Northland v Southland
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@taniwharugby ....we are big and tough enough to win contact. Defend not too bad. But Hawkins steps crossfield and lacks power in his kicking. Hohaia is not a kicker, and Gregory is so hit and miss as to be dangerous. Hence our game management is awful.
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Massive ticker and massive defence from Northland, though I’m still wondering how we actually managed to win that.
Worst game I’ve seen Northland play in a long long time.
Didn’t respect the ball when we had it, awful kicking, stupid penalties.
Pretty much everything we did only put us under more pressure than was already on us.
Wonder if the heads were already in Napier...
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What was the time in 22 stats? Kara went off at 25 mins and we spent the rest in our 22
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I think a lot of people are underestimating Southland still haha, I'm still stunned as to how they didn't win that. Good on Northland on showing grit out there but geez, Southland really should have won that, they were miles better everywhere apart from the scoreboard and could easily be 5 from 5. The turnaround from Southland this year has been amazing and certainly don't deserve to be 2 from 5 but sadly it is what it is.
We'll done Northland though, 4 from 5 is nothing to be laughed at.
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@African-Monkey Southland are well coached but lack a bit of size and power. Northland invited them to win with some atrocious game management. That they didn’t illustrates their weakness. Ours is at 10/12 where we have other options but It seems don’t want to give them a shot.
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The pluses ,The Taniwha are fit and they have ticker , and the defence was outstanding, the minuses..not enough hours left in the day to key them in..still you take the win
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we made some very poor decisions and poor execution of some basics.
But gotta give props to our defence, which was scratchy on the fringes early on, but jeez they musta been in our 22 for 30+ mins in that 2nd spell, only our try and Rangers break, which was the only time he shoulda off-loaded, and didnt, did we venture out of our 22.
Robinson and Matich were central figures in the defence.
To hold on, especially with 14 men at the time too, awesome.
This side have a bit of steel to them though, not often you attribute winning ugly to us, most often losing ugly or losing with style.
So, take the W and move on to next week.
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Watching how the ABs use Smith to kick from deep, maybe we need to use Nock more here, he gas a great kick, Hawkins doesn't, on line kicks, surely we should be using Gregory more, Hawkins instead of relieving pressure, kept it on too many times.
I'd like Nock to have a crack at quick taps too, he had a few huge opportunities today with the defence scattered and dawdling back, he woulda nabbed easy metres at worst an extra 10.
We just need to be smarter, and 2 guys in Hawkins and Ranger who know better were far from it today.
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@taniwharugby Agree that Nock should kick more. Partially because the others are so poor. Hawkins takes an age to turn to the side before he kicks and then he doesn’t have a lot of power.
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@kev said in Northland v Southland:
Hawkins takes an age to turn to the side before he kicks and then he doesn’t have a lot of power.
had 1 charged down, 1 grubber for a penalty kick for touch, 4 that went less than 20m downfield, 1 directly across field at a point in the game where we needed field position relief, why they dont have Gregory practicing line kicks during the week and then throw him the ball on penalties...Hawkins is courageous on defence, has a crack at breakdown when it is on, but going forward he really isnt up to this level. ..I pretty much predicted where every single one would end up, unfortunately
I cannot see them starting Cooper next week either...
Think @kev mentioned it above, our 10/12 axis is a massive weakness for us, and fair to say, today, 13 too.
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@Kirwan said in Northland v Southland:
Everytime I scan a Northland thread I think you guys have lost by the comments.
Having a good season results wise.
Haha, I had to refrain from posting towards the end of the first half, I was getting too bloody frustrated.
@Steven-Harris nailed it though, it’s about expectations.
Yes we won, which I have no doubt all Northland supporters are happy about, it’s the manner in which we played today that riles us up. We know the lads are capable of 100x better than was dished up today.
That said, our loose trio were absolutely outstanding again. And like I previously mentioned our ticker and defence both get massive ticks!
It’s often said that good teams find a way to win while playing poorly, maybe this is true of the Tani’s today....
We are currently in uncharted territory at the top of the table after all 😀😀😀
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that kick of Nocks went over the roof of the stadium, it went out, and stayed out!
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I'm thinking how we go in the challenge (and top of the table championship clash) could well set the tone for the rest of our season.
HB - away
Otago - away
NH - home
Auckland- away
Waikato - home/KaikoheIf we can topple HB (will take a monumental effort with 5 day turnaround and on the back of that defensive effort on Sunday) that challenge v NH will be huge the way they are playing, and if we somehow got up over them we would end up defefending it in Kaikohe...maybe we just shouldn't put it up for challenge up there 🤣 that'd go down well.
But seriously, I'm not overly confident for Friday, which leads me to look ahead and think we are 4/5 now, a very real possibility we end 4/9...particularly with injuries or niggles about.
But I think we will win 1 or 2 more, hopefully nab 3 or 4 bp in the process which might almost be enough for a home semi.
Oh, I will add, if we did win the shield and lost the other 4 games, I could live with that too.
