2012 Rugby Championship Game 1 Australia vs New Zealand - 18 August

Couldn't agree more,
test match rugby is about 1 or 2 chances and being good enough to take them. It's not abut throwing the ball around and playing silly buggers. I'm sure a few old timers like campo and Ella will be claiming it should be, but they would be smashed by modern day defense.

So we should choose a team we THINK might be able to slow/stop the Big Black machine in the Hope they have an off day and maybe we will get lucky?

We should pick our best team.

That team needs to be one that can keep the All Blacks to a low score. The All Blacks scored 27 points on Saturday and history will say that that is too many points for us to win.

We are never going to beat the All Blacks by scoring 4+ tries in a Bledisloe Cup game. It just doesn't happen.

yup but we should also care if we get beaten by 1 and not trot out"gallant wallabies" or "honourable loss"..we used to win just about every game in Sydney and yes against the All Blacks. Why is it now acceptable to get close.home ground is worth 10-15 points so if you lose by 10 then it is the equivalent of a 20 point loss on neutral ground and God only knows what at Eden Park.

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it is acceptable to just get close.

Losing a close game is bitterly disappointing. Of course we are trying to win.

Saying that we should throw caution to the wind and that if we lose by 60 it doesn't really matter is never going to win us the Bledisloe Cup.

In 80 years how often has this approach worked? Bledisloe Cup games are mostly arm wrestles that the side who makes fewer mistakes and takes advantage of their limited opportunities will win.

I can't think of a potential Wobs coach who wouldn't come with some baggage that would undermine any succession plans.

Either they would be:

a. a Foreigner, in which case we would all hate him;

b. "not from [insert state]", in which case it is evidence of a conspiracy against [insert state]; or

c. in the event they come from [insert my state], they would be "from [insert club name] that everyone hates", and evidence of a conspiracy against Coach x from [insert my club's] name.

Xenophobia, interstate and inter club politics, and Tin Foil hat wearers will stuff it up for us.

We should think National, State, then Club to make progress. Unfortunately too many of us think in Club, then State priorities with the National considerations only arising for the absolute superstars, who are tolerated because their presence makes our own state and club players look better.

You would think you would look at the All Blacks backline and say, shit, that is a pretty good backline, we are not likely to keep that to 0 tries in a game, particularly assuming our forwards are mediocre. Not like other than the centres the rest of it is poor.

We therefore need to pick a backline that is able to score a couple of tries itself. Not saying put in some dud defenders. But surely we can find a couple of centres who can make a decent attempt at a tackle, and be able to hit a gap, put on a step AND pass the ball to the wingers or fullback, particularly given that they are our real weapons (Ioane and Beale (Beale's shocking game aside). Barnes isn't a dominant tackler, but not sure he does that much worse a job in defence than Faingaa, who scythes the legs as well. Except that Barnes can also pass, kick and run into a gap. And Cooper is pretty good under the high ball but would still prefer to see a winger with some toe. Someone who if you put him into a gap is going to be very difficult to run down. AAC would look far better at 13.

Of course, all this is just deck chairs on the Titanic until we find some forwards with some mongrel, drive and fitness to win the breakdown.

1 TRIES 2
1 from 1 CONVERSIONS 1 from 2
4 from 4 PENALTY GOALS 5 from 6
100% GOAL % 75%
0 DROP GOALS 0

POSSESSION
POSSESSION %
60
40
TOTAL PHASES
83
74
PHASE SETS
45
42
7+ PHASES
2
1

ATTACK
92 TOTAL RUNS 65
479 RUN METRES 473
2 LINEBREAKS 6
5 OFFLOADS 8
9 HANDLING ERRORS 11
18 TURNOVERS 16
73 RUCK AND MAULS 48

SETPIECES
3 SCRUM WINS 8
0 TIGHT HEAD WINS 0
13/0 LINEOUTS (OWN/OPP) 14/1
0 LO NOT STRAIGHT 0

DISCIPLINE
21 MISSED TACKLES 15
13 LONG ARM PENALTIES 14
0 SHORT ARM PENALTIES 0
0 YELLOW CARDS 0
0 RED CARDS 0
Bring Back Cooper..Line breaks/offloads dont pan Barnes he's just in the wrong position. 21/82 missed tackles.uugghhh..60% of possession at home..more phases,more runs no tight heads,no line out losses..bring him back..puuulleeeaasse

My issue is not so much how much we lose by, but how we lost the game.

If we lost by 60 but had been showing signs of improvement over recent performances, I could handle that.

If we keep losing by 7 or less and show the same lack of imagination in our game plan, no improvement in our skills and never try something new . that's when I fuckin lose the plot!

I agree. They should be more
Pissed Off with themselves after a loss like that. Be good sportsmen, but you just feel like they weren't hungry to win and weren't at all surprised or disappointed to lose. They looked mostly happily relieved that they somehow stayed in touch and weren't flogged.

I actually said to the Missus b4 the game " I think we will loose by 10 but I also think we have the team to beat the all blacks. They just aren't on the paddock"

. I mean come on No joc would surly mean we need a player like quade in the team.

Has anyone complained about the last turnover? It was one of the worst not releasing the ball as a defender I have seen this year. Any other day that's a penalty to the wobs. That Irish doofas stuffed that up. Can't wait for gagr to do a video on all the crap that went on with Richey. The mans offside 80% of the time or obstructing players.

It's a part of the game now.

Anyway I would struggle to see us winning next week in Auckland , especially with no pocock. That's another thing. We lost by 8 ( realistically 5) With pocock having done knee damage and only playing at 50%

We lost that game because we just couldn't get over the advantage line. No Horwill or Palu or Moore (at the start) in the forwards and no McCabe in the backs. Say what you like about McCabe but he runs hard and fast. Really, if it wasn't for Sharpe and Diggers we would have been completely fucked.

We do miss JOC in that regard as well. For all that he is small, he always seems to get over the advantage line. Good footwork I guess, like Ioane.

I just got back from Sydney, and thought that like comments above, a group of NZ boys that we had a beer with last night said how much they had enjoyed meeting and having a few beers a few wallabies in Coojee pub, thought perhaps they might of been starting to work out how to fix things next week. Also we wondered if Robbie would admit that maybe he was wrong in not picking QC and bring him in or be more worried that if he did it could be an admission that he made a mistake. Actually haven't seen replay or anything as yet, but before I do a few things that sprung to mind over test (that may get changed when seeing replay), was 1. Genia , was there a reason he took so long to clear ball from rucks, was it his fault or fact that nobody made themselves available to take ball? 2. Poey got penalised quite a bit (and warned a fair bit), but a few of these times were just simply because he was playing the Lone Ranger without a lot of support. 3.And as a AB supporter, I never really worried during game , as I felt although ABs were playing quite poorly I seldom saw Wallabies do anything that looked like they were going to really hurt a defensive structure overly.
Apart from that I don't think I would rush back to a Sydney test, really is quite a poor stadium for rugby viewing, but perhaps I been a bit spoiled by Suncorp etc.

The player apparently didn't go to ground so it was still a contest to rip the ball free, which was what happened.

check a replay and look only for what Higginbotham and Slipper did, instead of only focussing on the best player on the paddock once again.

If you can find anything that Higgers did (other than dropping the ball) well done.

Shit this made me laugh...clicking 'Like' just wasn't enough

I think it is a little unfair to single Higgers out and make him the scapegoat.

There was plenty of others in Gold who didn't man up on Saturday night.

I only singled him out because he was the subject of the post. Wallabies highlights reel would be pretty short viewing.