France v Australia

[Scrubber2050]

I would be surprised if Skelton retains his bench spot. His scrummaging was woeful and should be better. Lots of criticism re Blades but both Horwill and Simmons are very experienced and are the sort of blokes that would be prepared to offer assistance to another player any way they can.

Maybe Jones should get a bench position. He must be raring to go

 

[Braveheart81]

I'll be surprised if a few people who didn't play the Wales test don't get a run against France.

I think Cheika will want to try out a few options to gauge where particular players are at.

My bet is Jones, Robinson, and one of Cooper, To'omua and Speight will come into the 23 this weekend.

It's easy to say that we don't need a 3rd back or a second backrower or whatever on the bench but the reality is that the bench needs to be balanced in case of injury and to be able to finish off games the way the coach wants to.
Having 2 locks on the bench is very unconventional and I am sure there are very good reasons why this is so and why teams go with a 5/3 bench for the vast majority of the time. Fact is we don't have a 15 man bench so we cannot sub out every player at some point.

We got away with the 6:2 bench against Wales, but imagine if we'd had their injury problems (losing Halfpenny and Biggar).

We'd have finished the game with a backline of Genia, Leali'ifano, Tomane, Horne, Kuridrani, Phipps, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper).

Not completely awful, but it's 4 players playing outside of their first choice position and certainly outside of where they would have been regularly training with the Wallabies.

 

[Gnostic]

This is what I fail to understand with this type of coaching critique, any improvement, by any player, appears to be by rule change whilst any lack of improvement is down to the lack of coaching.

It simply can't be both



So what you are saying is that Deans, McKenzie & now Cheika are not reasonable judges of coaching ability

I am not alone in my criticism of Blades, other far more knowledgeable commentators and coaches are offering the same observations.You will see that I never questioned Chieka' or Link's judgement of Blades, I said I suspected he had no choice. So your approach to why so many players fail to achieve improvement in the required technical aspects over such a long period, with
the same flaws evident is they are shit and always were. Great.

 

[Fireworks]

1. Slipper
2. Fainga'a
3. Kepu
4. Simmons
5. Horwill
6. Higgers / Hodgson
7. Hoopers
8. McCalman
9. Phipps
10. Foley
11. AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper)
12. CL
13. Kuridrani
14. Speight
15. Folau

16. Mann-Rea
17. Faulkner
18. Alexander
19. Carter or Skelton
20. McMahon / Hodgson
21. Genia
22. Cooper
23. Horne

 

[Braveheart81]

Who knows whether Blades will survive in the longer term.

When Cheika took over, it always seemed likely that he'd bring along at least one assistant of his own choosing and retain one of the Wallabies assistants.

Given Cheika coached the forwards at the Tahs and his two assistants were Grey and Gibson, it had to be Blades to survived with the Wallabies.

It's possible that some of our players have reached their ceiling as far as improvement goes in the scrum. Kepu has improved greatly in the last couple of years as has Slipper.

Simmons has also improved greatly at scrumtime and has gone from being one of our weakest to close to our best lock in that situation.

It would appear Robinson and Alexander have reached their peak and are either plateauing or on the decline.

You'd hope Skelton has a lot of improvement to make and hopefully a fair bit of that can be achieved quickly. Given his physical advantages and relative inexperience (and subsequent exposure to coaching) you'd figure he just needs to go from being terrible to average to be perfectly serviceable in the scrum at test level.

We need to hope that in 2015 some of the young props like PAE can do so well at Super Rugby that they demand selection in the matchday teams for the Rugby Championship and give themselves a chance of making the RWC squad.

I tend to think that we'll end up taking at least one of Robbo and Alexander to the RWC.

 

[thierry dusautoir]

I think dual in the midfield is going to of particular interest, especially Fofana on Kuridrani

 

[Muglair]

A balanced bench has to be the go. It makes sense and everyone else generally goes with it.

The fact that we are even talking about it comes back to the perceived weakness at lock. A balanced bench works best with a balanced team. An unbalanced bench (2 locks, short back rowers etc) is probably a great indicator of problems with the balance of our starting side ....... at 4/5/6/7/8.

This must be doing the selectors heads in.

 

[Brumbieman]

Phipps
Foley
Speight
Karmichael / Lilo
TK
JOC (James O'Connor)
Izzy


That backline can win the cup.

Uhhhh......



And who's going to give them the fucking front foot ball?


Great backline, but our issues are not there.

 

[Brumbieman]

As much as I agree with the considerable wisdom of Sir Bob of Coogee most of the time, I can't for the life of me understand why he bangs on about TK at 12 so much. Firstly, he's killing it at outside centre and secondly it's not like we don't have some good options at 12. I'm a firm believer in having the rapier and sledgehammer (as it were) combination in the centres. That is, a distributor and a crasher. Now it doesn't matter too much which position either plays in, but I believe you have to have that balance (look at Nonu and Smith as a classic example). If we move TK to 12 then who plays 13? Probably AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) but then I think we've got the balance wrong. No point having a powerful centre combination if the ball never gets past them in attack.

Beiber would be the only right option for 13, if TK moved to 12.


It would be one hell of a centre pairing, tbf.

 

[Scrubber2050]

Who knows whether Blades will survive in the longer term.

When Cheika took over, it always seemed likely that he'd bring along at least one assistant of his own choosing and retain one of the Wallabies assistants.

Given Cheika coached the forwards at the Tahs and his two assistants were Grey and Gibson, it had to be Blades to survived with the Wallabies.

It's possible that some of our players have reached their ceiling as far as improvement goes in the scrum. Kepu has improved greatly in the last couple of years as has Slipper.

Simmons has also improved greatly at scrumtime and has gone from being one of our weakest to close to our best lock in that situation.

It would appear Robinson and Alexander have reached their peak and are either plateauing or on the decline.

You'd hope Skelton has a lot of improvement to make and hopefully a fair bit of that can be achieved quickly. Given his physical advantages and relative inexperience (and subsequent exposure to coaching) you'd figure he just needs to go from being terrible to average to be perfectly serviceable in the scrum at test level.

We need to hope that in 2015 some of the young props like PAE can do so well at Super Rugby that they demand selection in the matchday teams for the Rugby Championship and give themselves a chance of making the RWC squad.

I tend to think that we'll end up taking at least one of Robbo and Alexander to the RWC.

Good post.

Sio will be the cover for Slipper (unless he flips to THP) so Robbo probably will get his last test this year on tour.

THP is slightly different. The only backup seems to be Alexander so I think He will be the reserve THP at RWC. Always plenty of scrum negatives but his workload at tha arse end is generally good. Chek just needs Kepu to be able to go for 75 minutes. There you go, problem solved

 

[FilthRugby]

I'm just looking forward to Saia having another big game.

Hopefully he continues his form of late.

 

[Scrubber2050]

I'm just looking forward to Saia having another big game.

Hopefully he continues his form of late.

Maybe fatherhood has galvanised the bloke.

 

[FilthRugby]

Well, he did mention in his interview yesterday or today, that he missing his family, and understandably so.

I think he really is using it as further motivation to quote - "playing for family makes the gold jumper even more special".

 

[BDA]

Saia walks a fine line between being super effective at the breakdown and getting penalised off the park. He got things right last week, but he cant get sloppy

 

[Dumbledore]

Beiber would be the only right option for 13, if TK moved to 12.


It would be one hell of a centre pairing, tbf.

I'm more than a little firm imagining that tbh

 

[Bobby Sands]

Uhhhh..



And who's going to give them the fucking front foot ball?


Great backline, but our issues are not there.

Such wisdom.

Other than the blokes running out at the moment, I guess you can throw in any of the forwards who are currently injured, who come into form. Maybe some other bolters, that have a big super rugby season. Forward before wide, check, now I remember.

#rugbycliches

Note: of course I know that we need atleast parity in the piggy's, but that doesn't make the posted backline any less relevant. I can't predict how much front foot ball our pack is going to generate in 15 months time.

 

[ACT Crusader]

It's not just the forwards that provide the front foot ball. If you don't have backs that want to hit rucks and secure the ball quick smart then that's a huge issue if you want to play a fast up-tempo game. If backs are constantly 'fanning out' waiting for 1-8 to get there at every collision, then those 1-8 are going to be absolutely spent going into the last quarter of the match.

I watched some of those Irish backs against the Boks and they were superb in that regard.

 

[Scrubber2050]

Such wisdom.

Other than the blokes running out at the moment, I guess you can throw in any of the forwards who are currently injured, who come into form. Maybe some other bolters, that have a big super rugby season. Forward before wide, check, now I remember.

#rugbycliches

Note: of course I know that we need atleast parity in the piggy's, but that doesn't make the posted backline any less relevant. I can't predict how much front foot ball our pack is going to generate in 15 months time.

In respect of our backline i wish I could predict the following:
1. How many tries they will score?
2. How many balls they will drop?
3. How many forward passes they will do?
4. How many shitty grubber or box kicks (although I understand the box lick is
banned )?
5. How many shitty line kicks , in general play or defensively from inside the 22?
6. How many missed tackles or less than dominant tackles are made over the advantage line?
7. How many times will they fail to break the line or at least get over it?

Have I left anything out ?

 

[Viking]

THP is slightly different. The only backup seems to be Alexander so I think He will be the reserve THP at RWC. Always plenty of scrum negatives but his workload at tha arse end is generally good. Chek just needs Kepu to be able to go for 75 minutes. There you go, problem solved

Has Alexanders workload really been that good? I recall some poor performance off the bench this year with very little impact at all. He had a great super rugby season but a poor test one.

Apart from his last Test I don't he has shown a good workrate.

 

[emuarse]

emuarse, I hope that Cheika is persisting with the team he thinks will win and be the core for the RWC, the time for chopping and changing expired a while ago.

I think the time for chopping and changing is always on the board.

Especially when you have players returning from injury such as Ginea, Cooper, and To'omua; but also players like Pocock, Moore, TPN & Higginbotham; not to mention others such as JOC (James O'Connor) and possibly Karmichael Hunt.

Are you suggesting that all these players should be discounted from the RWC?

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Mr Cheika​

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