@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.

@Chris-B I agree that his failure to get rid of Northland and Tasman is a black mark on his record!

@Toddy said in Aussie Rugby:

@Nepia well you do have history of team hopping

Franchise rugby, not representative rugby.

(Although if Hammett ever gets promoted to AB coach I'll get back to you.)

@Toddy said in Aussie Rugby:

@Nepia it's momentarily saved you an awkward decision come Bledisloe time

No it hasn't - that's just stupid.

@Bovidae said in Aussie Rugby:

But I'm sure he would want to have a good relationship with the CEO.

True ...

@Bovidae said in Aussie Rugby:

Dave Rennie might be having a closer look at his contract and if it has any release clause.

He took over the Poo when the coach just left ... the Poo! I think he likes getting shit and trying to mould it into diamonds.

Not-lockdown update. No one is giving a shit about the 2 person rule in Chinatown today, but the Coles in World Square has gone to spaced queues already while half the rest of the shops are just open like normal.

@No-Quarter said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@Nepia said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

@No-Quarter said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

and it appears the original narrative of them not working at all was put out to stop people hording them when medical professionals need them the most.

I thought this was always the narrative from the get go, or it was as I understood it.

That was more the suspected (and pretty obvious) narrative but the official statements from the WHO were that they straight up don't help at all. Which was likely a white lie, but pretty shitty nonetheless.

I didn't read any of their stuff ... I was just watching it play out on the Fern.

@No-Quarter said in Coronavirus - New Zealand:

and it appears the original narrative of them not working at all was put out to stop people hording them when medical professionals need them the most.

I thought this was always the narrative from the get go, or it was as I understood it.

@Bovidae said in Pick Your (or any) High Schools' All-Time Greatest XV:

@Nepia said in Pick Your (or any) High Schools' All-Time Greatest XV:

@Bovidae said in Pick Your (or any) High Schools' All-Time Greatest XV:

I did select Gatland at no.8 for that reason. Read could move to lock and Lomu back to no.8.

I think Jonah actually locked (with Royce Willis) the NZ Schools team one year, with Isitola Maka at 8 maybe?

They were all in the same team in 1992 and 1993. Willis was in the NZSS for 3 years. He was a big unit though.

I think there is still a head shaped dent in the front lawn of a flat on Cameron Rd from when he did a headstand doing yoga (a guy doing yoga in 1995 was freaking weird, but you don't argue with someone that size, even if he is the most placid dude out there.

@Bovidae said in Pick Your (or any) High Schools' All-Time Greatest XV:

I did select Gatland at no.8 for that reason. Read could move to lock and Lomu back to no.8.

I think Jonah actually locked (with Royce Willis) the NZ Schools team one year, with Isitola Maka at 8 maybe?

@Bovidae said in Pick Your (or any) High Schools' All-Time Greatest XV:

@mikedogz You need a lock. Tukino?

After a quick look at the EONZR other ex Wesley players of note include Sotutu and Mapusua. Wiremu Maunsell and Shannon Paku were at St Stephens. Lindsay Raki (Manurewa) might be one to avoid.

I thought he went to Hato Paora?

Also do we select them on their senior positions of their school positions? Should Jonah be a forward?