A feast of rugby tomorrow, anyone attending? Predictions welcomed, reviews also appreciate
That run from Mark Telea in the first half. Magic.
It was a great match, far more than I expected today. England are learning game by game again, if they keep that going they’re going to do very well. Next week to be really fun to watch!
ABs classic wobbly first test hopefully, and next week with more training sessions to bed in systems will be better. Perofeta was really good, but Beauden’s kicking game was a marked difference maker in terms of ensuring the ABs spent more time with ball in hand in the right part of the pitch.
DMac’s passing was exceptional but other than that he did struggle against the rush D (every body does, even Mounga) and some of the missed kicks & the time out would have been frustrating. Definitely deserves another shot at 10 and I think keeping BB on the bench to sub in as a change of plan as needed is a good balance.
For mine, England’s best player was their halfback Mitchell - he was possibly the best player on the pitch. Really great service from the base, great pass, managed to keep the defence guessing, a scary good performance. In a way a similar player to Roigaard so its a shame he is out injured to have a battle against a similar player. Perenara was great, but is definitely more of an old school style where Mitchell looks to me to be perhaps a change in style that will become more common in coming years.
I suspect you’re right about first test nerves. But England will also learn. All Blacks tried up the jumper vs England first half, of course they were going to struggle vs England. All Blacks have another game though, where England will come unstuck is they don’t
Samoa - Italy from yesterday too which is yet another example to why the new Nations Championship protecting the bottom of the 6 nations at the expense of the next tier that they’re not consistently better than is a total joke.
Oh wow, just checked the score, got to watch the highlights of that match!
Oh another game we missed was Georgia - Fiji; weirdly for compared to all the other games that one was played away for Fiji.
Not many play Georgia to be fair. I suspect only Scotland of tier 1 have ever been
England gonna give NZ a really hard game unless their kicking for goal improves here
Nika Amashukeli just isn’t up to standard; both teams have a lot to be frustrated about due to his rulings. Thankfully he was equally bad so overall it balanced out, but it made for an absolute shambles at ruck time (similar to the game vs Argentina a couple years ago). I think you could make an argument that the mess he allowed to happen at the rucks is what led to TJ Perenara’s unfortunate injury.
I thought him not too bad actually, I liked his breakdowns. Felt flowing to to me. Nothing I actively disagreed with on the whistle either
Perhaps it’s just a huge divergence between NH & SH on the breakdown. Down here you’re not allowed to chuck your hands on the ground as much as he was allowing; and once the ball is lost the ref basically tells them to clean it up and get the game going again. Whereas in this game when the tackle area had definitely become a ruck he was still happy for newly arriving players to stick their hands on the ball to slow it down.
They’re also a lot stricter on the direction they’re coming in on the breakdown as well. So generally in SR it was a lot tidier than in this game; with less players off their feet even when the defending team counter-rucked and blew past the ball.
I was also pretty frustrated by his guesswork and inconsistency at scrum time. The very first scrum dropped with Marler not taking the hit & hinging as much as Lomax overreaching with the gap being set too far apart. He gave a straight arm for that, but then in the 2nd half was resetting scrums for basically the same thing. The use it call on the ABs scrum that took the feed, hooked the ball and then started moving forward was a bit much too I thought.
Aus v Wales has been a good watch so far; I’d say the Wallabies are looking the better team but struggling with a bit of dropped ball so haven’t been able to take full advantage of the half-breaks they’re generating.
I enjoyed the full game, even though both teams got the dropsies at times. Lolesio trying for a cross field kick instead of just passing into a 2-2 out wide 10m out from the line got him yanked by Schmidt but I think for the most part he was pretty good and is still building into a combination with Gordon. The latter box kicked well but it was a good call to sub when the game started to become a lot looser.
For the most part the Wallabies many rookies stood up & got the job done so they can rightly be proud of getting the win. Wales aren’t a tip top team by any means and are rebuilding themselves - but have had more time in camp and more games played than Schmidt who basically prepped the team with 4 sessions so with more time the Wallabies should improve for game 2.
Thought Brousset was really good too, clear in his instructions throughout, not afraid to follow up on warnings and be decisive.
I want sky sports…
Now TV day pass is available. Given more next week, and the week after - might be worth a month pass. Scotland on TNT for some damned reason means I might go to the pub to watch the SA v Ire match
