The Silver Fern

I listen to a lot of podcasts and it genuinely gobsmacks me at the continued ineptitude of the rugby analysis we get in NZ. You’d think we would have the best technical analysis of games in the world given the prominence rugby has in NZ culture.

Contrast to that Ireland – smaller playing population and rugby competes with Gaelic Football and Soccer. Despite that, there’s 3 Irish podcasts I regularly listen to. (There’s a bunch of other lesser options too.) Yes, they are horribly biased but know way more about the any opposition Ireland plays than any NZ rugby analyst. They tear into the team when they lose and actually spend time to analyse the game and tactics - we get told someone had a good game because they scored a try. It puts almost anything we get to shame.

Do the media think the general public are too thick too absorb content like this?
Surely there’s space for a grassroots type podcast/Youtube channel to fill this obvious void? There’s a bunch of South African ones but mileage varies greatly with these.

Congratulations SA - different level.

Worst loss outside of a WC by a large margin for me. We cannot carry on for 2 years with this muppet in charge. (We will though.)

Black pill time. I’m finding it hard to muster any enthusiasm for this weekend or anything beyond really. Wellington knocked the (little) faith I had completely out of me. Not the result, the performance. No confidence in the coaching team and the core veterans. I have doubts whether the management even know what the problems are.

We win comfortably in the weekend showing we can pull out the odd big performance but can’t sustain anything. Though we go out and lose the next week. We then head north and lose twice. We show just enough that none of the required structural changes are made. The media will tell us how great the players are, and a few bounces and refereeing decisions just didn’t go our way. The coaching team is locked in, the veterans which needed to go years ago hold on for the next WC and be guaranteed selection irrespective of performance.

Repeat for next year. Then it’s too late to change anything for the WC anyway. Depending on the draw, exit in the semis. Media and players say the coach just needs a bit more time and his plan is coming together.

Repeat the cycle.

Squidge videos can be hit or miss for me but there's one on his second channel breaking down Black Ferns / Ireland which is worth a watch. They definitely have an impressive knowledge of individual player's characteristics.

Schmidt has really got control of the penalty count / discipline. Wobs were the worst at this under Eddie. In 2022 they averaged 13.6 per game with 15 yellows and 1 red.

Contrast that with the first 2 SA games where they were pinged a total of 10 times across both matches.

I imagine it's almost a pre-requisite for selection.

@junior said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:

@JA said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:

I listen to a lot of podcasts and it genuinely gobsmacks me at the continued ineptitude of the rugby analysis we get in NZ. You’d think we would have the best technical analysis of games in the world given the prominence rugby has in NZ culture.

Contrast to that Ireland – smaller playing population and rugby competes with Gaelic Football and Soccer. Despite that, there’s 3 Irish podcasts I regularly listen to. (There’s a bunch of other lesser options too.) Yes, they are horribly biased but know way more about the any opposition Ireland plays than any NZ rugby analyst. They tear into the team when they lose and actually spend time to analyse the game and tactics - we get told someone had a good game because they scored a try. It puts almost anything we get to shame.

Do the media think the general public are too thick too absorb content like this?
Surely there’s space for a grassroots type podcast/Youtube channel to fill this obvious void? There’s a bunch of South African ones but mileage varies greatly with these.

The rugby-industrial-complex in NZ is too small and no one wants to piss of their mates or anyone in power. While Rattue was a massive prick, the way he was frozen out completely by The Cartel has proved to be a salutary lesson for his colleagues and is probably part of the reason why we have the media we do.

Yup, the NFL realised that it’s an effective form of promotion and freely allows their game content to be dissected by random Youtubers. Whereas World Rugby or Six Nations started giving Squidge copyright strikes for using a 3 second clip of a game.

@DurryMexted said in All Blacks v Springboks I:

One tactic i highly enjoyed was our aggressive counter rucking. We blew over a fair number of rucks, as well as giving Williamse massive issues trying to get quick/tidy ball. The impressive thing was that the saffas had often actually committed a couple of forwards, but we still were able to get in there and disrupt. This was particularly targeted at the first or second ruck after a boxie. A tactic that came off well

Loved this. Compared to the NH teams (Ireland in particular), we rarely focus on this so was great to see it applied effectively. It's a simple effort play but had a noticeable impact - slowed the ruck speed, caused them to send an extra fattie in and got the halfback thinking twice.

Really, entertaining game, attacking shape looked solid for Lions but the defense looked like what you expect for a scratch team.

@chimoaus said in All Blacks v Springboks I:

@pakman Yeah JB is fine, I was more referring to Christie trying to box kick us out of the 22, he rarely made much distance past our 22. If you look at the kick offs, SA always got the ball back near our 22. If that was Ireland, SA we would get the ball back closer to the 50m line.

The AB's have to figure out how to exit to at least the 40-50m line. Giving the opposition the ball 20-30m out is simply a fail to exit. Ireland use their wingers all the time, SA 9 can box kick to half way almost. We have JB so its strange they keep going for 9. It just confuses me as they must have the stats and skills to exit, yet we simply can't which just puts pressure on us.

I think this is saying SA only had 30% of possession in their half and 70% in our half. Where as we spent 49% in our half and 51% in theirs. That makes it pretty obvious we struggle to exit our half.

A million times yes! An exit is a fail if you're not comfortably outside your 22 at the bare minimum. This is so crucial in dictating the next stanza of play. Especially in such a tight game.

Multiple times we had the initial ruck somewhere around the middle of our 22 and the goal-line. Christie's box kick would then get literally 8 - 12 metres and just heap the pressure right back on us. No wonder we couldn't get out of our half. It's just not good enough to get that distance. His exits were tolerable in the first half, so fatigue probably an issue but it just handed SA the momentum.

@junior Fully agreed about the local media not wanting to upset their mates or contacts. But that’s why I bought up Ireland – similar population and rugby competes with other sports, just like we do.

So why are their options for detailed analysis so much better than ours? I don’t know the answer.

More examples – the 42ie. It will have multiple articles from Kinsella or whoever breaking down one facet of the game in minute detail. A dozen stills and a video to show how one strike play evolved and was executed. Can you imagine Stuff or the Herald doing similar?

Tim from Eggchasers can go deep into the AB’s depth chart and discuss random players off the top of his head. Could you imagine the Breakdown guys discussing the merits of England’s fourth choice tighthead or Prendergast’s tackling technique? Ha!

@NTA Saw the same one. Had to turn it off - was cringe inducing. Wondered if they were the same after Aus/SA game 1!

Agreed, some of the tries, particularly in the Black Ferns games have been genuinely top shelf and yes way less box kicking. I feel there is more tolerance for losing a bit of ground over a few rucks but still hanging onto it and building into something.

With the men's game , it's generally an immediate kick for a slow ruck or getting caught behind the advantage line.

One thing that does nag at the back of my head is the quality of one on one tackling. Maybe unfairly but makes you think if it's actually a great run or just a shit tackle attempt. I feel it's the latter a lot of the time.

Not specific to the women game, e.g. Marx missing Jordan but feel it happens more frequently with the games I've watched.

Montoya is sick of Wilson's nattering to the ref, came through on the audio "shut up c*nt".

He must have up picked some local lingo in Townsville!

Private equity in search of a home.

They tried to follow the IPL and Liv golf playbook without understanding why those particular endeavours worked (or sort of worked).

IPL – captive 1b+ Indian market who support any form of cricket. Liv – individual sport, so easy to pick off top golfers with massive contracts to give it instant credibility. Also, you can throw a superstar cricket team together and be half decent – it’s the extreme opposite end of the scale with rugby.

I remember when the Rugby 360 reports started appearing. Almost the same time, on the Bill Simmons podcast he talked about the same proposal – new league forming outside of the official channels, top players signing massive contracts to be part of it, global tour, it’s real, it’s coming etc etc.

Basically every talking point from Rugby 360, except he was talking about it happening with the NBA players.

No idea on what some of these breakdown penalties are for. For both sides.

Nice hit back - really picked out Lynagh.

Why is the TMO coming in for marginal knock ons - uggh.

Exactly. Doleman could not have had a better view.

Why do we so often catch the ball stationary then start running - seems endemic.

Damn - why can't we do that?