The Silver Fern

One thing with Tupaea and Lester whenever they touched it – I felt they were always making yards or at least bumping off the first tackler from shit situations and looked more dangerous with a bit of space. (I never really got that feeling of that expectation from Proctor.) Can’t find the run metre stats yet.

Surprised how poor Ireland were in the second half. 0 line breaks, 3-4 lineouts lost in a row and won just 69% of their own ball, scrum issues. Their lineouts are a killer as they launch a lot of their plays off of them.

They were the peak of strategy and execution a few years ago - looks more and more like the short passing, multi-phase strategy has been dated. It doesn’t help that they’re struggling to refresh the team, especially with explosive type athletes which they rarely produce. Will be interesting to see how they trend against Aus and SA.

I listen to a lot of podcasts and it genuinely gobsmacks me at the continued ineptitude of the rugby analysis we get in NZ. You’d think we would have the best technical analysis of games in the world given the prominence rugby has in NZ culture.

Contrast to that Ireland – smaller playing population and rugby competes with Gaelic Football and Soccer. Despite that, there’s 3 Irish podcasts I regularly listen to. (There’s a bunch of other lesser options too.) Yes, they are horribly biased but know way more about the any opposition Ireland plays than any NZ rugby analyst. They tear into the team when they lose and actually spend time to analyse the game and tactics - we get told someone had a good game because they scored a try. It puts almost anything we get to shame.

Do the media think the general public are too thick too absorb content like this?
Surely there’s space for a grassroots type podcast/Youtube channel to fill this obvious void? There’s a bunch of South African ones but mileage varies greatly with these.

@Mauss said in England Vs All Blacks:

@Chris-B said in England Vs All Blacks:

It would be interesting to do a detailed season-wide analysis of catching high balls to verify who is best (and worst). Not just a raw score of catches and drops - but, looking at catches in traffic and outcomes compared with expected outcomes - some sort of rational scoring system and commentary.

Unfortunately, it would probably require "someone" to watch all the games again. Maybe he (or she!) can do it next year!

That sounds like an awful lot of work for whoever you’re referring to.

Anyways, speaking of unpaid labour and the exploitation of the working class, this whole high ball-discussion reminds me of a recent Gary’s Economics-video where he’s talking about the rising housing prices. He makes the point that everyone thinks their specific city has a housing crisis while, in reality, it’s a global issue, necessitated by the growing inequality between the ultrarich and the working poor. [Just in case I happened to have piqued someone’s interest, this is the video I’m referring to: youtube.co/watch?v=BTlUyS-T-_4]

I think a similar misconception is at work in the high ball-discussion. The reality is that it’s not just the All Blacks who are experiencing a high ball-crisis. All teams are currently struggling with defensive kick receipts: Welsh fans are about ready to lynch Blair Murray, Freddie Steward shelled multiple high balls against the Wallabies on the 1st of November, Tom Wright didn’t catch a single attacking bomb against the Boks at Ellis Park, and, for the All Blacks XV, 6ft3 Chay Fihaki couldn’t deal with the England A aerials. Whether you're a tall high ball-expert or a scrumcapped Bok midget, the results will most likely be the same: you're going to drop more balls than you're going to catch.

100% on the money. Listening to Irish/Aussie/English specific podcasts and they are ALL bemoaning that their team can't deal with high ball effectively. It’s not just us. As you point out Steward bombed multiple chances in the Aussie game. I caught an interviewe by the BBC rugby podcast with him and he pointed to the escort rule having a big impact on him. He said the coaching staff are emphasising the positioning of other players around the point of the catch to pick up on the scraps, go for a turnover or kick it again to a backfield out of alignment.

With the way game is going (if in doubt - boxkick it), I think this area is getting to be one of the core elements of the game on par with scrum/breakdown etc.

We had this to a lesser degree in 2009 with the ELVs which prompted teams to want to play without the ball. Henry/Hansen realised this after the 2009 disaster and started picking fullbacks on the wing or players with decent highball skills like Dagg, Jane or Kahui.

It is a positive that they are working on it - see Jordie moving to the back to deal with the odd one but it will be tested to the nth degree with the England gameplan.

Ignoring NZ for a moment - they have absolutely shafted the pool stages. It's clear who will be the top 2 in each pool with possible exceptions for Italy/Georgia and Japan/Samoa.

Some of the best matches in history happened in the pool stages and actually provided some jeopardy with big teams not making out of the pool. England in 2015 (knocked out by Wales), Scotland in 2019 (knocked out by Japan) and Aussie in 23 (knocked out by Fiji/Wales). Now it's just a parade and in some cases beneficial if you lose your game against the other big team in your pool.

Plus the permutations of round of 16 and 1/4s path is way too confusing. Should be able to summarised in 2 sentences.

Congratulations SA - different level.

Worst loss outside of a WC by a large margin for me. We cannot carry on for 2 years with this muppet in charge. (We will though.)

@Grooter said in Ireland v All Blacks - Chicago2:

@Richie8-7 to be fair we were looking unlikely until the 59th minute when the herculean flying Dutchman pounced on the Irish 10 Crowley and then Tupaea won the turnover, hopefully sky sport show the world rugby awards at months end as I wanna see Fabian receive his world breakthrough player of the year medal

On this particular play - I didn't catch it at the time but Holland absolutely busts his guts chasing the kick - full sprint after it from the instant Jordan kicks it. Real effort play which you don't always notice.

Black pill time. I’m finding it hard to muster any enthusiasm for this weekend or anything beyond really. Wellington knocked the (little) faith I had completely out of me. Not the result, the performance. No confidence in the coaching team and the core veterans. I have doubts whether the management even know what the problems are.

We win comfortably in the weekend showing we can pull out the odd big performance but can’t sustain anything. Though we go out and lose the next week. We then head north and lose twice. We show just enough that none of the required structural changes are made. The media will tell us how great the players are, and a few bounces and refereeing decisions just didn’t go our way. The coaching team is locked in, the veterans which needed to go years ago hold on for the next WC and be guaranteed selection irrespective of performance.

Repeat for next year. Then it’s too late to change anything for the WC anyway. Depending on the draw, exit in the semis. Media and players say the coach just needs a bit more time and his plan is coming together.

Repeat the cycle.

I was gobsmacked to see VDM not in the side. A big weapon and genuinely worldclass on attack. Even more surprising was the acceptance about this selection from the Scottish media – as though they half-expected it. On the BBC Scottish rugby podcast , the sentiment was that the All Blacks will be disappointed to not see him there as they would have loved exploiting his defence.

I don’t follow URC enough to know but didn’t think he was that bad! He was a monster against England in the 6N.

Squidge videos can be hit or miss for me but there's one on his second channel breaking down Black Ferns / Ireland which is worth a watch. They definitely have an impressive knowledge of individual player's characteristics.

Schmidt has really got control of the penalty count / discipline. Wobs were the worst at this under Eddie. In 2022 they averaged 13.6 per game with 15 yellows and 1 red.

Contrast that with the first 2 SA games where they were pinged a total of 10 times across both matches.

I imagine it's almost a pre-requisite for selection.

@junior said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:

@JA said in Quality of rugby media - TV Shows etc:

I listen to a lot of podcasts and it genuinely gobsmacks me at the continued ineptitude of the rugby analysis we get in NZ. You’d think we would have the best technical analysis of games in the world given the prominence rugby has in NZ culture.

Contrast to that Ireland – smaller playing population and rugby competes with Gaelic Football and Soccer. Despite that, there’s 3 Irish podcasts I regularly listen to. (There’s a bunch of other lesser options too.) Yes, they are horribly biased but know way more about the any opposition Ireland plays than any NZ rugby analyst. They tear into the team when they lose and actually spend time to analyse the game and tactics - we get told someone had a good game because they scored a try. It puts almost anything we get to shame.

Do the media think the general public are too thick too absorb content like this?
Surely there’s space for a grassroots type podcast/Youtube channel to fill this obvious void? There’s a bunch of South African ones but mileage varies greatly with these.

The rugby-industrial-complex in NZ is too small and no one wants to piss of their mates or anyone in power. While Rattue was a massive prick, the way he was frozen out completely by The Cartel has proved to be a salutary lesson for his colleagues and is probably part of the reason why we have the media we do.

Yup, the NFL realised that it’s an effective form of promotion and freely allows their game content to be dissected by random Youtubers. Whereas World Rugby or Six Nations started giving Squidge copyright strikes for using a 3 second clip of a game.

@DurryMexted said in All Blacks v Springboks I:

One tactic i highly enjoyed was our aggressive counter rucking. We blew over a fair number of rucks, as well as giving Williamse massive issues trying to get quick/tidy ball. The impressive thing was that the saffas had often actually committed a couple of forwards, but we still were able to get in there and disrupt. This was particularly targeted at the first or second ruck after a boxie. A tactic that came off well

Loved this. Compared to the NH teams (Ireland in particular), we rarely focus on this so was great to see it applied effectively. It's a simple effort play but had a noticeable impact - slowed the ruck speed, caused them to send an extra fattie in and got the halfback thinking twice.

Really, entertaining game, attacking shape looked solid for Lions but the defense looked like what you expect for a scratch team.

@chimoaus said in All Blacks v Springboks I:

@pakman Yeah JB is fine, I was more referring to Christie trying to box kick us out of the 22, he rarely made much distance past our 22. If you look at the kick offs, SA always got the ball back near our 22. If that was Ireland, SA we would get the ball back closer to the 50m line.

The AB's have to figure out how to exit to at least the 40-50m line. Giving the opposition the ball 20-30m out is simply a fail to exit. Ireland use their wingers all the time, SA 9 can box kick to half way almost. We have JB so its strange they keep going for 9. It just confuses me as they must have the stats and skills to exit, yet we simply can't which just puts pressure on us.

I think this is saying SA only had 30% of possession in their half and 70% in our half. Where as we spent 49% in our half and 51% in theirs. That makes it pretty obvious we struggle to exit our half.

A million times yes! An exit is a fail if you're not comfortably outside your 22 at the bare minimum. This is so crucial in dictating the next stanza of play. Especially in such a tight game.

Multiple times we had the initial ruck somewhere around the middle of our 22 and the goal-line. Christie's box kick would then get literally 8 - 12 metres and just heap the pressure right back on us. No wonder we couldn't get out of our half. It's just not good enough to get that distance. His exits were tolerable in the first half, so fatigue probably an issue but it just handed SA the momentum.

Wow, Italy close it out.

Well played Italy - showed some guts. And skill!

The coaching was there – the backline shape ‘looked’ ok but when you’re operating with slow ball and no punchy forward runners it doesn’t actually achieve anything. Then they have to throw extra forwards in to win the breakdown and in a few phases you have more defenders than attackers on their feet and quickly run out of options.

It is sad and I genuinely feel for the supporters.

My Dad tells a story about going to Cardiff Arms Park with an All Blacks scarf on back in the 80s. We trounced them and after the game he had a queue of Welsh fans shaking his hand and congratulating them on the performance. Their fans are top tier and there isn’t exactly light at the end of the tunnel.

@junior Fully agreed about the local media not wanting to upset their mates or contacts. But that’s why I bought up Ireland – similar population and rugby competes with other sports, just like we do.

So why are their options for detailed analysis so much better than ours? I don’t know the answer.

More examples – the 42ie. It will have multiple articles from Kinsella or whoever breaking down one facet of the game in minute detail. A dozen stills and a video to show how one strike play evolved and was executed. Can you imagine Stuff or the Herald doing similar?

Tim from Eggchasers can go deep into the AB’s depth chart and discuss random players off the top of his head. Could you imagine the Breakdown guys discussing the merits of England’s fourth choice tighthead or Prendergast’s tackling technique? Ha!

@NTA Saw the same one. Had to turn it off - was cringe inducing. Wondered if they were the same after Aus/SA game 1!

Agreed, some of the tries, particularly in the Black Ferns games have been genuinely top shelf and yes way less box kicking. I feel there is more tolerance for losing a bit of ground over a few rucks but still hanging onto it and building into something.

With the men's game , it's generally an immediate kick for a slow ruck or getting caught behind the advantage line.

One thing that does nag at the back of my head is the quality of one on one tackling. Maybe unfairly but makes you think if it's actually a great run or just a shit tackle attempt. I feel it's the latter a lot of the time.

Not specific to the women game, e.g. Marx missing Jordan but feel it happens more frequently with the games I've watched.

Montoya is sick of Wilson's nattering to the ref, came through on the audio "shut up c*nt".

He must have up picked some local lingo in Townsville!