Mate I'd hate to live with a lot of you blokes. Seems a few watched this thread rather than the game.

Positives:

We won
Our back three + Jordie had a great game under the high ball, won a huge majority of the contests
BB kicked well to that, seemed like a plan they'd worked on - many kicks were just at the far end of contestable range, so perfect to run on to with speed.
Sititi played a blinder
Telea played a blinder
We had lots of forwards running into holes followed by forwards running onto offloads
Both wings played well with ball in hand
Great leg drive from a few key forwards - Ardie, Pat T, Sititi in particular
Excellent bench scrum - good signs for Tosi, and impressive by Aumua after 70 min
4/4 goalkicking with none of them easy

Negatives

Kicking tactics:
- chips, although one was regathered and almost led to a try. That was under penalty advantage, debatably the only good time to try it
- couple of aimless kicks by BB and Jordie. Need calmer heads or more tactical clarity.
Discipline. Need to find a solution/train harder to stop tackling off the ball. Yes they're running decoys but you can't full-on tackle them. A lot of the other penalties were unlucky/fairly standard
Cane poor. Certainly true of his carrying and the tackle off the ball hurt. I didn't study his work in the tight stuff though, so not writing him off yet.
Handling. I think this was by far our biggest issue. The amount of times we had opportunity let down by poor hands/forced 50/50 offloads/passes poorly located was frustrating. Need to work on the basics more, catching/passing in contact at pace.
Midfield distribution. Jordie had an off game, but Rieko just doesn't do it for me as a midfielder. So so much better as a wing, ALB can fill the midfield role till Proctor/someone else comes through. I think we've given Rieko enough time there to prove himself.

Mixed

Jordan. Moments of brilliance, couple of brainfades. High effort though.
Ardie? Made some metres no one else in world rugby would've made, but anonymous elsewhere. Not sure why, tackling stats (1/3) are weird and suggest a role I didn't spot at the time.
Scrum. Bad early, good late. Keep working on it.

Overall stoked, we had a gameplan that we executed at times, and we gritted out the win - we scored points where we needed to.

This is year one of a four year process - way too early to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The Silver Fern

delicatessen