The Silver Fern

Good thing Kevin Pietersen never carried on like a pork chop on or off the cricket field

I know Rieko has been away this week due to the death of his grandmother.

Long time lurker, first time registerer.

Hearing Wellington halfback Kyle Preston has signed with the Crusaders for next year - can't directly confirm this myself, but it was passed along. In which case, thought they might have gone with Nic Shearer as the third halfback behind Hotham and Drummond.

Presumably he was going for good if he didn’t get 2

I’d take Darry over Lord.

This is a big test of Razor - time to be ruthless, because he hasn’t been until this point. I don’t really care if you have to drop a whole lot of players now or debut players against the WCs in a fortnight - sort it out.

Today was another missed opportunity selection wise - I would have looked at 6-2 potentially today to give it a go, Carter too.

Players have become too comfortable in this environment. We play a lot of dumb rugby and if you keep rewarding those who are playing it, you get more dumb rugby.

I will say we have quite clearly missed Roigard the last 2 games - he’s class and it’s a clear drop to the next level.

He was coaching until 2-3 years ago. Sadly he went off the deep end and became a massive conspiracy theorist around Covid, the vaccine and the mosque shootings, was sad to see.

He is a Kiwi (.and he’s also Tonga). Born and schooled in Marlborough to a well known family there - Tonga got him on their radar in 2022/23 when he was still a teenager through his heritage when he’d barely left high school and was offered a chance to play at a World Cup as they had a number of injuries and the like.

There’s more egregious examples of poaching/nation switching than this - agree there are issues with using this team as a pathway but this seems like a case of a young Kiwi guy who probably didn’t know the true nature of his talents and probably wouldn’t have represented Tonga if he thought he was an All Blacks contender.
If his departure to the Chiefs is confirmed it probably allows another Pacific Island player to take his spot, who is committed to representing one of those sides.

@Kirwan yeah I’ve since heard that might be the case

@jimmyb said in All Blacks vs Wallabies Bledisloe I:

Also a sub plot that no one’s brought up, Tim Donnelly has done a seriosuly good job with those Wallabies forwards. Another coach lost overseas

Donnelly’s body of work in NZ wasn’t exactly screaming out international coach.

Clears the way for Oli Mathis

He had two sabbaticals from NZR when he signed https://www.thepost.co.nz/sport/350350577/hurricanes-factor-ardie-saveas-second-sabbatical-clause-exit-moana-pasifika

Someone was telling me Waikato weren’t planning to publicly release their squad - which sounded so absurd I thought it might actually be true

Yeah - he explains his frustrations that the process took so long after the 2019 RWC and believed it should have been concluded in “days”.

He had agreement from those two to come over. Joseph would have been forwards coach.

My thinking is they weren’t going to play him at Twickenham anyway - he’d been out of form and injured prior. But the curfew issue made it more of a story than it needed to be.

Jason Ryan went to his wedding over the summer so it can’t be that much of an issue.

@Mr-Fish said in Moana Pasifika 2026:

@hikastags said in Moana Pasifika 2026:

Does anyone know if Ardie will be playing for MP next year?

A mate of mine who currently plays in Japan seems to think he's heading back there

He has a sabbatical option in his contract for next year so would be strange to not exercise it. Nothing publicly announced yet though - maybe after this year's momentum he'll want to stick around for another season and use his sabbatical in 2027.

It’s my understanding NZR doesn’t allow ‘sabbaticals’ in RWC years.

Interesting book. Easy read. I think he was still probably a flawed coach but didn’t have a lot go his way and NZR’s power brokers don’t come off looking great (albeit from a biased POV) - whatever you thought of the tenure.

They’ve loosened some of those rules in recent times - media can say suspected suicide but only a coroner can rule it a suicide.

I know he gets lauded but I really battle with Squidge and his meandering.

The South African teams are viewed with some serious rose tinted glasses by not only South Africans but NZers.

They were quite poor in the closing years of the competition as we knew it (Lions aside I guess), with the overseas selection rule hurting their franchises as well as just generally not being as good as the NZ sides.