The Silver Fern

I think he missed out on 2019 SR because sides had their 6/8's picked early.

His 2018 NPC form was too late

@shark I thought Lentjes was carrying an injury, so was benched.

Outrageously bad refereeing for the Koroi try with the Otere Black obstruction.

Makes my head explode.

Thanks for your answer. Poor guy, this may hamper his chances of winning a call for the next SR season for which he has been conditioning all year long.

I thought Koroi was a fullback/wing? Why would they bother with him there. Rats that Ioane was unable to play. Maybe they could use someone like Fletcher Smith in their team.

Wait.

@bovidae Cat's out of the bag then.

@damo don’t worry about missing the game,there was about 25,000 empty seats that missed the game as well..
But congratulations all the same..!

@stargazer said in Otago vs Ta$man:

Phew, no bonus point for Otago. That's good for the Bay, who'll play Ta$man next.

So all you Bay fans will be cheering for Waikato next Sat. 😉

Definitely has the potential to be a great Super Rugby player, he’ll be in and around the squad but another year with NZ 20’s & M10 before Super Rugby wont hurt. Love how he keeps things straight & attacks the line constantly, better first five defender than most. Looks to be trying too hard to win like most Steamers at the moment, hopefully they can just let loose against Southland and will see his best. Goal kicking definitely a major work on struggled at Jock Hobbs as well as M10.

@duluth said in Auckland vs Otago:

@Dice said:

We'll likely get Faiane and Nanai back next week, and hopefully Gibson. Whetton looks like he won't recover in 6 days though.

Lock looks concerning for the Wellington game.

It might be just Lamalu, Olmstead and Lane as the fit locks?

Looks like that's the case.

I wonder if Fatialofa is coming back at all. He was not meant to be out this long and he wasn't listed as being out for the season.

Tim said:

Cracking up at the commentators talking up Canterbury's 3rd choice frontrow today.

No one is intimidated by Daniel Lienert-Brown, Brodie McAlister, and Chris King.

agree with 2/3 of this, I think McAlistair will turn into a very good player tho.

Chris King has always been useless, huge backwards step to bring him back

@stargazer Yes it is. Credit to their fans for turning up week in week out, hope things can get better for them, similar to Northland teams in the past.

@nepia Don't worry, he's good for at least 50 more years in black.

Was at the game on Sunday. Wellington always looked in control even though they were fairly sloppy at times. I was amazed at the size of our front row - probably the smallest front row going around the ITM Cup.

Number of classy operators in the backline but our forwards will need to front week in and week out if we are going to contest this year. The return of Aumua and the pending return of Fidow will boost our chances.

@bovidae said in Game of 3 halves: All Blacks v Canterbury v Otago:

@chris-b Part of the reason for the dropping of Rokocoko and Sivivatu was their vulnerability under the high ball, which was the main SA tactic in 2009-2011. That was more relevant to Rok than Sivi and led to the emergence of Jane, Dagg and then Kahui being selected as a winger at the RWC.

His omission can't have been due to any off-field problems either, given the story about Zac in Aust immediately before the RWC. So I can only assume it was because Sivivatu had signalled he was going to France later that year and coin flip didn't go in his favour.

But wasn’t there some off field issues nonetheless that may have been a contributing factor?

LOL, local rivalry at its best in this game! 😃

Both teams did their best to bottle that last few minutes then the ref finishes it....

It's been a monumental fall from grace by us these last two years. We looked like we had something special brewing after that 2015 season. We had a young and exciting team that was only a hair away from winning a title. With all the young talent we had, it appeared we were poised to be perennial contenders for many years. I seriously didn't think any coach could stuff it up, but here we are.

Man of the match for Ta$man - Mitch Hunt. Honourable mentions for Guyton, Lowe, Taufua and Blackadder. Several others pretty good.