@Canes4life said in Waratahs v Crusaders:
@Canerbry honestly I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a disfunctional Saders side. It’s bloody odd.
Razor seems to have that Klopp quality how he takes average/good players and makes them look great in his system. And once they leave Klopp's side to go play elsewhere they suffer what looks like a shocking drop-off in form but in reality they just finally play to their actual level.
Only 14 games with 3 bye rounds. How did they sign a broadcast deal? No other competition in the world is so determined on hand-braking itself by minimizing content and disillusioning supporters it seems.
I hate these mid season bye weeks. What they do is it takes away so much of the momentum out of the season as a viewer.
@mariner4life said in Super Rugby 2024:
every sporting competition has shit teams in it. What administrators aim for is that those teams have, in the eyes of their fans anyway, a chance to win on any given weekend, and that bad teams can develop in to good teams.
Rugby Union in the Pacific is basically Ice Hockey in North America. If we're to prevent it from dying here you only need to look at the NHL for a template.
Allowing free movements of players in the competition, regardless of nationality, moving away from national identity the Brumbies aren't an Australian team, they're a team from Canberra. Same thing with the Chiefs and Hamilton. The Australian talent pool will never be as good as the NZ talent pool for obvious reasons, how are Australian teams ever supposed to get on NZ's level?
Just look at the NHL example, it's the exact analogue, in the sense that you have two countries, one small that cares a lot about the sport (Canada/NZ) and a big country where the sport is very niche (US/Aus). In the NHL most teams are American and most players are Canadian. A Canadian team hasn't won in decades and yet Canadians are still crazy about it.
@KiwiMurph said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@ACT-Crusader said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
@Canes4life the only thing I’ll say about Perofeta is that he was playing excellent footy under Rangi last season and given he has AB experience I think they will back themselves to try and get that best out of him.
That's a reach. He was playing about the same as he was this season (when he wasn't injured) and his test experience is fuck all. A japan test where he looked poor and 30 seconds in another test
Leon McDonald was the outside back selector, Perofeta over Love was obviously his call & it's the only selection of the 32 that I disagree with - which isn't surprising because McDonald's selections at the Blues were consistently terrible.
@mariner4life said in Crusaders vs Blues:
They are inherent losers. It doesn't matter how much talent they have, they will find a way to choke.
Haha, 10 changes to the Blues starting line-up from last weekend, and they only lost by 2 points bro. wasn't the capitulation of last year eh..
@Tim said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
Jeff Wilson is obviously stupid, but he's still talking about Quentin Strange starting for the ABs. How dumb can he get?
He also declared in one of the first shows that he couldn't see anyone but the Crusaders winning the title.
@Mattasaurus said in Crusaders v Chiefs:
Was hoping for a better performance from Tupea
I never quite understood the level of hype surrounding him compared to other guys, last season the Chiefs looked midfield looked better with Poihipi or/and Rona paired with ALB.
@chchfanatic said in Crusaders 2024:
@sparky we got bored of winning.
Actually rugby has got boring. Used to watch and go to all the games. Last couple of years I just don’t care. Now we are terrible I have zero interest in any super rugby.
NRL is soo much more entertaining. The game on Friday night was the greatest atmosphere I’ve ever been a part of.
I’ve got mates who are lifelong rugby fanatics who don’t watch anymore. We used to all have season tickets. Now you can’t give away tickets. Rugby is in a sad state of affairs.
speak for yourself I guess, I'm finding this the most exciting season of Super Rugby in a long time, the Hurricanes returning to 2015-16 levels of class, Crusaders rock bottom of the table, Highlanders looking like heavyweights again, the Reds performing the best we've seen from them since 2012/2013, the Drua and Moana Pacifica appearing a lot better drilled/coached compared to previous seasons, I'm really enjoying the quality of the matches this season - especially after that absolutely turgid world cup (in terms of viewing experience) due to a pedantic amount of over-officiating.
@Bones said in Super Rugby 2024:
@Duluth they don't even need bye rounds.
Agree, isn't that what we have wider squads for? Why must we have byes in a 14 game season.
Even the Top League now features more games (16) than the current iteration of Super Rugby.
@Canes4life said in Hurricanes 2024:
@antipodean I think he was fairly inexperienced when he came into the Canes so not the biggest loss. Hopefully we can pick someone up that can advance our attacking play.
Blyendaal has the potential to become a very good coach, you've got to remember he's only 33 & it was his first coaching gig, most are still playing at that age. he was a very intelligent flyhalf while playing over in Europe & was very unlucky not to get capped for Ireland under Schmidt, also captained the NZ U20 side of 2010, think he will do very well coaching in the URC, a competition where he thrived as a player at Munster.
@Duluth said in Crusaders 2024:
I lost a lot of respect for Colin Mansbridge due to his comments directed at the media.
Good to see respected journalists like Gregor Paul calling it how it is & presenting imformed and reasonable assessments like this.
Honestly, some of the ridiculous cope that the pundits on the Breakdown were spinning for why the Crusaders are underperforming and why Rob Penney "deserves the benefit of the doubt" were utterly delusional. It takes Crusaders supporters for complete fools.
Make all the excuses you want, a team with that much experience & quality should have no excuses being made for them, the Highlanders would dream of having such a roster - the 4th best squad in the competition behind the Hurricanes, Blues, Chiefs.
Savea would be a shortsighted option, he's in his 30's and is competing with a plethora of younger 8's coming through. He's also demonstrated to be a poor captain in the past. Dalton Papali'i and Jordie Barrett are both 26, they are my picks if Scott doesn't get the role.
@Canes4life said in Hurricanes 2024:
@foobaNZ nah we need to back Godfrey to be our long term 10. Him and Roigard ripped the Crusaders apart in a pre season game last year as a halves combo. I’d rather back Godfrey than take a punt on Jacomb who’s aligned with the Chiefs anyway.
Godfrey also was the under 20 player of the tournament playing 10 last year.
I was going to say. Why do they feel the need to shoehorn him
@mikey07 said in Hurricanes 2024:
thank fvck for that, no more inexplicably shoehorning Godfrey into 15 by the coaches just so the limited Morgan can start at 10...
@Crazy-Horse said in Crusaders vs Blues:
Unfortunately McLeod has reverted to type after going through a purple patch last year. How the hell was he an AB?
Quite simply because Razor made some limited players look a whole lot better than reality - and then idiotic Foster fell victim into thinking these players were AB quality rather than recognising they were just system players with clearly defined roles and incredibly effective coaching under Razor. Foster was a useless selector.
@No-Quarter said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
Cullen had the misfortune of being compared to himself in his hey day rather than against other players, he was definitely the best fullback in 03 but he didn't have much left in him at that stage. I think we could have gotten another season out of him, but begrudgingly can see why they wanted to look forward given his injuries. His treatment by Bitchell was unforgiveable for an AB great to be cast aside the way he was though.
It was Deans, he selected the backline, read Umaga's book he didn't rate Tana and Christian right from the beginning and tried to create a backline consisting entirely of light & gangly Crusaders like Leon McDonald, Aaron Mauger, Ben Blair, Caleb Ralph, Mark Robinson, etc..
@SouthernMann Brown is without a doubt our smartest coach, he was only coach to have higher percentage of votes by NZ players in player's survey than Razor, he took an NPC level basket case of a Landers team post 2019 exodus & shitty Mauger to fighting wins over strong Crusaders Blues Chiefs Brumbies teams and got them competing against the best regularly, an extremely limited roster and injuries hurt his record.
You know I almost thought Razor would have registered enough credit in the bank (based off his resume & history of proven success at every level - when compared to Foster) so for people to question his decisions before the All Blacks have even played a single game yet seems odd to me. At least when Foster was appointed in 2020 most of us actually gave him a chance to prove us all wrong (based on results) in his first season - so we could then made a fair judgment of his decisions. Yet people on here are already spouting off on here with such conviction that this decision by Razor is objectively the wrong one when we haven't even seen the outcomes yet, lol.
I still have lucid flashbacks to the first episode of the breakdown this season as Jeff Wilson brashly opinions "if i look across the squads i seriously can't see anyone but the Crusaders taking out the title again" i remembered that particularly fondly as we got systematically taken apart by the previously bottom of the log and -126 points differential western force in the weekend
@Chris said in All Blacks 2024 - looking forward:
Maybe he won’t get selected this year.
Perenara, Funaki, Ratima... PLEASE Razor