- Australia v South Africa in Brisbane
- New Zealand v Argentina in Wellington
LFG Pumas!!
Oh how I wish Scotland got a crack at New Zealand this year, our last team to win against
Surely SA’s to lose now
Yeah I said after the two England games that the ABs were pretty lucky to get away with 2 wins and could easily go 0-4 on the road against SA, Ire & Eng this year. I still thought they should have had enough to put the Argentinians away at home but yet again they played a muddled, disjointed game and had no answer to the rush defence. Couple that with a very soft 2nd half forward performance and they were deserved losers.
Honestly, unlike the home loss to Argentina under Foster this performance I think was even worse. Argentina 2 years ago played incredibly; tonight they just played well. Good, structured rugby - did the basics very well, and had some interesting variety in attack plus from broken play were incredibly dangerous.
Yet again, the All Blacks defensive system this year was found to be very porous and they got no better physicality from Blackadder than they did with Finau against England. When Sititi came on they pulled Papali’i off and left Blackadder on who promptly gave up two penalties. The Sotutu fans will be even more aggrieved that he was overlooked for that performance.
The NZ public will probably bag McKenzie but I dont think there was a lot he could have done, Perenara’s service was pretty slow for the first 55 minutes, and while things sped up a lot with Ratima on for the last 20 minutes the ABs forwards were just completely outclassed.
I was at the Wellington Stadium with my Scottish partner & in-laws for the 2011 World Cup when Argentina beat Scotland and while we were all gutted to lose that, the Argentinian fans that night were amazing. They were just as incredible tonight - so much passion, so much fun. I hate losing, but I love the joy they get out of beating us :)
Finish your drink on a dayboo try!
Not often you see boots fall apart! 8 to go and NZ in trouble here
I thought about making a thread yesterday morning, but it then slipped my mind, so thank you. Sounds like first game has gone as predicted, lets see if Los Pumas do any better than predicted too!
I think if the Wallabies had set some better pictures they wouldn’t have been penalised out of the first half so much. While I do think Pearce has been a bit pedantic and not paid attention to some of the SA infringements as much really it comes down to referee management and the Aussies just did too much dumb stuff early on to ever get on the right page with the ref.
Combine that with a malfunctioning scrum & a wobbly line out they’ve just really struggled to get much going. At times so far in the 2nd half they’ve looked very good on attack, but as soon as SA manage to slow a couple of rucks down they’ve been at risk of a turnover - that is if they haven’t dropped it themselves by then.
