Yeah that sort of thing got penalised in SR.
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Pretty messy game of Rugby in France v NZ. Another international game where territory was 50% plus determined by the referee not the players which I personally hate. I think Barrett's 2 decisions to go for 3 and get it close rather than attempt to get the points that would win the game were mistakes.
Razor also did not select well for this match. Jordan is not in form at 15, and Reece is very out of form at 14. Both players made mistakes that led to massive territory or points to France. Given how well McKenzie played against Ireland I still think the better selection was Jordan at 14 with Barrett at 15.
Finau's early injury forcing Lakai to play 78 minutes probably meant the bench impact wasn't as good as the last two weeks; though having said that the loose forwards looked really good even once when they were rejigged. But I think they really missed Cane's leadership at times in that game - at points looked a bit panicked.
It sounds weird given they got 30 points, but I think in a way France won without having to do too much. The big thing was absorb the pressure, their counter-attack was full of pace and very effective and in the last 60 minutes their defence was very strong. So long as they just managed to stay on the right side of the ref they got the W.
Yeah you shouldn't be leaking 3 tries to a team like Portugal really, but oftentimes games like that can kinda degenerate to somewhere in between each teams level.
Re England, I'm starting to wonder if its possible that the age of the rush/blitz defence might be coming to an end and that's why they're adapting already having just perfected it 6 months ago.
Teams might have finally worked out how to stress it enough that unless you're a Springboks with a whole replacement forward pack on the bench you just can't maintain it for more than 70 minutes. Too early to tell yet, but the next full calendar year of games will be interesting to see how things change. Though WR's foolish adjustment to refereeing escorts might counter any gains attack have had as teams can just go back to YOLO up a kick to relieve pressure.
Haven't decided if I can be bothered watching the ABs game or not, feels like a somewhat unproductive use of time watching footie during the daylight hours.
I would like the time for all kicks reduced even further, 60 seconds is way too long. 10s are able to drop kick at a snap and there's been recent instances where the ball drops off the T, and the 10 resets it and kicks in about 10-15 seconds. We need to be less precious about kicks and stop making it some sacred moment. Reward kickers who can get the ball away accurately at speed, rather than giving them time for a meditation and moment of zen.
Yup, was trialled during Super Rugby and the 9 basically becomes a protected species; effectively you can't get in their way, drag them in, push them out, interfere with getting the ball away at all.
At times it felt like it was going too far but did make for cleaner ball and more play, less of the dumb stuff that just interrupts the action.
None of the changes in the article impact the importance of the scrum in the slightest; all it means is less fake injuries, water breaks and pissing about setting them up.
Looks to me like Ireland's old bodies aren't going the distance and they're not getting a lot out of their bench so far. Probably similar to the ABs they should have started getting more experience into some of the players sooner.
This is what Razor & the coaches have gone with:
1. Tamaiti Williams (17)
2. Codie Taylor (93)
3. Tyrel Lomax (42)
4. Scott Barrett (78) (Captain)
5. Tupou Vaa’i (36)
6. Samipeni Finau (7)
7. Ardie Savea (92) (Vice-Captain)
8. Wallace Sititi (8)
9. Cam Roigard (8)
10. Beauden Barrett (132)
11. Caleb Clarke (27)
12. Jordie Barrett (67) (Vice-Captain)
13. Rieko Ioane (79)
14. Sevu Reece (31)
15. Will Jordan (39)
16. Asafo Aumua (18)
17. Ofa Tu’ungafasi (66)
18. Pasilio Tosi (6)
19. Patrick Tuipulotu (49)
20. Peter Lakai (1)
21. Cortez Ratima (10)
22. Anton Lienert-Brown (82)
23. Damian McKenzie (60)
With Ardie moving to 7 this could well be a sign of the future - particularly as the most balanced loose forward trio would see him at 7 for Moana Pasifika next year as well to ensure Inisi gets plenty of game time at 8. I feel like Ratima is a bit unlucky, he didn't get much from the forwards against Ireland, and while Roigard definitely got the ball out of the ruck cleaner & faster, the passes were often going quite high so by the time it was in McKenzie's hands it wasn't a great deal better than Ratima's service. Still, Roigard is the future starting 9 - he's just too good to leave out now he's fully recovered from injury.
The only things I would have done differently was to play McKenzie at 10 so Beauden could play 15 and give us a good kicking option. As it stands, if i'm France i'm just kicking into Sevu Reece's side of the back field all game, piling territorial pressure on. Jordan's kicking game has been very weak from Fullback in the internationals since he returned from injury so that puts the whole responsibility on BB to track back and deal with it.
With that positional switch, i'd have liked to see Jordan at 14, and then Love or Perofeta on the bench. But Razor's kinda one-track minded on Jordan is our best 15, even though a lot of us kiwis would see that as more of a situational/depending on the opposition type thing and it ignores how incredibly successful he has been at 14 over his time in the jersey.
i'm becoming a linux nerd and this power button thing would be fine for me bc ive discovered how good suspend is and never power off my desktop anymore anyway, just spend then bump the keyboard when i want it back.
Wouldn't you just pull the power cord at that point? If the device has become completely unmanageable such that it needs a power reset i'd be surprised if there's much more harm that way than holding down the power button until it turns off.
I can't remember where I watched it - but I saw some video a while ago now where (I think) the engineer was explaining that shutdown & power on does less of a cleanout than restart on Windows. Something to do with shutdown going through steps more similar to a sleep/suspend than restart. Made little sense to me but would be interesting to see if post restart or post power-on the computer was "fresher"
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I don't see that as a problem. A scrum exists to restart the game with a contest for the ball when there has been a mistake such as a knock-on, forward pass etc. If you claim a free-kick, then you should have to kick it - it's in the name.
The problem with scrums is they lead to penalties - so in effect you start penalising knock-ons, or other phases of rugby that are accidental. And the scrum penalties are awfully inconsistent - you saw it in France v New Zealand tonight. Sometimes an immediate penalty, other times 2 scrums could look identical and one would get penalised the other wouldn't. Its just bad for the game to have that sort of inconsistency.