@mariner4life said in Aura watch:

to me it feels more like a commercial stage show than the challenge it used to be. It's the microphones, and the "ooh which one will they do" followed by "oh it's the old one, they don't respect you bro" and the legislated allowable responses. It's a sideshow, play the bloody game.

And it's lead by a bloody half back.

Note: the advantage shit is absolute horseshit though.

How the F would you know, you haven;t watched it in ages.

I bugger off for the anthems and come back for the haka. I missed the haka in 1994 vs the French at Eden Park because my mate and I got lost driving to the ground, and the girls we asked for directions were pretty so we dropped them off where they were going first and then went to the game, made our seats just as the haka ended. We lost to the try from the end of the world. I'm not risking missing the haka again.

@Hooroo said in All Blacks v BI Lions Test #3:

So the general feeling about the town is that while it is a pity we didn't win, it was a hell of a series and a really good result for Rugby.

I don't disagree either.

The Lions fans have to be the best travelling fans of any sport?

I'm not too miffed about all that happened. If it was against England or Aussie or South Africa then I would be more gutted.

I'm going to go a little against the grain here of the Fern wisdom - just a personal opinion so pitchforks can stay holstered. As someone who isn't over there soaking up the atmosphere, after the heady early days of the tour I've actually found this tour has broken my spirit for rugby a bit. I'm sure if I was there intermingling with the travelling fans and not just following online on forums and through the media my thoughts might be different.

Firstly the officiating, I know some people think we should rise above the officiating but that's a bullshit cop out, it should be held to account like everything else that happens out on the field - if we can moan about TJs flapping, Cruden existing, SBW being SBW, Fatty being unfairly/fairly picked on, etc etc then we can discuss the ref as well. As I've mentioned earlier in the thread I think the 'spirit' of the reffing switched between the 2nd and 3rd test (and even times within the 3rd test) and it negatively affected the ABs both times. The final test draw was worse than the 2nd test loss for me to take personally because of the bullshit at the end.

The tour also served up a bunch of negative rugby that was at times penalised and other times wasn't. The offside line was at various times policed and not policed. The ABs tries in the first test and the Lions counter attacks in the second should have been the takeaways from the tour but it was the negative play that overshadowed everything else. Both teams dished out a wee bit of dirty and or reckless play (IMHO and with my biases one team got penalised a bit more for it) that probably didn't need to happen. Oh and fuck Connor Murray and his ball rolling and fuck the refs for letting him do it (Smith also did it on occasion as well in the 3rd test).

The Lions management chipping in the media was annoying. As noted above the Lions played right on and over the borderline of the laws throughout the test series yet they spent a bunch of time moaning about the ABs tactics to the media and refs. It's like they don't own a mirror. The moaning about blockers was particularly annoying as they were consistently guilty of the same tactics. Speaking of blocking, in the 2nd test BBBR was penalised, a penalty that gained the Lions 3 points, for an act that happened throughout the 3 test series on both sides.

The media just did my head in on this tour - and that's really only through posters linking to it on here. How come all rugby media is just trolling? From both sides.

Should we have won the series? Yes. Would it have made my thoughts any different? Probably, I guess we'll never know, a few less dropped balls, a couple less injuries, a couple of not dropped on their head French babies and I might be singing a different tune.

@number9 said in 2019 Rugby Championship:

So how does that drop kick Aumua make the ABs when he has played like shit all season.

I guess because Harris is liable to hit me in Australia when throwing into the lineout in Auckland.

@Chris-B said in Hansen:

Of course, they have been - but, that doesn't mean they're right.

Doesn't mean they're wrong either. Being able to say I told you so is the only thing keeping me from slitting my wrists at the moment.

You play that game again with the different players and get to change five plays/decisions - e.g. Cane smashes England players and the ball doesn't reach Daly, Savea has the freedom to run rather than contest rucks on his own, J Barrett doesn't come on and turnover ball when we finally have momentum, and Ioane makes ground in contact and pops a ball to TJ in space - and you could easily get a different result.

FYI - I'm 100% not in the Hansen is shit camp, I'm in the Hansen has been bloody good for a long time but made some errors and got out-coached, and I'm definitely not in the new camp of "England were always going to win", we had the team to win and we didn't.

@frank said in Has Hansen gone stale?:

@billy-tell said in Has Hansen gone stale?:

Rennie is one of the most overrrated coaches. Initial success with the Chiefs then very average.

Overrated mostly by Nepia. Not sure who else is stroking his schlong.

Wheres the yawn emoji? Wins Super rugby twice with long term failures the Chiefs, wins three U20s in a row and lulls us into thinking they're easy until we start loosing a few, takes over a basket case province when their coach quits and makes them way more competitive than they should be. Oh, also won a rare NPC for Wellington when he was a baby coach back in the day.

But yeah, overrated and average.

@chris-b And there you are - thought you'd been abducted by aliens. Following the same reasoning I am impressed with how Foster built the Chiefs so that Rennie could win with them.

It was also impressive how Vance Stewart set up the Crusaders in 1996 so that Wayne Smith could benefit and eventually win in 1998.

The work that Jed Rowlands and Frank Oliver did in setting up the Blues for Sloane/Henry to win in 2003 was impressive too.

Also, it was great how Hammett got rid of Nonu so that he could rebuild the team for four years of mediocrity and this allowed Boyd to bring Nonu back to get the Canes to the finals and set them up for the win the following year.

Shannon Frizell - WTF! Seriously, even setting aside the fact he's a poach, he's the worst selection in the ABs for a long time.

Basically Akira has to move to a South Island team and do some of the mythical graft that @Machpants claims he doesn't do, despite the fact he's week in week out one of the hardest workers going un a bumbling Blues team. What graft has Frizell done in his 34 minutes per game he plays?

So, the Sunday morning thread read isn't nearly as much fun when we win comfortably.

So my random thoughts on the game:

So I think I was correct in thinking we haven't been playing direct this year, however in this must win match we played really direct and smashed them up in the forwards. I think the TWM must be disappointed they had to play direct in this match as I think they were saving it for the cup finals themselves. We also massively tidied up our defence, although TBF last week we just had so little ball that we had to make so many tackles that we were always going to miss a few.

There seems to be a bit of a loss of perspective on the wings. Yes they both played well (Reece especially played better than I thought he would in defence and without the ball, Bridge as I expected) but it's impossible to make a comparison between this week and last week - last week the forwards played like fairies and the backs suffered because of it (and they were down to 14 for 40 minutes) and this week the pack kicked arse and the wings benefited from decent front foot and counter attack ball. I think Ioane would have carved up just like Bridge did last night with that extra space. Can't believe some are genuinely suggesting he'll be dropped.

Coles is getting shit but I thought he played well outside of his yellow and getting a yellow for dumping a mouthy halfback out of a maul which we were dominating isn't too bad in the scheme of things.

The loosies were awesome. Savea spent the first 40 minutes emulating his brother on the wing (the good version, not the fatty version), dare I say it very Fifita like, then spent the second 40 in the middle more making tackles and hitting rucks. I wonder if that was the gameplan. Also, we may as well just give Ardie the number 8 jumper. He's playing 8, Read is playing 6 and Cane is playing his brand of hard tackling 7 for 60 minutes until they bring Todd on. I still don't get Todd, good rugby player, but 3 7's in the team just seems overkill.

Patty T stood up and didn't get himself red carded so that's a bonus. Whitelock had a new haircut, he doesn't quite look like the missing link as much anymore, and that coincided with his best test of the year.

Beaunga is starting to gel I reckon. I was generally worried when Mo'unga came off injured. Not for the game, BB could easily slot into 10, but for the RWC. Thankfully it looks like it's not serious. SBW and ALB were both good. Smith ran the game well, like he used to.

JB still worries the shit out of me, even though I thought he was decent, but he still looks like he's 30 seconds away from doing something stupid. I guess I have to trust he'll come right like DMac did (who copped far worse from some posters than JB does for arguably less stupidity).

White looked shit this week, Genia looked good when he came on. The number 6 who changed his name was awesome last week, he was terrible this week. My non regular rugby watching Aussie mate picked up how bad he was early in the game and then spent the rest of the game shouting at the screen to get him off. Kervei was irrelevant without as much ball as last week and O'Connor was just left to tackle all day. Beale had his worst test in a while.

Best thing about the win (aside from keeping the Aussies scoreless), my Aussie mate who was in Singapore for last weeks match and spammed the shit out of me for two days after the match was sitting right next to me on the couch for this match. I'd like to say I was a magnanimous winner ... but I wasn't, I rubbed that win in his face all through the match and then for the next couple of hours at dinner, where to his credit he still proudly wore his wallabies jumper (which looks like a soccer shirt) all night.

Edit: Must proof better next time and not start three sentences in a row with 'so'. Second Edit: How could I forget, how awesome was it seeing our 7 man scrum smash the Wallabies! Rugby porn of the highest order.

If we can't complain about player selection and non-selection then the Fern is fucked. No more discussing Jonah from you @Stargazer if that's the case.

@Tim said in Crusaders v Chiefs:

@gt12 said in Crusaders v Chiefs:

Given that Retallick is taking the year off

He’s also taking next year off, and so is your coach.

The evidence suggests the coach has already started taking next year off.

@Snowy said in NRL 2020:

@Nepia said in NRL 2020:

I think I'd been on a league forum

There's the problem right there.

I like to get out of the right wing echo chamber occasionally.

@taniwharugby said in Good podcasts:

MIssing in Alaska

Alaska 1972, 2 Congressmen vanish on a small plane, with speculation about a mob hit as well as to do with ties to the Croatian War.

Only about 4 eps in, is pretty good.

Is that date correct?

@Stargazer said in Magpies 2020:

put your $$ on plenty of tries

As much as I'm a fan I'm not risking my $$, he's likely to injure himself out of the season while stepping off the bus.

@taniwharugby said in NH International Rugby:

@Nepia I was living there around that time and that wasnt how it felt up there.

When I was living there he was playing and I don't remember too much hype ... but by the time of RWC 2003 (and I was back in NZ) I remember lots of hype.

@taniwharugby said in NH International Rugby:

@Tim IMO the unsung hero of the English pack at that time, when Back, Dayglo, Johnson seemed to get most of the plaudits, I thought HIll was the real standout.

@mariner4life Juan was awesome too.

TBH, it didn't seem that way to me, the hype out of the NH about Hill was off the charts (again to me).

@raznomore said in NRL 2020:

@Nepia said in NRL 2020:

@mariner4life said in NRL 2020:

How bad are the Broncos??!!

They should get that Bennett guy back to coach.

I liked how we stayed in the game despite it looking like we were going to get thumped again for most of the first half.

Ken did some outstanding work keeping us in the game. He's improved lots in the last couple of years and is getting underrated like Manu did for not looking like a typical wing. That young wing for the Broncos is going to be class.

This is how dumb and tragic my mate and I are, we started looking at the schedule to see if there was a day time game to go to up on the coast when they allow more fans in. The Warriors have never won a game we've been to in Oz.

How underrated can you be if you've been the best winger in the game? I think he gets probably the most Love next to Roger and Harris from the media and Aussies.

I think I'd been on a league forum where they complaining he wasn't a proper wing and were suggesting he should move to the second row when I wrote that.

@Canes4life said in NZ Club rugby (general):

For anyone interested there are a few good podcasts with various Club, NPC and Super Rugby players via the Huddy Sports YouTube channel.

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCgNwfjpxmJvXsCkX2obqzfw/videos

@Stargazer there is a good interview in there with Hugh Renton that you might want to post on the HB page.

Cheers for this @canefan - was always wondering if he left the Magpies or they ditched him, and it turns out they ditched him.

@Stargazer said in Highlanders 2020:

The HBRU never publish contract duration of players. Hell, they hardly ever publish signings. So who knows? He was playing club rugby for Central, I think?

@Number-10 ?

@Stargazer said in Highlanders 2020:

I wonder if this will be Cridge's chance to turn his career around, assuming he gets some gametime.

Is he still contracted to the Magpies?

@R-L said in Hawt discussion (lots of PG13 gifs/pics):

@Nepia you used to be different.. Now you are like the rest of them

Damn it, I've drifted back into the pack.