@no-quarter said in England vs All Blacks:

Criticism of SBW is not just based on that performance. Given what he is (was?) capable of and what he's producing on the pitch he is well below his best. His lack of pace can be fairly easily exploited on defense as well.

He's not a disaster, but I think he's lucky to be starting. Right now I'd prefer either ALB-Goodhue or Crotty-Goodhue.

SBW should not be a lock for RWC19. Am hoping he has an injury free Super season to show he still has what it takes.

Totally agree with the second half of your post. The problem is that plenty HAVE been using this game as definitive proof he is past it and should be dumped completely.
The only thing this game reinforces is that he injury prone which is by far his biggest issue.
He is injured so often it is impossible to string enough consecutive minutes together to even assess his form.

What would really make it a great event would be a couple of groups of poorly trained dancers doing shitty break dancing moves on little stages along the sideline. Similar to the IPL and BBL but more of them, with brighter costumes.

Involved in what? BB kicking all the ball away for 30 mins?

@bones said in Blues 2019 - (New Head Coach):

Farken hell. Only the blues. Have we ever seen this before? I can't think of any time I've seen the head coach demoted to assistant and vice versa.

And only months after signing an extension. WTF! Good but WTF.

A couple of days out from the biggest test since the Lions and all we have is a bunch of blokes reminiscing about players from 30 odd years ago.
What is going on?

Hopefully the coaches spring some selection surprises like dropping BB and BBBR, recalling Luatua, Piutau and Ngatai, Starting Dmac at 10 and Jordie at 15 and bringing in Akira and Michael Collins in from NZ. That might get the conversation back on track.

Really hard to pick this game with the year we have had. It could be a blow out or could be one of those frustrating, error ridden, tight games.

@sparky said in Rugby World Cup 2019 - How are we tracking?:

Big surprise this year is Hansen sticking with SBW when week in, week out, he's the worst performing player in the Black Jersey.

Really? Week in, week out?
That's funny because my recollection of this year has been SBW sitting on the sideline injured.
How many minutes has he actually played to be so poor?

Is there much point comparing the current team to that all time great 2015 team?
Next year they will be up against completely different teams in a completely different context.

I think the main issues we have been facing the last 2 years are still there.
6 is still a question mark. Squire looks to be in the lead but he is so often injured and has yet to prove he can play at the level required against the best teams.

Midfield is still pretty unclear with lots of options but we don't appear any closer to having a settled first choice combo. Mainly due to frequent injuries.

The back three combination is also an unknown. Dmac was meant to be the secret weapon super sub but appears to have been promoted to starting 15.

My main concern is that we seem to lack a bit of "rugby brain" when it comes to tactics when things aren't quite working. We look great when thing work and we blow teams away but things aren't coming off we seem to persist with high risk, low percentage plays like cross kicking and offloading in contact.

It may be a case of keeping the powder dry but we haven't seen a really tight game plan since it worked so well against the Lions in the first test.

Only just watched my recording of the game. After reading this tgread and various things in the media i was expecting a totally different game.

What i saw was a dreary, wet kick fest. Other than being fired up for 20 mins and taking two chances well England offered fuck all. The two Mauls that ended up with a knock on were the only times they looked remotely threatening.

For the ABs i saw 30 mins of rubbish tactics of kicking everything. Worse still it was poorly executed. Crotty was clearly given a message to take out with him which was stop kicking the fucking thing away.

Nobody really played poorly IMO, kicking aside.
A Smith wasn't as bad as some have said. Poor kicking at times and the pass to Ardie. But Ardie should have caught that or not have been so flat.

SBW also gets judge fucking harshly. I was expecting a shocker. He dropped one poor pass and dropped the high ball as he got a white shoulder in his back. There was also a nothing kick but that was clearly a team tactic given everyone was doing it. What exactly did people expect from him? His propensity to get injured half way through a game is a big problem. However that should count Crotty, Squire, Moody and Coles out too.

Crotty in particular showed he is still valuable after being written off on here lately.

Dmac was a bit of a mixed bag. Some good cleaning up and a few good runs but his ball security was poor and he was partly to blame for the first england try.

Anyway hopefully the weather isn't shit for the Ireland game.

It's a double double cross. Wales will be in disarray.

But but but it's Global....and rapid. So it must be really good.

We should all chuck in $5 and TSF can be a major sponsor.