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I agree that they might have had a chance if they tried to push past the people standing in their way instead of trying to draw attention to the obstruction but it still wouldn't been hard to get there with a couple large players in the way. Then there's the risk that the obstruction goes unnoticed.
Was about to go to bed, the ref is making the game hard to watch. Then they had to go and score that and keep me watching... Still dirty on the obstruction try, blockers really get my goat.
almost muffed by holding on to the ball as usual with an unmarked folau a metre to his right! It was good to watch but it didn't give me confidence in TK or cement his place in the team in my eyes, but maybe a daytime viewing will convince me otherwise.
Agree about the penalties - the offside blocking/running off the ball at most kickoffs (or the blocking on Hodge pointed out at the start of the match on a Scotland break) has more of an impact than an obstruction like that. They are just ignored though.
Some decent footage of his rugby gameplay at Biarritz here (skip to 1:50):
Looks promising though I was surprised to see that it was uploaded 4 years ago! It's hard to judge what he would be like now from those few clips.
I think another one from tonights game was Tomane - he did enough to remind us that he has held the gold jersey before! Something to think about when picking wingers.
Judging by comments here and in the news threads I seem to be the only one who thinks Douglas is doing very well and contributing a lot. Does anyone care to enlighten me?
I think what holds those guys back is foot speed and agility. Being a fan of both codes and having seen a lot of all of those mentioned players I'd have to guess that Burgess is quite a bit quicker than that lot. Also I imagine their thinking is that being from league he is probably a little...
No one has the same offloading capabilities as SBW, but Burgess' offload is definitely passable and will be at least on par with other rugby centres. His foot speed and footwork are also JUST OK for a centre position in my opinion. He's going to be a lot bigger and stronger than any other centre...