Northland v Waikato

[Stargazer]

I checked a few more:

Against	Won	Lost	Drawn
Hawke's Bay	3	7
Counties Manukau	2	4
North Harbour	2	6	1

I was surprised to see that Northland played so few games against Counties during the last decade.

[Bovidae]

The home team tends to win this fixture and I was expecting Northland would get up for Ranger's 100th game. Some porous defence from Waikato in the 1st half. Lansdown had a game to forget.

[kev]

@taniwharugby said in Northland v Waikato:

@kev yeah and continuing with players like Hohaia and Hawkins year in year out is not helping development...Hawkins guided us round last night, but Cooper should have been starting or persist with Reihana, he needs game time to develop, this season is toast in all ways.

They messed him about last year too. Tua needs time in the midfield, alongside Ranger last night would have been ideal.

Look at how Gregory is struggling, when he should be one of our go to guys after the Super season, but he isn't even looking upto this level often this season

I think Dewes is doing a good job with our set piece, but overall tactics and defence is not ideal...
I hear mixed stuff about Konia....

We need guys like Corey Evans and any number of talented northland kids as well as aspiring Blues players to want to come up here, but our development and play has been so up and down the past few seasons why would they?

Tua looked good before injury last year. If he stays on the field ( ?) he can break into Super Rugby. Reihana, Johnny Cooper, Gregory, both Rush’s are developing players who need support. I feel sorry for Noah Cooper who must ask why he was dropped vs some others. Our squad was so so far off the pace in the first two games - just said so much about their poor preparation.

[Chiefy07]

That was a pretty good performance. Hopefully we can build from that. I thought that was definitely our packs best performance of the season - bar a couple of scrums and 2 or 3 lineouts. I think that was a good balance to the pack - particularly in the loosies. Surprised to hear that was Faukafa's first game at 8. He seems well suited to it, hopefully he carrys on that form - it's good having a big ball runner at 8.

Been good to see Justin Davies have another go at playing for Northland - always rated him in his first stint. Looks like he wasn't expecting to be playing this level again but going well - scrum improved once he came on.

I think we need to fit Tamati Tua in somewhere. While Gregory is injured he should be at 12, once Gregory is back then probably should go to the right wing. He's too good to sit on the bench. Just on Gregory - I can't understand why we would play one of our best players out of position at centre. Just put him at 12 and leave him there - if he can do it in SR he can surely do it in NPC.

We need to get Macilai on the ball more - still a massive weapon at this level.

Was Reihanas best game for Northland - will be interesting to see if 15 is his best position or whether he just enjoyed being on the front foot more. Think it was a good call to have Hawkins do the goal kicking and Reihana do most of the out of hand kicking.

You slot Robinson, Tua and Gregory back into that team and it does start to have a strong look about it.

[Chiefy07]

Also - why the hell did we take Macilai off when we did. Ranger had a great game in his 100th but I would've had Macilai up there as MOTM at the point in the game he was subbed.

[taniwharugby]

@kev yeah there was no reason to drop Noah after last week.

Plenty others deserved dropping, but he has looked the part at the back.

Sure Rivez played well at 15, but he was probably most deserving of being dropped after last week...Johnny Cooper had a nice cameo last week, also dropped...reinstated Hawkins, again, played solidly, but seriously that is a step back in our development going to him, again.

With a bye before our next game, I assume we will have Gregory, Tua, Hohaia and Ranger to choose from for our midfield, Hyland, Rush, Leilua, Macilai, Cooper, Roberts-Te Nana to choose from in our back 3....

@Chiefy07 I mentioned that at the time Re Macilai, unless he was injured youd have rocks in your.head taking him off.

[Dice]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUew6mClA9O/

[taniwharugby]

@dice the origin of the Turtle...iirc Rangers was in response to the move Digby Ioane was busting out at the time

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUe6uB0Fieu/?utm_medium=copy_link

[Dice]

@dice said in Northland v Waikato:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUew6mClA9O/

Saw Joe Rok's comment on this post.

So I went looking for the Ranger one.

They only managed to get a glimpse of it before cutting away.

[Dice]

@taniwharugby said in Northland v Waikato:

@dice the origin of the Turtle...iirc Rangers was in response to the move Digby Ioane was busting out at the time

https://www.instagram.com/p/CUe6uB0Fieu/?utm_medium=copy_link

Geez, I missed your post.