The Silver Fern

Will Jordan was the difference. Should have been given man of the match. When he went off injured in the round robin match at that stadium a few weeks back the Crusaders went to pieces and dropped or lost every contestable kick, Mackenzie and Stevenson dominated with the boot and grew in confidence. In the final Jordan just took them both out of the game and his leadership seemed to rub off on Rivez Reihana as well.

I think he has really turned a corner in maturity and leadership this season and I am looking forward to that playing out for the All Blacks. Hopefully he can stay injury free and play the entire test season.

Tamiti Ellison is a bigger thief drawing a coaching salary for defence than he was drawing a salary as a Super rugby player.

Have to admire a man who is defense coach of the Crusaders in their worst season in years and then slides into the All Black job and concedes record amounts of points but receives very little scrutiny for either.

He is the invisible man when it comes to accountability.

Why do people always say except Jason Ryan. That fat fucker is the one who wants to exclude Talented players from selection because of personal issues. The forwrds have gone backwards this year as well if you take out Fabien Holland (nothing to do with Ryan) adding some much needed size, power and workrate. Our Scrum and lineout have both been dismantled at various times this year and we constantly lack go forward in contact. Thanks to Ryan the best power runners in NZ rugby are lost to us with one likely to turn up in England colours before the next world cup and the only decent 7 in terms of workrate and the physical size required for test rugby looks to be going the same way. Our best impact lock will probably follow next year. The majority of that appears to be down to Ryans dislike of what he perceives is the 'Blues Culture'. A region that produces one third of our player base.

@nonpartizan said in All Blacks 2025:

@sparky said in All Blacks 2025:

@nonpartizan New Zealand used to have extra rugby smarts to make up for lower player numbers than England, South Africa and France. Not any more.

I expect those three nations with their huge resources to pull away in the next few years.

I think small countries can compete with bigger countries in sport - such as how Jamaica is consistently the biggest rival to the US in sprinting despite having a population of only 3 million.

HOWEVER, what you can't afford is waste and inefficiency. Your decision making at all levels of the game have to be very accurate. You need the smartest people in charge making the decisions so that you are always able to use your resources wisely. One bad appointment or poor decision can cripple you. I would say in that sense the AB hiring process for a coach has to be unbelievably thorough next time around. The candidates need to be thoroughly vetted and whatever their weaknesses are there has to be some steps taken to offset them.

Agree waste is a big problem and I can't understand why Jason Ryan gets such a big pass for it. He is the one coach in the setup who has made it obvious he is still stuck in the past where the All Blacks could afford to exclude players with tremendous talent on attitudinal grounds and select players who are not up to it because they have the right attitude.

He is the dumb motherfucker who has excluded 3 of the loose forwards with the most potential talent of their generation in Akira Ioane, Hoskin Sotutu and Dalton Papali'i. Not saying every one of these players would have been a success but a good coach should back himself to get the best out of at least 2 of them. All Black rugby can simply not afford to waste this kind of talent anymore.

He is also the dumb motherfucker who has selected guys not good enough for test rugby like Brodie McCallister, George Bell, Luke Jacobson, Du'Plessis Kirifi while putting to much faith in players like players like Wallace Sititi to be world beaters on the basis of a few Ardie Savea like highlights. Savea is also shit as a 7 and a starter in general and should be on the bench which I put partly on Jason Ryan as well.

@antipodean No one is denying we may have a drop in player quality but there is not alot can be done about that. We can do something about the coaching by ensuring (and as fans insisting) we have the best candidates possible in these roles.

Regardless our player quality which is not Italy, Scotland, Wales levels (we are still in the top tier) we should not be losing in the humiliating style we are.

I think most All Black fans can handle losing and not being No1 but what we hate is looking clueless and inept.

Not so sure. Ioane was all class in defense and hustle on the Aussies when the All Blacks were turning the screws and mounting the pressure on them keeping them pinned in their own half.. Tupaea while great on attack allowed them easy metres out wide and at times in the first half hour it looked like they could rip us a new one like the Sprinkboks did. Defense and pressuring other teams into mistakes to turn over possession is just such a critical part of test rugby now and Reiko is the best exponent of this at centre in NZ. It is something we have been shit at all season until the final 20 of this game.

I personally would like to see Tupaea at 12 and Ioane at 13 and Jordie Barrett the only one who looks assured under the high ball at 15. Jordan to the wing and massive practise on catching high balls. I just can't see us ever beating the boks consistently with him at the back catching less than 50% of high balls.

9. Roigard
10. Anyone other than Beauden or Damien
11. Leroy Carter/Caleb Clarke
12. Quinn Tuaaea
13. Reiko Ioane
14. Will Jordan
15. Jordie Barrett

reserve Hotham/Ratima
reserve. Mackenzie
reserve. Leicester Faingaʻanuku

that was pathetic captaincy. Kane ruined that kids career tonight. He was done after two overs. Any longterm cricket watcher could see it but he could have been back to fight another day but to give him 2 more after that was trying to mentally ruin him.

AB XV equally as woeful under the high ball as the national team. Diabolical and we were lucky England A couldn't go 2 phases without knocking the ball on. Such a massive weakness of our game.

As is kicking, Josh Jacombs field kicking is woefully short and inaccurate and is his goal kicking is Beaden Barret levels of shit. He seemed to settle into running the game a bit better in the second half but wasn't great in this area in the first or last week so I wonder why Reihana isn't been given more time at 10. I guess Robertson and co see Jacomb as the next cab off the rank if their is an injury.

I would like to see how Cam Millar goes in a team that isn't getting eviscerated in the forwards and has some decent attacking threats on the outside It is a shame they selected on Super form only and not NPC. His kicking game is the best in NZ rugby but he gets exposed playing in a weak Highlanders side in a tournament like Super rugby that doesn't place much value on a 10 that kicks well and controls territory.

So not the worst U20 team of all time?

@Victor-Meldrew said in RWC Week 2: All Blacks v Namibia:

@MiketheSnow said in RWC Week 2: All Blacks v Namibia:

Discarded / surplus to requirements for a lot of those players tbf

Fifita had multiple chances.

What playing at lock? Super rugby forces potential test No 6s to play lock where they are then told they are too small and not good enough for test rugby. Running bigger packs off their feet with hybrid 7s playing in every loose forward position works in Super rugby but not in test rugby.

So instead of Fifitta, Luatua, Naitoa Ah Kuoi, Dominic Gardiner, or Cameron Suafoa being developed as test 6s they are picked as Super rugby locks and don't develop as looseforwards miss the big All Black salaries and eventually take the bigger money on offer overseas.

Criminal waste of talent for a team that is crying out for some power runners in the forwards to give them go forward in contact and put the rush defense on the retreat to stay onside.

I reckon you put Hoskin Satutu on the bench for England and they would have put another 2 tries on us in that second half..

Were you not saying on the other thread that people are not allowed to post what they heard from an old school mate of Reuben Love? Sounds like you are happy to have comments disqualified if you don't agree with them.

One of the worst loose forward trios the All Blacks have ever put out

Real shame Zack Gallagher is going, he has made a real decent fist of playing 6 in the NPC and looks like he could have proved useful in this position at Super level,. Canterbury lineout has been a real defensive weapon with 4 genuine jumping options.

Our scrum only improved when Fabian Holland came on. Same as what happened in Eden Park. The referee was very focused on ruling on what was presented to him and he constantly saw our scrum going backwards in for the majority of 2 tests so he was going to reward this. Vaai and Barret not a powerful enough pairing in the engine room.

Just like not picking Caleb Clarke on the wing when we got massacred in the air was stupid so was not picking our most powerful lock when they had worked over our scrum.

I like the suggestion of NZR select the head coach and then set about appointing the assistants with input from the head coach, rather than complete free choice.

We need to spend some time and money defining exactly what the structure and requirements are of the assistant coaching setup with properly written job descriptions and metrics for measuring performance.

This seems to be what Rassie Erasmus has done with SA. Their coaching setup is way more complex than ours but they have a well defined structure and everybody seems to know their role.

We would have to review it every 5 years to make sure it is ahead of the game or at worst keeping up. I think this is a big part of our problems. We caught a break on the rest of the world when we appointed GH, Hansen and Smith and our coaching setup was better than the rest of the rugby world. Unfortunately this lead to complacency and the rest of the rugby world looked at what we did refined it and now have better coaching structures than us and we are trying to do the same thing we came up with at the turn of the century.

@canefan said in All Blacks vs Springboks II:

@kidcalder said in All Blacks vs Springboks II:

@game_film Not sure Sotutu is the answer

One player isn't the answer. Our inability to clinically perform fundamentals such as kick receptions, line outs and scrums seems to be increasingly apparent as games go on. Sometimes we scrape home, this time we got pumped. Fault lies with the everyone from the coaches to the players. There are some fundamental problems in how we are approaching the game at the moment. And we have a coach who is impeding the progress of the whole group because of his selections

I think we have seen the importance of having quality players across your whole 23. Or at the minimum players who can perform their core role and let others shine..

Seriously how does someone like Brodie McCallister get selected for the All Blacks with problematic lineout throwing? Why was this not noted after his debut or picked up at practice this week? It is like a time warp back to Anton Oliver where core roles are not a big deal if you are a good bloke and rugged team man.

@Darth-Sader said in All Blacks vs Wallabies Bledisloe II:

Solid win in the end. Aussie didn’t live up to the hype second half though.

Reiko Ioane was very solid defensively coming on at centre. Aussie backline never looked threatening out wide once he came on.

Shoud have given himself and Munro at least an over each.