NZ U19s
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@OomPB Commentators said that the local team was thrown together 4 days ago and that WP's top players weren't available. I wonder why? Was SA schools or u19 in camp or playing? The WP 9 that moved to 10 was good but was playing them on his own at times. Loved the starting NZ midfield, power at 12 with pace at 13. Not much quality defence going on though so I hope tougher tests will come.
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@Daffy-Jaffy our schoolboy season ended in August. The grade 12s end exams starts now. They are u18s.
NZ u19s would have better games against our CC u21s which season is now half way.
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@Daffy-Jaffy said in NZ U19s:
@OomPB Commentators said that the local team was thrown together 4 days ago and that WP's top players weren't available. I wonder why?
Probably knew they were going to be trounced so backed out.
No reason at all not to have the best (U19) players available. They've known about this fixture since July.
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I haven't watched the game yet but NZR still didn't publish a team list before the game. Amateurs.
Edit: There seems to be a new name (F. Sa) in the team list, so he must have replaced another player in the squad. Cahill the captain for this game.
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I haven't watched the game yet but NZR still didn't publish a team list before the game. Amateurs.
Edit: There seems to be a new name (F. Sa) in the team list, so he must have replaced another player in the squad. Cahill the captain for this game.
Fiti Sa (Crusaders Academy)
Don't know yet who he has replaced or whether he's an extra player added to the squad.
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@Stargazer said in NZ U19s:
I haven't watched the game yet but NZR still didn't publish a team list before the game. Amateurs.
Edit: There seems to be a new name (F. Sa) in the team list, so he must have replaced another player in the squad. Cahill the captain for this game.
Fiti Sa (Crusaders Academy)
Don't know yet who he has replaced or whether he's an extra player added to the squad.
Four players from the squad weren't involved in this game. Hunter Morrison and Torian Barnes are two of those, so likely one of them. We'll know when they play the Sharks.
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Just watched the second half, after watching the first early this morning.
Two correction to the "match report" from NZR:
The try they give to Byron Smith was not scored by him, but by Epeli Waqaicece, who scored two tries in the first half.
Ajay Faleafaga kicked the first 8 conversions, of which he missed one. So a total of 7.
Byron Smith attempted the other 6, and missed 5 of them (some easy ones, but the wind may have been a factor).The match was so one-sided that you can't really say much about it. It's easy to play well against such a weak team. Our defence was barely tested. I remember our boys defending on their try line once. There are a few players who still have to get rid of that tendency to attempt to score themselves, instead of passing to a team mate who has an easier path to the try line.
All in all, a good first run to warm up, but I hope we'll see a better contest in the next 3 matches.
The coverage of the game was excellent, by the way. Good camera work and good commentary. The playing conditions were also very good.
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By the way, this is from the pre-match interview:
Interviewer asks whether there are players they should keep an eye on.
Hammett: I thinks so, but if I'm completely honest with you, these guys are quite new to me as well, so I'm looking forward to see who the talent is. I wouldn't be able to tell you "look out for this [player]"; maybe [by] game 4 I will be. At this stage, we're looking forward to give everyone an opportunity to impress.
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@Stargazer said in NZ U19s:
There are a few players who still have to get rid of that tendency to attempt to score themselves, instead of passing to a team mate who has an easier path to the try line.
Waqaicece being the worst culprit. BTW, were the commentators pronouncing his name correctly? c is a th, not f.
Speaking of the interviews, Viljoen is very Kiwi.
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@Stargazer said in NZ U19s:
There are a few players who still have to get rid of that tendency to attempt to score themselves, instead of passing to a team mate who has an easier path to the try line.
Waqaicece being the worst culprit. BTW, were the commentators pronouncing his name correctly? c is a th, not f.
Speaking of the interviews, Viljoen is very Kiwi.
Would have been only 3 when his dad was playing for the 'Tu.
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@Stargazer Markotter is Paul Roos home. Think the NZ squad will stay at SAS which have excellent facilities, even an Indoor rugby pitch and home SA 7s
SAS - Stellenbosch Academy of Sport
Professional athletes and sports teams from around the world train at the Stellenbosch Academy of Sport. SAS is a world-class, high-performance training and preparation environment.
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@Stargazer I investigate the opponents and the timing of this tour are totally wrong. The grade 12 , u18 players weren't available. So the timing of the tour is wrong. So don't expect any good opposition.
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@OomPB It's a pity, isn't it? It would have been so great if the tour had ended with a proper SA U19 v NZ U19 game, too!
The whole purpose of this tour was to prepare the NZ players for next year's WR U20 Championship, mainly because the players of this age group had missed out on playing international games for NZ Schools due to Covid, the last two years. For the NZ players, there are still good lessons to be learned from this tour, as their coach said, learning off-field aspects of touring like the long-distance travel (which will be new to most of them), dealing with jet lag, being away from home (NZ), playing at altitude etc. The coach also mentioned learning to play against teams with a different style of rugby and more physicality, but we didn't get to see much of that because the WP team simply wasn't strong enough.
Anyway, the tour will still be useful, but I think there's an opportunity missed here by not playing stronger opposition. They should have included a match against a stronger U21 team, as you mentioned before.
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@Stargazer Torian Barnes has injured his knee. Don’t think it’s ACL. But pretty serious
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@Stargazer I thought this might be the curtain-raiser for the SA-Arg test if it is Sat, SA time.
