Poll: Best AB coach - professional era
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@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
wasnt Lane Kiffin one of those type of nepo coaches?
Yep. Classic example. I thought he was a complete F wit at first. But now I quite like him.
A bit "out there", but putting some serious contenders together now.
He could end up at one of those mega college football positions that have opened up this season.It's hard to see NZ ever selecting a coach with real world experience again.
Even Foster spent only a short time on a non rugby employment environment.
Henry probably has as much respect as an educationist, as he does as a rugbyite. -
@KiwiMurph said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@MN5 said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Howlett scored a lot of tries ( more than anyone else ! ) but wasn't a genuine gamebreaker like others were. The more I think about it the more I'd choose Tuqiri over him.
Tuqiri? I dont think I can ever recall him taking the outside break - whether it was a league habit or not he had an obsession with cutting back in field and an aversion to the sideline and after a while it became very predictable. Tuqiri had a good World Cup in 2003 but his physical (and rugby) profile was bigger than his production.
Probably fair about any league convert not named Thorn or Robinson
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@mariner4life Holy fuck, we have Howlett deniers now? You cannot rely on any rando's memory. This is like boomer morons who claim that Zinzan Brooke was "soft".
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@Tim said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@mariner4life Holy fuck, we have Howlett deniers now? You cannot rely on any rando's memory. This is like boomer morons who claim that Zinzan Brooke was "soft".
Only thing soft about Zinny was his hands. Uncanny ability to pluck a rugby ball at pace.
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@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Was he the more successful out of that Rogers, Sailor trio?
Rogers was pretty good in more than one position but Sailor would be the worst. Less than one-dimensional as a player. Remember Dougie standing him up in one Test so badly it looked like he was taking the piss
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Was he the more successful out of that Rogers, Sailor trio?
Rogers was pretty good in more than one position but Sailor would be the worst. Less than one-dimensional as a player. Remember Dougie standing him up in one Test so badly it looked like he was taking the piss
Yeah Sailor was easily the worst, yet was the best out of the 3 in the other code.
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@nzzp said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@sparky said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Sir Ted.
By some margin. Reinvented the ABs and peeled off some real statement wins early on. 2004 France away was extraordinary - destroyed them up front and in the backs, when people (aka the Walrus) thought they'd dust us up front.
I think you may be referring to this infamous article published on the morning of the game.
All Blacks trading on nothing but worn out myths
For once, the great, implacable, unstoppable All Blacks machine has made an error. Today, New Zealand must take on a half-decent rugby team.How they managed to allow France on to the schedule of one of those patented All Blacks Soft Rugby Tours, I don’t know. It must have been because they realised that for the tour to have any credibility, they would have to play England or France. So, naturally, they took the softer option — no doubt regretting that they couldn’t play Scotland instead (or San Marino) — and went for France.
New Zealand began their tour with a match against Italy. Italy, still struggling to make the step from not bad to pretty good, got a routine hammering. The All Blacks then took on Wales. It would seem that they skimped their research on this one. True, Wales are a second-tier rugby nation, but they are emphatically an improving team and gave the All Blacks a bit of a fright.
France might do a little better than that. The fact that Argentina beat them last weekend will either make France unstoppable or make them cave in after ten minutes. You never know with France. Chances are it will be a tough match for the All Blacks.
But hey, chaps, never mind. The final match of the tour is against the Barbarians and that will make plenty of money without testing anyone’s stomach for the fight. The Barbarians team will be an ad-hoc gathering of every has-been and never-wozzer residing in the northern hemisphere. All the decent players will be taking part in the Heineken Cup that weekend. That is the way of it these days. When the All Blacks play, the real action tends to be elsewhere.
But there is bad news on the horizon. I am very sorry to have to tell the New Zealanders that next autumn they will have to play England at Twickenham. They had to do it. Otherwise people might — perish the thought — suspect that New Zealand had been avoiding that fixture.
Playing England at Twickenham has become, despite the post-World Cup slump, just about the hardest task in world rugby. Nevertheless, the Australians have taken it on five times in the past six years and so have the South Africans. In that time, New Zealand have played England at Twickenham once.
That is not counting the match in the 1999 World Cup, which they couldn’t really avoid. And to be fair and accurate and so forth, New Zealand won convincingly. None of the games that Australia and South Africa played at Twickenham was in the World Cup. Perhaps those countries believe that identifying a sporting challenge should be followed by the act of taking it on.
All right, then, let us accept the fact that New Zealand are at least going to play France today. So if France beat them, it is a national humiliation, right? Well, wrong actually. The players comprise a “development squad”. This is technically known as a team with a built-in excuse for losing.
The All Blacks’ line-up today has nine changes from the team that played in the final match of the Tri-Nations tournament. This is an experimental line-up that may or may not produce future stars. What it is not is a completely baked side for whom victory is everything.
All right, you can say that this ruthlessness and disrespectful policy towards international rugby matches is part of the All Blacks’ canniness. They make soft tours, they send out development teams, but when it comes to the biggest of the big occasions, they are ready and the others are not.
Lovely theory, shame about the practice. New Zealand won the first World Cup, in 1987 and, er, that’s it. At the last World Cup they lost in the semi-finals to Australia. The All Blacks were rated higher, the Australians wanted it more.
It increasingly seems that the All Blacks myth is just a mite short of substance these days. And all the policy and planning and organisation seem to be designed to protect the myth.
There is precious little that is exceptional about the present All Blacks, apart from the mystique. They have hung on to that with glorious tenacity, but surely it is time that someone noticed that there was a shortfall in actual performance. You can’t go swaggering about claiming to be the best rugby team in the history of the universe if you don’t (a) beat other leading rugby teams, or (b) even play them.
The New Zealanders created hard-nosed, intense rugby union and imposed on the sport a lofty professionalism in the days when woolliness was a revered philosophical concept. Once, every rugby player in the world was, at heart, an All Blacks wannabe.
Times have changed and everyone has moved on except New Zealand. They are mired in the glories of their past and instead of moving on they set up soft tours and pick squads that can lose without shame. The world has caught up with the All Blacks myth and realised that, although the kit remains the coolest in world sport, the clothes have no emperors.
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Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
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@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
Yep. He was on a roll in '04/5. Remember him claiming Martin Johnson playing rugby in NZ almost ruined his career.
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@mohikamo said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
except his pass was pretty garbage by Test standards
Haha.
It wasn't that bad. But i'll concede it wasn't up to the very, very high standards of the rest of his game.
Very strong; remember him trying to put a bit of hit on a huge SA forward and getting squashed, quite comical.
All opponents had a stop Going plan.As for Edwards.
The ABs never bothered having a stop Edwards plan.
I know I watched him in quite a few games, but I dont actually have any recall of him, which you'd think I would, for the greatest halfback of all time . . . yeah right.Except for one game tho, but that was a game the ABs were not actually taking that serious, and just went out and gave the ball some air.
And the poms still f'n rave about it, "greatest game of all time" . . . yeah right; probably the only game that had been worth watching in Euro for decades.
Games like that all the time in NZ. -
@Tim said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@mariner4life Holy fuck, we have Howlett deniers now? You cannot rely on any rando's memory. This is like boomer morons who claim that Zinzan Brooke was "soft".
Iestyn Harris could have been an all-time union great if Wales had used him properly
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
Yep. He was on a roll in '04/5. Remember him claiming Martin Johnson playing rugby in NZ almost ruined his career.
Haha, wtf.
It was like a gap year of sorts at a time when he wasnt an established first team regular at Leicester never mind England.
That is crazy shit.
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@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
Yep. He was on a roll in '04/5. Remember him claiming Martin Johnson playing rugby in NZ almost ruined his career.
Haha, wtf.
It was like a gap year of sorts at a time when he wasnt an established first team regular at Leicester never mind England.
That is crazy shit.
Stephen Jones: "Why Neil Back was a better 7 than Richie McCaw"
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@Catogrande Simon Barnes. The bird-watching guy.
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Actually Mike, @mohikamo is just echoing what many AB's who played in Edwards career said about him - e.g. Meads, Laidlaw, Kirkpatrick, etc.
I'm old enough for that era and Sid pretty much outplayed him every time they met - exception being the 3rd Lions Test in '71.
JPR, on the other hand..... The finest Welsh player I have ever seen by some distance and up there with Meads, Gibson, McCaw etc in the Meldrew pantheon
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@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
No it was Simon Barnes.
It was the game that sparked an incredible run for the All Blacks. for the next 12 years. his timing couldnt have been any worse
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@DaGrubster said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
No it was Simon Barnes.
The Walrus wrote about powder puff forwards before we smoked France and forced them to uncontested scrums.
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@DaGrubster said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
No it was Simon Barnes.
It was the game that sparked an incredible run for the All Blacks. for the next 12 years. his timing couldnt have been any worse
That is atrocious shite.
But sadly - reading through it, I'm thinking "copy and paste some of the more level-headed paragraphs into an article to publish today... it's not too far off" -
@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@nonpartizan said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Victor-Meldrew said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
@Catogrande said in Poll: Best AB coach - professional era:
Who the fuck penned that load of shite? The Walrus would be my guess.
Yep. He was on a roll in '04/5. Remember him claiming Martin Johnson playing rugby in NZ almost ruined his career.
Haha, wtf.
It was like a gap year of sorts at a time when he wasnt an established first team regular at Leicester never mind England.
That is crazy shit.
Stephen Jones: "Why Neil Back was a better 7 than Richie McCaw"
Stephen Jones: An All Black shagged my wife. Memoirs of unbridled hatred of a national sporting team.
