The Silver Fern

@Grooter said in Ireland v All Blacks - Chicago2:

@Richie8-7 to be fair we were looking unlikely until the 59th minute when the herculean flying Dutchman pounced on the Irish 10 Crowley and then Tupaea won the turnover, hopefully sky sport show the world rugby awards at months end as I wanna see Fabian receive his world breakthrough player of the year medal

On this particular play - I didn't catch it at the time but Holland absolutely busts his guts chasing the kick - full sprint after it from the instant Jordan kicks it. Real effort play which you don't always notice.

One thing with Tupaea and Lester whenever they touched it – I felt they were always making yards or at least bumping off the first tackler from shit situations and looked more dangerous with a bit of space. (I never really got that feeling of that expectation from Proctor.) Can’t find the run metre stats yet.

Surprised how poor Ireland were in the second half. 0 line breaks, 3-4 lineouts lost in a row and won just 69% of their own ball, scrum issues. Their lineouts are a killer as they launch a lot of their plays off of them.

They were the peak of strategy and execution a few years ago - looks more and more like the short passing, multi-phase strategy has been dated. It doesn’t help that they’re struggling to refresh the team, especially with explosive type athletes which they rarely produce. Will be interesting to see how they trend against Aus and SA.

I don't know Wordpress but Grok gives a comprehensive answer on how best to go about doing it: https://grok.com/c/fd288606-2fb8-4e7b-b331-be3514116cbb (Edit - scroll down to your question, I forgot I included another question previously)

I'd think there would be someone in your Chess community who is handy with basic webdev and could knock it out.

Murray Kinsella and Bernard Jackman had a decent conversion about the NZ/IRE game on the 42.ie rugby podcast. Most of it's about Ireland (+ URC) which is a good listen by itself but they go over out the state of the NZ team and the coaching. It's interesting hearing a neutral perspective from the outside.

About the NZ rugby public:

"They're very hard to please - they're quite cynical and that's because they know so much about rugby." Ha!

I don't agree with it all (Robertson called 'very bright guy') but worth a download.

So Wales has Argentina, Japan, NZ and SAF. I'm looking forward to the Japan game - was highly entertaining series earlier in the year.

What's a decent result this Autumn for Wales?

From the outside - beat Japan, closeish against Argentina and just taking the medicine for the last two?

@nzzp said in All Blacks vs Wallabies Bledisloe II:

How the hell Tamati Ellison still has a job I do not know. We are regularly shipping 30+ points. His track record wasn't great - failed at the Crusaders last year, so elevated to the ABs. It's a symptom of 'people I know' rather than 'the best person for the job'.

Go through that coaching team sheet and figure out how many hadn't worked with Razor before. It's almost zero. Working with people who you know is the opposite of a high performance mindset.

Where are the new ideas going to come from? God knows.

What I find wild is the shift from 'drop Croczilla for the final' ruthlessness to "BB can play till he's 40, or we get RM back'. That is such a 180 I cannot get my head around it. And fuck the world I re-watched the last 40 of the SA test this week. BB gets a prime attackign opportunity towards teh end and just ... cross kicks the ball. IT's like his one trick that surely catches the opposition by surprise this time. I mean, it's not on every fucking tape you get of him doing stupid, low percentage miracle plays that will look good on the Insta.

I cannot remember being as disappointed in a coaching team as I am right now. We are fucking up the fundamentals over and over, and no one cares. Your captain is chipping on his 5 m line and no one cares. Here's the thing. If you dno't respect possession, the opposition will and they will thump you. That's where we are right now. It's awful to watch and hard to support.

Fuck Robinson, Robertson, Tamati, Scott, Beaudy, Scooter, Ardie, TJ, Last season Cane and RM. Jesus it's frustrating.

Edit. I feel better after that vent. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Would upvote this twice if I could. The glaring structural issues with the coaching should have been flagged and rectified by the High Performance Director. (Unless Robertson had them over a barrel.)

Agree with the general sentiment about the makeup of the loose forwards. But individually I thought Lakai was fine if in the last game. He made post contact metres in heavy traffic, his detail around ball presentation and body positioning was spot on. Granted he got limited chances but seemed up to the physical stuff in that sample. Let's how he goes against the bigger bodies the Wobs have returning this week.

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

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

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.

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.)

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!

Hunter with 2 fantastics line breaks right up the guts and caps each with just brain dead offloads

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.

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.

First glance was surprised to see Edmed over JOC for the start.

I hope Edmed can ramp it up from what I saw in Super. But with Lynagh's wobbles (+ injury) and JOC heading overseas, this is probably a decent game to throw him in the deep end.

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.

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

@DurryMexted I wondered this too, who does he come on for - Barrett, Mackenzie, Carter? Or is he solely inury cover...

@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.