Having had the weekend to absorb the loss I thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

Firstly well done the Lions you got there in the end. Plenty of teams would not have gotten over the line but you found a way to win ugly.

For the ABs I have to say even down to 14 I thought we would still win it. Mostly due to what I thought was tactical brilliance from Hanson. Subbing a forward was clearly something they had planned for as it happened almost immediately. It sucks for Kaino but our 7 man pack was more then competitive against the Lions 8 and that is purely down to conditioning. Every one of those blokes put in a shift and they got so close. I suspect if Cruden had passed that balls to the forwards and asked them to hold it for 5 minutes they would have.

But thats not us we play to win not to draw, was still a shitty option.

I can understand people are frustrated with SBW for what happened but I think people need a little perspective. He is not even close to being a serial offender wasn't his last card in 2011 that was 6 years ago. If you balance it up against the good stuff hes done I think hes still the kind of player you want around. So this talk of him never wearing Black again or people booing him needs to be put to bed. Its over no one will regret it more then him.

Vunipola on the other hand should count himself very lucky, in my view that was a straight up targeted shot. He saw it was Barrett and he went hard in on him. It was cheap as well as Barrett was rolling out of the ruck, and there was no other defender so he had no need to even enter the ruck, the ball was available. I think if the contact was any heavier we could have been down a fly half. I would be surprised if he was selected for the 3rd test, he didn't really bend the line and his discipline sucked.

For the SOB incident, it makes me really wonder if the way the Refs are implementing the head high rules needs some adjustment. One thing in common with a lot of the rulings that have been very inconsistent is that its not normally the tackler that is at fault, but more often the tackler assist. We see it here with Sean, with Sonny and even the Cane incident in Ireland. He was coming in as the assist but Henshaws spin caught him. I think as the assister there is a much greater risk of these sorts of accidents. For one you have a player who is in the process of being tackled that will normally be lowering there head as they move toward the ground. This puts it right in the tackle zone for anyone attempting the assist. Then you have huge amounts of force in the collision and the way that acts on the players is not easy to predict, making any assisted tackles a lot messier. The inverse is also true in a one on one tackle with two players colliding both have a good idea of where their bodies should be, to effect a safe tackle at impact.

I really don't know how to deal with that. I would like to see slow motion replays used less as I think reducing the time gives the impression that the players have a choice in their actions and for a lot of cases in the assist I don't think they have much of one. What they committed to 2 steps away is what they have to go through with.

I was happy with Laumape, thought he was good considering the circumstances. Reiko needed to be busier. He can't afford to run hot cold like that and needs to go looking for the ball a bit more rather then wait for it.

One final thing all of the international French Refs are totally fluent in English, please don't give them this excuse as a crutch for a poor performance. They don't need it if they are not communicating with their team properly its not down to language skills.

The Silver Fern

mooshld