The Silver Fern

I knew that the Ellis Park result was the worst thing to have happened to the ABs. Foster has single handedly destroyed the AB legacy.

Akira must be feeling great right now. Poor guy.

Interesting to hear Ryan say that if we had a full deck we would be able to compete. So he's admitting that the backups are shit. That sure doesn't fill me with confidence, perhaps they should have picked a better squad.

Really don't see the point of picking Bower when he wasn't even named in the original squad. Norris is the future, so why not give him another go. Happy with the other selections.

The judge clearly hates the ABs since he wants SF to remain in the team.

Is there a point in playing Whitelock until the 80th minute when they are clearly going to lose? Razor sure loves to run him into the ground and leave the ABs with a burnt out player.

Thank you Hansen, Henry, NZR and the senior ABs. This is on you clowns.

@antipodean said in 2025 All Blacks Squad v France:

@akan004 I don't know why the media bother asking Scott a single question. Every answer is meaningless word salad.

And tbh it looks like that's how he coaches too when you see what he's managed to do with our backline.

The only good one was the one with Millsy and Guy, the last one that I posted. He talks about why Blackadder was not selected. They don't think he's making enough of an impact, namely his post contact carry metres and a lack of dominant tackles. Sounds like he reads the fern.

@booboo said in Ireland II:

Interesting contrast in reaction to the two results, Chicago and Dublin.

Winners, losers, magnanimity and shit loss.

The Irish have been terrible losers today. All the kiwis who were happy for Ireland and their fans after the Chicago loss should hopefully now realise that others won't ever reciprocate that level of magnanimity towards us. I hope we will never ever see another day where an AB loss is accepted and even celebrated by many AB fans.

Are we big enough in the forwards? Our front row is but the Aussies had bigger men running at us from 4-8 and were bending the line on most occasions. Our obsession with mobility and speed in NZ rugby has resulted in us not producing large forwards. I look at the NPC and our loosies are all virtually the same size, sitting around the 110kg mark and our locks aren't massive. We saw what a bigger body like Patty T could do when he came on, and that's where the game is heading now - power and size.

A decade ago, we could rely on our players running the opposition off their feet and our pack, while not being the largest, were always the quickest and most skilled, which gave us an advantage. Now, the opposition is as skilled, as fit and they generally have bigger men than us, while the introduction of impact players means that they will always have fresh forwards to close the game out.

It's not a question of us not being able to produce big guys. We do have the largest PI population in the world so size shouldn't be an issue, it's just that we tend to pick guys to suit the traditional NZ speed game which has always favoured slightly smaller men. Guys like Skelton, LSL, Meafou, the Vunipola brothers, Antonio etc are all NZ born, so we certainly can produce bigger athletes. We just need to start identifying them and bringing them through.

ABs ability to stop mauls already a lot better under Ryan.

@barbarian said in RWC Final: All Blacks v Springboks:

@pakman said in RWC Final: All Blacks v Springboks:

Sometimes the better team loses. That's sport. But ABs did more than enough to win that one and only denied their just desserts by officials, in particular TMO.

You can believe this all you want. Hey whatever makes you sleep at night.

But from where I sat the better team won, and the scoreboard reflected that pretty nicely, as it generally does.

I'm conflicted. The ABs should have been more clinical in the 2nd half and goal kicking obviously cost us, so in that sense we didn't deserve the win.

Having said that, how the hell did SA not put away a team that was down to 14 for 65 minutes of the game? They should never have allowed us to be so close. If Jordie had kicked that final penalty and the ABs had gone on to win that game, that would go down as a massive choke by SA. But they won, so the narrative changes and they are now being hailed as the most clutch team of all time. Fine margins.

Roigard being back to his best is a huge relief. Many of us had feared that he would never get back to that level again after the horrific injury he suffered.

@taniwharugby said in When should Foster go?:

think the point is he was kicking for the 5m lineout, that is the difficult part, but given how far out he was kicking from, he shouldnt have been going for that lower % play...irony is, if he had gone for say 10-15m out, he woulda put it into the 5m....

I know he has said that he is happy to take the risk and go for extra metres and if it doesn't come off then he can live with it. That's fine if we are in the lead or at least are in the game, however this was a crucial time in the game where we were well behind and needed to score. It was definitely not the time to take a risk. This team lacks rugby IQ and Mounga displayed that perfectly with that kick.

@pukunui said in All Blacks v BI Lions Test #3:

Fucking disgrace. I thought it couldn't get any worse than last weeks deciding penalty but that was a complete farce.

Fully expect WR to stay completely silent.

Has anybody ever seen a referee change his mind about a penalty from a non foul related incident? First time in history I reckon.

I thought the big work on after the semi was to improve our physicality. We looked even less physical than last year.

Vaii was nowhere to be seen. He's not an international standard forward. Really don't know what the selectors see in him.

Aussie based Ferners, Stan is now showing the SRA U20 games too. I didn't expect that. Well done Stan.

"Retallick lucky he didnt break Hanigans neck "

Clown going nuts in the PC.

@duluth said in All Blacks 2021:

That herald article also had a brief summary of the victims version of events (via her mother)

The victim's mother, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the pair had a mutual friend and were out socialising in the Octagon when the incident played out.

She said a conversation arose that Frizell did not like, prompting the slap, "to shut [her] up".

When the victim returned to confront the rugby player, the second assault occurred.

Frizell later sent abusive messages to a third party on social media.

A punch that resulted in dental work? I’m even more surprised by the NZR sanction now. Given the small punishment I was assuming the assault was a push or something else relatively insignificant

If what the woman's mother is claiming is true, then Frizell should never play for the ABs again.