- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Roar Rookie
Joined February 2008
0
Views
0
Published
13
Comments
Published
Comments
Or even a Farrell…?
Owen Farrell is my favourite all round fly half, hands down.
So who should play ten for Australia?
There are many many things I’d change before the coach.
1. Stop referring to the All Blacks like they’re gods. The only people that think they’re gods are themselves, and the NZ media. They’re now behaving like little kids that have always been told how special they are, i.e. primadonnas with no spine.
2. Teach them to have respect of the rules. Over the last 10 years their use of professional fouls to switch out tries for penalty goals has been a blatantly obvious and pitiful strategy. The word “cynical” has now become entangled with the ABs and it’s a shame. The best teams don’t need to play like that, Scott Barrett has got to go, permanently.
3. Get focussed on the game rather than trying to look tough. Dane Coles is a national joke, last night he clearly thought he was participating in Monty Python’s Fish-Slapping Dance rather than a game of test rugby. Perenara needs to spend more on skills rather than pulling faces in the mirror.
4. Get some brains at the breakdown. Kane, Retallick and Whitelock are brilliant. Last night I couldn’t count the number of brain fades by Savea and Frizell. Both solid runners and tacklers, but the breakdown requires some art, and therefore brains.
There’s plenty more where that came from, but it’s enough to show that the ABs are suffering from altitude sickness. They have forgotten what rugby is about, and they’ve forgotten that they need to earn their stripes if they want to be in the top 10 teams.
This situation is not Foster’s fault.
This is 10 years of obsequious press, excessive pride and manscaping, loose referring, and general belief that they’re bigger than the game.
Justin Bieber turned it around, perhaps the ABs can too.
There's no way around it anymore – Ian Foster must go
Parties? I’ve not been invited to one of them since the 80’s.
For the love of God, stop letting the Wallabies play us like this
How did you find last night’s game timber?
It played out exactly as I outlined.
1. The wallabies played a tighter game and didn’t heap pressure on themselves.
2. The wallabies didn’t gift the ABs a lead.
3. The ABs fell apart within 20 minutes with tantrums to Kane, ALB and TJP.
4. The ABs resumed their cynical display of professional fouls rather than conceding tries.
That’s pretty much every defeat the ABs have had against NH teams (or the Springboks) over the last 10 years. It’s a fairly simple formula for beating the ABs.
Fairly often their illegal tactics result in a tight victory for the ABs against the run of play, and until refs start giving more yellow cards for penalties in their 22, it’ll probably continue that way.
I’m not sure there’s a formula for beating them once they have an easy lead as their hang-back, counter-punch game is very hard to defend against when you must score tries to catch up.
The Wrap: Wallabies mauled by resurgent All Blacks
I’m pretty sure that most readers with a decent knowledge of the game don’t rely on half-baked general-sports media assessments for their analysis…which is probably why I stopped reading this article after the first 2 paragraphs.
For the love of God, stop letting the Wallabies play us like this
How would you characterise the constant professional fouls in the ABs 22?
It’s been called out by numerous commentators on the game for probably the last 10 years. Very rarely will a ref tackle it head on otherwise there would be 3-4 yellow cards per game, but occasionally you see some given out.
The result is penalty goal points rather than tries and quite often an undeserved tight win by the ABs. That’s the win at all costs, cynical mindset that’s against the spirit of the game. It’s the NZ version of the underarm bowl, but it’s been in force for a decade.
Wallabies win Bledisloe 4 thriller in Brisbane
TBH I really think the Wallabies benefited greatly from having a stronger front on tackler at 10 today. Hodge shut down the ABs favourite channel and forced them to find space from their first phase, which Barrett failed to do tonight.
For that reason alone I’m now wondering about JOC at 10…he’s a bit of a walkover.
Wallabies win Bledisloe 4 thriller in Brisbane
Yes, in the softest way possible. Embarrassing for the jersey.
Wallabies win Bledisloe 4 thriller in Brisbane
Kane showed poor leadership tonight, Richie wouldn’t have gone there in a million years.
Scott Barrett needs to go, he brings the whole team into disrepute. Sure the dull witted call it niggle but the rugby players call it just plain cheating.
Wallabies win Bledisloe 4 thriller in Brisbane
Yes the Wallabies showed intensity tonight but it was simply the baseline for test match rugby. I laugh every time I read “it showed the ABs can be beaten…”. I called it before and will say again. If you don’t gift the ABs a lead then they crack in a matter of 20 minutes.
Kane, ALB and TJP all had little tantrums as the pressure came on, and the ABs slipped into a very cynical style of game.
I can’t count how many times there was a professional foul from the ABs within their 22. Yes the Wallabies did some too and MK rightfully spent time in the bin, but far fewer.
If Scott Barrett thinks his tactics are how you play rugby, he should be dropped cold. If Foster condones it then he’s an embarrassment to the game and the ABs proud history.
The Wallabies did exactly what I was hoping from tonight, one simple thing. When they got in a pickle they slowed it down and reset, rather than just heaping more and more pressure on themselves.
Wallabies win Bledisloe 4 thriller in Brisbane
The ABs have always played well with a strong lead. Get ahead of them, or even just keep them level and they start to panic and fall apart. We saw this in Wellington and in the recent RWC, and this is why the slower, grinding NH game style (also used by the Springboks) has been so effective in shutting them down.
Many of the “magical” ABs are simply fair-weather players and they’re the first turn into a creampuff when the pressure is turned on, but the trick is not gifting them a lead.
Over the last decade, and particularly since Cheika, the Wallabies have gifted points through their own mistakes more than any other “top tier” team. Their pursuit of flashy points invariably gives away as many as it gets. Against poorly drilled teams you might survive that, but the ABs are anything but poorly drilled.
With Rennie at the helm I can see that he’s slowly cauterising those leaky points, but there’s a long way to go on that front. If he manages to do one thing this international season it’ll be teaching the wallabies how to avoid stacking pressure on themselves. The NH game is built on staying tight, earning your right to play wide, and kicking strategically, but only kicking on your terms i.e. when you have the momentum and you’ve drawn their defense in. That type of game is tactically simple and it’s easy for a young squad to gel around. That game style also means that any fast-paced attacking moves are only used when you’re well on the front foot, and with that type of advantage the error rate falls through the floor, all of which is great for confidence building and skills development.
It’s ok to be predictable if your game style is tight, the opposition might know what you’re doing, but they can’t get in to disrupt it. If your game style is loose (crazy offloads, chip kicks, pick and drive without support) then there are a huge number of attack vectors for the opposition.
At the moment this young Wallabies squad is playing predictable and loose as it’s looking for rapid offloads from the very first phase of possession, at a time when the attacking momentum isn’t really established. This option is prone to errors and that’s where the ABs are being gifted their precious initial lead. One example was almost laughable in the second half in Sydney; any time the wallabies made it over the gain line there were multiple ABs hovering in the Wallabies backline waiting for the offload. They weren’t offside as there was no ruck formed, but they knew the offload was coming, so they ended up getting multiple easy turnovers just by hanging back.
Rennie is a smart coach, and he’s well versed in NH rugby, so I have no doubt that he’ll find the right style the Wallabies over the next few seasons. He also knows that the ABs are brilliant but fragile, so I don’t think he’ll be too worried about bridging a gap that’s much narrower than the NZ media would like you to believe. If you listened to them then you’d miss the clear dominance of South Africa and England, and the on-par performances of both Ireland and Wales.
The Wrap: Wallabies mauled by resurgent All Blacks
Honestly our sports journalism is pretty dire.
It’s dead boring to listen to and serves zero purpose.
The Roar comments are 100x more insightful and considered.
'Give yourself upper cuts': Eddie furious at journos after 'worst press conference I've ever had'