Tah-dah! Beale the magic man for NSW

I remember being totally dissatisfied by our win percentage under Link and Deans and Connolly. I didn't understand that they were the good times!

.;..could've, should've, would've....but didn't....old news now

Carter was chasing down intercept break outs, recently in France. He still had pace but his problem was injuries.

I get your point Jez but Palmer was stuck behind the incumbent test THP at one place. Horwitz has been overlooked at 10 by Cheika, Gibson, Coleman and Wessels. Even when Foley was injured last year, Mack Mason was played at 10 ahead of Horwitz.

If he misses being in Australia than why did he recently sign an extension at Leicester which puts them in a position where they are entitled to ask for compensation? The RA are also bringing back a player who is recovering from an injury, picked up an injury when he first arrived and is in his late 20s. Enough is enough. Come back when your contract is finished or stay overseas. Australian inside backs are leaving at a much younger age work on keeping them as we don't need another Brock James or Paul Warwick players with strong kicking games which Foley doesn't have and stay overseas for good. Jake McIntyre has improved in France in a team that doesn't have a lot of big names and money.

Clearly our expectations and standards today have obviously slipped, compared to the amateur era, if the mostly inconsistent play that often blights KB is, these days, considered magic.

The same argument could have been used against Dan Palmer when he kept getting selected at loosehead for NSW - he'd only played TH at club level but never higher. All his initial selections for NSW were at LH until he eventually left the team to get a shot at his natural position with the Brumbies. Who knows what the reason Horwitz played 13 at NRC was? If they had two 10's but no 13's him playing the OC position doesn't mean he wasn't the stronger 10, it might just mean the other guy was incapable of playing 13 and there wasn't much between them at 10. Maybe he was no chance of making it but to sign a bloke and then essentially offload him before the season starts when you had such a critical position undermanned strikes me as bizarre.

Riddler - Being retired early and financially independent means I have a lot of time to blog, no more work for me. I do think that a lot are unfair on Foley. For instance he has had 3 very good tests not just one, so an average of 1 per year. That really is not enough. He has had a lot more quite poor tests so it doesn't balance out. Far too hard to judge the best test ever by QC to Foleys best game as to who played better. But what can be said to Foleys credit his was a vital rwc game and QC has never had a RWC game of that quality. QC though overall on average has performed better , less worse games and more of high quality games. It is fair to say that QC has not been in very good form for a while , but that said he was better than Foley in 2016 in the rc forcing Foley to 12. He played better at 10 than Foley all year, Foley was quite poor at 12 yet QC was dropped. It seemed quite an injustice BUT Cheika was correct in that Foleys next game was very good. IMO Foley just is not good enough and is as good as he is going to get with the exception of some high kicking out wide. By not good enough I mean for the Wallabies to beat teams like SA, England, Ireland and Scotland regularly like they used to.

Since the RWC we've lost 3-0 to England, 1-2 to Ireland and are 0-1 vs Scotland (for a combined 5 losses and 1 win vs Home Nations in Aus), as well as having lost to England 2-0, Scotland 1-1 and Ireland 0-1 on Spring Tours. Spiro had some interesting stats recently: 'John Connolly’s percentage would rise from 64 to 71, Robbie Deans’s from 58 per cent to 71, Ewen McKenzie’s from 50 to 69 and Michael Cheika’s from 53 to 60.5' Even if we take out the All Blacks would we have a winning percentage against tier 1 teams either 2016 or 2017? I don't think we would. I think fans are just unhappy with results, and specifically with the parts of the team that are underperforming. Foley has been the incumbent since 2014 and can we really say he's developed into the steady hand top class international player we had hoped in 2014? The last 10 that was given 5 years of incumbency to perform and develop was Larkham, who was world class during that period.

No flyhalf with 60 caps that has been the incumbent for four years should fail to make that pass at the end of the Ireland series. It's sad and it cost the Wallabies a victory, but it just was a play that he shouldn't have messed up.

Sure win most home series and an over 50% win ratio is reasonable and we usually have but let's be realistic we probably play NZ more than most, over the last 18 months England finally playing as they should with their resources, Ireland are a very good team - agree last year pretty rough against Scotland but they have improvved it happens - as a kid I remember when we were beaten by Tonga in the 70s - it happens. I think we have done pretty well with what we have available player wise - sure pity some players have gone to Europe but it is what it is - especially when we have to compete with NRL and AFL for players and in reality we are probably a players last choice.

You clearly like Foley, which is fine, but don't pretend that you're objective in analysing his results. You've never admitted he's played poorly in three years. You love him as a player and want him to be the flyhalf, I get it. He seems like a decent bloke but his tackling percentage is not high, he has a large error count in terms of turnovers conceded, has a limited tactical kicking game (sometimes he kicks long but often they're very short and/or not out) and does not have a sublime passing game. Given that Cheika is essentially having Beale play at 10 most of the time except off of set plays I think even Cheika recognises his limitations. Has he been the best 10 for the last few years? Possibly, there are obviously varying opinions. Is it possible he will do better than Toomua? Yep. Do I hope that's the case? Not really, as as good of a bloke as he is he does his best and he's never really performed well enough consistently for us to beat the top sids consistently (albeit the rest of the team often haven't been great over 16-17 either). I don't think that when guys like Mark Ella are calling for him to be dropped they're biased against Foley either. Him bombing that pass at the end of the Ireland series with a two man overlap (after Beale had crabbed admitted) was just emblematic of some of the problems we've had with him there.

I don't think many people would describe Foley as a 'steady hand'. A Barnes was a steady hand, but Foley isn't that guy at all. Hopefully Cheika gives Toomua a few chances on the Spring Tour and hopefully he performs better than Foley and Cheika is forced to retain him there.

Expecting to win most home series and have a win percentage over 50% are expectations that are too high? I don't think many people expect to go back to the early professional era, but I think people would like to see the sort of results we achieved under Link or Deans or Connelly.

I think there needs to be a recalibration of expectations - a lot of people hark back to the post 1995 era when professionalism started we were quickly ahead of the game and most other nations. The wallabies performance is possibly similar to other sports in which we were leaders until other countries became interested and spent more on it eg tennis, athletics, swimming and recently men's surfing. It will be interesting to see how the women's 7s go, they were the first to be full professionals other countries are doing similar now - the question therefore is what do we do next to stay ahead - the issue of foley selection is a minor one in reality.

Maybe such posters are upset about the performance of the Wallabies?

I think I want foley to keep getting selected so I can just imagine the ongoing frothing and seething by some posters.

Hasn't been thrown? Been barred from training and told he won't be selected. If that's not thrown, I don't know what is.

Wow.

Your just being obtuse, you wrote after the Irish tests that we have problems at 9,10 and 8, so your just engaging in a red baiting exercise. That’s fine, we love feeding the chooks up here.