International Club Rugby South v Northern Hemisphere 2012

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Aucklander

Aucklander

The Ultimate Warrior
Veteran Sweet F.A. Reigning Premiers - Gumbies - SFA 10k Posts Gumbies FFC - Sweet F.A. NRL Tipping Winner
May 3, 2003
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I see Argentina beat Wales. A direct benefit of their 4 nations involvement?

England easily over Fiji, Italy just over Tonga, South Africa just home over Ireland too, while Australia trail France by 4 after about 20 minutes.

Scotland will attempt to be the All Blacks for the 1st time ever tomorrow morning.
 
Wallabies got hammered. Scoreline could have been worse. The French back row play was very good and they were able to dent holes in our defence with some pretty nice offloading. Our attack was bad as usual. Kept trying to pick and drive when the holes were wider. We need to greatly improve our passing game...and then use it.

Benn Robinson is no where near the player he used to be. Also Phipps is not up to test level. Should have made an exception to the locals only policy and picked Burgess.

Just watched the replay of the Argentina v Wales game. Argentina were good and surprisingly much more dangerous with ball in hand than the Welsh. They've definitely benefited from playing in the rugby championship and I suspect it won't be long til they cement themselves in the top 5 in the world. Their game against France next weekend will be interesting. I also give Samoa a decent chance of knocking off Wales.
 
Predictable calls will be for Deans to be sacked but seriously, today showed why the Wallabies are so poor. Our forwards and scrum are abysmal. Nick Phipps.......meh. Lets face it, guys like Genia and Pocock you can't replace but we have no depth whatsoever and too many players are grossly overrated (such as Ashley Cooper). The players are just not good enough and there isn't anything better in the Super 15 competition. Meanwhile the All Blacks and Sth Africans just seem to role them off the production line.
 

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I watched England/Fiji (predictable win) and Ireland/Saffies. The Ireland game was poor; both sides looked unimpressive. The Springboks looked terrible in the first half, when they offered nothing, Even so, Ireland didn't look like scoring a try. The South Africans predictably improved in the second half, and showed enough to nil the Irish in that half and win the game. But playing like that, they wouldn't scare even the young England side, let alone the ABs.

I didn't see the Wales game, but seeing the tries on the news, the Pumas scored two very neat tries. Amazing pick up (of NRL standard, even? :p ) for the second. If they have finally found some decent backs to match their fine pack, they really will be a force.
 
Just awesome skills from the ABs against Scotland. You watch them at their best, and no other side looks in the same league.
 
moto748 said:
Just awesome skills from the ABs against Scotland. You watch them at their best, and no other side looks in the same league.
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They play a different game to everyone else.

They destroy Scotland and yet yield the territory 57/43 and share the possession 50/50.

They don't mess about it's quick use, offloading and then creating and exploiting the space in an almost rugby league style.
 
The scrum half cannot consistently work cleanly unless the scrum holds, however......

I want a halfback who snaps the ball without the extra step Australian halfs usually take before the pass leaves the hand.

Beale, Cooper, any 5/8 would do better given that critical extra time.

I haven't seen an Australian one do it properly since Nick Farr-Jones.

Funnily enough, I think that the replacement for Phipps vs the All Blacks actually did it.

Can someone please tell me who that was? I think he came on in the second half.
 
sosos said:
The scrum half cannot consistently work cleanly unless the scrum holds, however......

I want a halfback who snaps the ball without the extra step Australian halfs usually take before the pass leaves the hand.

Beale, Cooper, any 5/8 would do better given that critical extra time.

I haven't seen an Australian one do it properly since Nick Farr-Jones.

Funnily enough, I think that the replacement for Phipps vs the All Blacks actually did it.

Can someone please tell me who that was? I think he came on in the second half.
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It's a basic skill for scrumhalves. At junior rep levels we usually don't pick scrumhalves that can't pass from the base.There's a very good reason why the likes of Burgess and Phipps didn't make any junior rep teams. The problem is, scrumhalves that can pass from the base generally aren't the best all-round players. Once they get to club level, players that have more size get the nod and they don't come through. In saying that, Genia is a brilliant pass from the base. One of the best I've seen and would rival Gregan (early days) and NFJ. Nic White isn't all too bad aswell.

Nick Phipps is just a horrible half-back. One of the worst going around. He gets to the contest and plays a up-tempo style but more often than not he plays a like headless chicken. There's no purpose in the way he directs the forwards and backs. There are plenty of better scurmhalves in club rugby. Nic Stirkazer was close to unseating Phipps by the end of the season for the Rebels if that gives you any indication. Ian Prior, Ben Lucas, Nick Frisby and Sheehan are all better options.
 
Dipper said:
They play a different game to everyone else.

They destroy Scotland and yet yield the territory 57/43 and share the possession 50/50.

They don't mess about it's quick use, offloading and then creating and exploiting the space in an almost rugby league style.
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I'm a rugby league fan primarily, and I have to agree with you. Crucially, they can all pass and catch from 1 to 15. I would say the ABs are the only international RU side whose handling is up to NRL standards. Everything they do seems to have a purpose.
 
moto748 said:
I'm a rugby league fan primarily, and I have to agree with you. Crucially, they can all pass and catch from 1 to 15. I would say the ABs are the only international RU side whose handling is up to NRL standards. Everything they do seems to have a purpose.
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Don't discount the fact that in rugby league you have 10 metres of space given to you. It's much harder to play with the defence right on you and often rushing forward. I'd say the top backs in both codes have a similar ability in ball movement and ball handling, while rugby league forwards are in general a fair bit better in that area than union forwards for obvious reasons.

The All Blacks score a lot of their tries from turnovers by immediately finding the space and taking advantage of the defence not being set. That doesn't happen as much in rugby league for a few reasons...mainly because there are a lot less turnovers in the loose.
 
That's fair comment, Mint. And of course, to some extent, the amount of room players have depends on how deep or flat they choose to stand.
 

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I think in league due to the pretty much one dimensional (and that isn't meant as an insult) nature of the game, ie 2 sets of players strung out facing one another with no line outs, mauls, rucks or real scrums, it's paramount to take advantage of any individual weakness in the defensive line as soon as it appears, the minute a bloke is slightly out of position or is stood up by the footwork of the attacking player then they have to make sure that it's exploited as this is the primary way to score.

In union teams can grind down another team in an arm wrestle style of game hoping that in the end the pressure alone causes the cracks to appear, as a result a lot of teams are unable firstly to isolate defensive players and get past them and also when the opportunity does arise they are unable to think and act quickly enough to fully exploit it before the cover comes across to snuff out the chance.

This is where NZ are different, the minute that the opportunity is there everyone is on it, players support the man in possession and take up good support lines and together with the best offloading game around they make the opposition pay.

You check out the clean line break stats from the weekend's games, there were precious few in a lot of the games but with NZ the number is always high, even when none of the other stats show any particular dominance from them this is the one that is key showing just how many times they sliced the opposition open.
 
There seems to be a lot of negative commentary about Australia's kicking game with the main comment being the Wallabies should stop kicking it away.

In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with kicking it if the playmakers think it's the right option. The Wallabies main problem is that their current kickers are so poor.

  • So many kicks go straight to the opposition; ( I remember Michael Lynagh's precision )
  • There is so little length in the kicking; ( I remember Roger Gould )
  • There are so many poor options chosen when kicking; ( I remember Mark Ella using the kick as a surprise weapon )
  • High balls are all either too long or too short;
  • Over the shoulder kicks from the scrum base are virtually non-nonexistent and where they occur are inaccurate; ( I remember Nick Farr-Jones mastery of this kick)
  • We hardly seem to kick any drop goals compared to other countries.
  • Chip and chase kicks? Not sure - can't really remember many recently.
Certainly an area they need massive improvement.
 
I'd go along with a lot of that, Dipper. Don't want to turn this into a league v union thing, which has been done to death I'm sure, but I agree the key thing s about the AB's is their support play. As soon as they win possession, the ball-carrier has options around him. All too often it seems other teams don't bother, and rely on the wearing down opponents that you allude to.
 
I haven't seen the Wallabies in a while, but I expect I'll see them play England on Sunday. They seems to come in for a fair amount of stick on here. Well, they certainly used to have a good side. Does Pocock still play? And Genia (sp?). They were both very good, I thought.
 
I thought Samoa would be a good chance of beating Wales after the results last weekend so wasn't surprised they won. I wish I'd put some money on it now. It's amazing that a country with a population under 200,000 can be so strong at a fairly big international sport. Tonga's population is even smaller!

Samoa could easily be added to the rugby championship. Sure they don't have a big home market, but rugby fans in bigger countries all like to watch them play. If they had regular matches with their best players against the top teams and maintained the sort of level that saw them beat Wales last night and the Wallabies in 2011 I'm sure they'd have no problem drawing big crowds in Australia and NZ.
 
I think England and Australia and New Zealand could do a lot more to support rugby in the island nations in both codes.
 
moto748 said:
I think England and Australia and New Zealand could do a lot more to support rugby in the island nations in both codes.
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Won't happen while the status quo works so well for Australia and NZ. All the best polynesian talent that grows up in Aus or NZ (or moves here/there during school) plays for the Wallabies or All Blacks. Not all of them would if the island nations were involved in the top level competitions. On the other hand a lot of the next best players (that end up playing for Samoa, Tonga and Fiji) do grow up in Australia or NZ and thus get all their development here before moving to Europe to play professionally. I guess its hard because there's probably more Samoans and Tongans living in other countries than live on the islands so there's a lot of players that have to make a choice (and could legitimately identify themselves as both, say Kiwi and Samoan).

I'd like to see super rugby become a bit more inclusive. You could expand the competition without diluting the quality if you allowed PI committed players to play professionally in Australia and NZ with less restriction (Argentinians too).

Re Rugby league, I guess they could add a PNG NRL team. It'd probably need some multi-millionaire to bank roll it though. The Polynesian Pacific Island countries aren't as strong in league and I think the NRL basically treats the PI's as a breeding ground for the Toyota Cup and NRL. A huge % of Toyota Cup players are Polynesian.
 
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moto748 said:
Yes, that was awful, wasn't it? And the ball went touch and goal IIRC!
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Yep. Very poor.

An Argentina win tonight will give the Sth a clean sweep for the weekend. A bit of pressure off Deans too with the Wallabies win.
 
France ended up winning pretty convincingly. It's a shame we won't get to see them play the All Blacks this time as they seem to be the best 2 sides right now.

It wouldn't have been a clean sweep though as Ireland hammered Fiji. Not sure what's happened to them in XV's. Was only 2007 when they made the RWC quarter finals and almost beat South Africa.
 
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