All Blacks 2025
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@Victor-Meldrew said in All Blacks 2025:
Don't the ABs have an even higher win rate when George Bridge was playing?

He scored more tries against SA than Jonah ever did too
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
And just to advocate for the devil even more. One of the most commented on, frustrating things from the past few years is when we've very rarely seen the ABs absolutely dominate with their "up the middle", fast paced game played around the breakdown with offloads and quick ball, bodies in motion.
When it's been pulled out it's been devastating for opposition and it's extremely rarely used - I'm definitely not against seeing more of it.
It's also a bloody good way to calm things down and begin to take control of the game. McCaw's teams did it a lot, we currently do it in patches.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
And just to advocate for the devil even more. One of the most commented on, frustrating things from the past few years is when we've very rarely seen the ABs absolutely dominate with their "up the middle", fast paced game played around the breakdown with offloads and quick ball, bodies in motion.
When it's been pulled out it's been devastating for opposition and it's extremely rarely used - I'm definitely not against seeing more of it.
Nor am I, but if we are releasing social media footage of us practicing this then it raises a bit of a concern that England will be prepared to stop it or that this is a bluff and we have no intention of using this strategy.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
Christ on a bike, this moaning for moaning's sake is getting a bit silly. ABs should apparently either release no media, or only release media of fans popular problem areas, or special tactics.
I saw footage on the news of them passing, running and then tackling. Lets hope they surprise England this Saturday and don't do any of this.
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@MN5 said in All Blacks 2025:
@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
Christ on a bike, this moaning for moaning's sake is getting a bit silly. ABs should apparently either release no media, or only release media of fans popular problem areas, or special tactics.
I saw footage on the news of them passing, running and then tackling. Lets hope they surprise England this Saturday and don't do any of this.
Oh fucking hell. Hope like hell there wasn't any footage of them pushing in scrums otherwise we're completely fucked.
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@No-Quarter said in All Blacks 2025:
I do wonder if WR could look at implementing a law that states the chasing players has to actually make a genuine effort to catch the ball
Hmmm, the rugby league "Disruptor" rule.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
Christ on a bike, this moaning for moaning's sake is getting a bit silly. ABs should apparently either release no media, or only release media of fans popular problem areas, or special tactics.
Yeah, this is just media/PR fluff.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
"up the middle", fast paced game played around the breakdown with offloads and quick ball, bodies in motion.In the club comp I foillowed this year (not an NZ one, but a huge amount of Kiwis in it) this was the basic strategy of all teams, all grades.
A great watch.
Going wide was the option play. Only after you had achieved the go-forward. -
@hikastags said in All Blacks 2025:
Quite surprised by the amount of people that are keen for us to keep practicing low percentage plays. Hilarious.
Yeah true, shouldn't practice box kick reception at all, great point.
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@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
@hikastags said in All Blacks 2025:
Quite surprised by the amount of people that are keen for us to keep practicing low percentage plays. Hilarious.
Yeah true, shouldn't practice box kick reception at all, great point.
That's not a low percentage play. Du'Plessis Kirifi and Peter Lakai throwing offloads 2cm above the ground is a low percentage play.
Great point, sounds like a winner.
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@Darren said in All Blacks 2025:
Comical how a short clip of a few guys practicing offloads is getting people so worked up.
Worked up for pointing out the complete stupidity of it considering all our other flaws in our core roles. You must think we're good at our core roles? Lol.
Lineout has regressed over the season, still can't take high balls, can't kick accurately, can't throw a straight lineout, can't kick chase, can't clean rucks effectively to play uptempo as everyone is saying we should do LOL.
But yeah, let's work on falling offloads.... Hopefully we're working on bounce passes next to keep our tempo!
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@hikastags said in All Blacks 2025:
@Bones said in All Blacks 2025:
@hikastags said in All Blacks 2025:
Quite surprised by the amount of people that are keen for us to keep practicing low percentage plays. Hilarious.
Yeah true, shouldn't practice box kick reception at all, great point.
That's not a low percentage play. Du'Plessis Kirifi and Peter Lakai throwing offloads 2cm above the ground is a low percentage play.
Great point, sounds like a winner.
What's the percentage of contestable box kicks being caught?