General Rugby Discussion 3

All Blacks blew it I felt - just stopped playing with around 20-25 mins to go.

Yeah, agreed. South Africa’s ability to ratchet up the pressure in the last 20 was excellent too.

Grant Williams and Kwagga’s try seemed to be scored too easily IMO; thought NZs goalline defence would be better.

I’m always amazed at Irish fans ability to big up their own team and diminish others. From memory Ireland was two fantastic DGs away from going down 0-2 in SA.

I won’t be surprised if NZ do lose by more than a score at the aviva. It’s a very tough end of year tour with no easy games and Ireland are an excellent side. But I wouldn’t be surprised either if nz won. Fine enough margins at the top

So what I get from that is... You agree with me?

Yeah. We were 2 fantastic DGs away from a 2-0 loss in SA.

But we got them.

We were also a Scott Barrett thigh away from a world cup semi final less than a year ago.

And we didn't get there.

Like you said fine margins.

Am I really bigging up my team and diminishing yours disproportionately? Based on current form and evidence?

I really don't think so swiwi.

yeah, you’d never see it called and we won’t see it again, but then often knock ons are called that have clearly gone backwards which penalises losing control. Afaik that’s not against the law.

I think it’s probably a question of time before they join the 6N unfortunately. At the end of the day, money talks-who would ever have thought that Twickenham would have ever sold their naming rights?

I think if a knock was given no-one would have protested. People usually think if you loose the ball, it's by default a knock on unless it is really really clear you pushed the ball backwards. If it's anyway close to 50 - 50, it's usually a knock on call and no-one minds.

Plenty of changes on both sides.

Think the All Blacks have said Blackadder and Caleb Clarke's absences are injury related.

I think it's a bit regressive for the Boks to bring Pollard back in for Sacha (who I felt was really good last week for the most part), but understand bringing Willie le Roux back in as I think the Bok backline looks much more dangerous with him linking play. Ruan Nortje has had a couple of good performances, and looks a really good lineout operator. Jasper Wiese had an excellent game last week and brings a real edge to the Boks pack IMO.

On the ABs side it'll be interesting to see if they can get Will Jordan more involved from the 15 shirt. I think Rieko Ioane's form has been poor and he's lucky to be still in the shirt IMO. Pack went pretty well last week, but Blackadder (despite conceding a lot of penalties) will be a loss. Sititi is quite a different player.

Looking forward to it again.

No, I don't really rate Libbok, unless someone else is going to take over goalkicking for him.

I just think there would have been no harm in persisting with Sacha and giving him a longer run in the jersey to continue to build confidence. To me, the ceiling for how good the Boks can be is higher with him at 10 over Pollard (which is saying a lot when you consider they're back to back RWC champions). Especially as he's been largely kicking well and showed good composure over the past few games.

On Kolisi - it's another one of these bizarre scenarios where it seemed he'd incurred a relatively serious injury, and they made a lot of noise about it (similar to Marx' injury post the Ireland second test), and then the player is back almost immediately. A concern I'd have on Kolisi is the way the Boks are using him now under Tony Brown's system (just in the context of this injury) - they seem to have him popping up as a carrier on a way more frequent basis. It's working well, and he's well suited to it, but he's shipping a lot of hits from it too.

Agreed the Boks have lots of versatility in the backs - le Roux, Moodie, Kriel, Sacha, Grant Williams and Cheslin can all realistically cover multiple positions to a high level.