All Blacks MOTM v Australia II
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Jordie and our 2 pensioner locks!
DP, BB, TL all deserving mentions too.
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I try to look at this based on who had the biggest positive influence on the game.
Jordie an obvious one but I thought that it was partly due to the work inside him, particularly by Lomax and the locks that carried straight and hard and sucked in the Oz strongpoint of their looses. That meant that Jordie was able to run at Foley and some scrambling forwards and we could rinse and repeat.
That really sucked the energy out of Oz and we reaped the rewards with space or makeshift defence out wide.
Kind of how some of the NH teams play and made us look like Oz did last night. -
Lomax had a vastly improved game, but there's no way I can give a bloke who missed as many tackles as the rest of the team combined a point.
Dalton got through a mountain of defensive work. Akira played tight and stopped momentum, key moments like ripping the ball near our line.
Brodie looked back to his pre-Japan form.
Jordie's game was near faultless. Superb defence, big runs, great passing.
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Taylor was certainly better than Christchurch and probably kept his spot on the end of year tour but lineout throwing still worrying - including one where he got free kicked for moving off of the mark ffs.
Went for Jordie, Retallick and Dalton.
That was the best performance by a 12 under Foster as head coach by a country mile.
Very hard to pick just 3 this week - so many put their hands up - De Groot, Lomax, Whitelock, Jordan etc
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@antipodean said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
Lomax had a vastly improved game, but there's no way I can give a bloke who missed as many tackles as the rest of the team combined a point.
Are you saying the rest of the team only missed 1 tackleā¦?
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I am one of those that voted for Lomax, and was surprised to see he is listed as missing 5 tackles. However, my vote was on the strength of his scrummaging and, in particular, his ball-carrying. The latter played a large part in the ABs forward dominance. I was also happy to see Lomax acknowledge he needed to lower his body height when going into contact - something I was critical of him for not doing all season.
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@Billy-Tell said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
@antipodean said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
Lomax had a vastly improved game, but there's no way I can give a bloke who missed as many tackles as the rest of the team combined a point.
Are you saying the rest of the team only missed 1 tackleā¦?
Lomax missed 5, as did everyone else, for a total of ten for the game
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Seems I'm the only person that feels Smith is worthy of a top 3 spot, and other than Clarke, he was the only guy left to not get a vote.
Youse are crazy!
Edit - bloody hard to select 3 from that game so I went for the guys who were under pressure and stepped up - either pushed into new roles or hadn't put in great performances for a while. So that was Paps delivering like many hoped he could (tackled like an absolute beast all night), JB stepping up into a new role at 12, and A Smith responding to vehement online criticism from that keyboard warrior on the Fern
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@voodoo said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
Seems I'm the only person that feels Smith is worthy of a top 3 spot, and other than Clarke, he was the only guy left to not get a vote.
Youse are crazy!
he suffers from sustained excellence. His normal is massive for us - but he also isn't quite what he was.
How you'd vote for Taylor over Smith I do not know
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@nzzp said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
@voodoo said in All Blacks MOTM v Australia II:
Seems I'm the only person that feels Smith is worthy of a top 3 spot, and other than Clarke, he was the only guy left to not get a vote.
Youse are crazy!
he suffers from sustained excellence. His normal is massive for us - but he also isn't quite what he was.
How you'd vote for Taylor over Smith I do not know
Yeah, I get that - but I also thought his 1st half in particular was noticably commanding, and such a step up from his recent outings.
The other thing I always notice about Smith is how fast he exits the field after being subbed - he motors and looks fresh as a daisy like he hasn't just played 66mins of rugby!, Bloody show off
