Haven't seen the replay, and not sure that i'd be too keen to do so, I'll probably give it a go sometime this week. My thoughts/observations from the ground were:
In a surprise move, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) decides to try and pass the ball: 3 times IIRC. No way am I going to drink the overpriced sweet brown liquid sold at the stadium masquerading as Beer to celebrate, so beers had to wait until the return home. He also spilled the pill in contact more times than I can recall. He gets plenty of practice at going to ground with the ball more than most, so it is certainly a surprise to see this AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) doppelganger play. His execution on the whole was poor.
Beale was worser, probably the most worstest of them all. He seemed to be playing as if he was back at SJC1 trying to recreate the razzle dazzle schoolboy rugby that he was able to execute so successfully against 17 and 18 year old kids. The Force, is seems, didn't deserve to be respected as professional sportsmen.
Taqele BigFellaLongName was a passenger at best, and an albatross at worst. He offered little on attack, suffering dropsies like the many of his teammates, and nothing on defence. It probably doesn't help a loig convert that the defensive structures varied significantly according to the phase of play. Plenty of the rugby background folk in Blue seemed confused as to where their designated position was and what role they were to perform.
Foley seemed out of sorts with some very ordinary kicking, and was bullied for time and space by the aggressive Force defence.
Horne was already playing out of position on the wing, but he and Izzy seemed to be all over the show, constantly defending and attacking (yeah right) from random positions, with no one really covering their usual space when they were
As well as almost zero defence in the #14 wing channel, the A and B channel defenders at the breakdowns (some call these the "10" and "20" positions, but I mean the first two blokes next to the breakdown) seemed to be more interested in what the rest of the defence line was doing, rather than driving the Force probes in their channel backwards. The canny Force exploited this weakness time and time again, and the Tah's never seemed to add any starch in this area to try and convince their opponents to try to crack the line elsewhere.
What is it with the inaccurate and poorly thought out kicks? If you can't do a job professionally, then perhaps it is best not to try to do the job at all. Time to hire an Aussie Rules bloke to teach the Tahs kickers how to kick, or not kick at all.
Is Andrew Mehrtens still the Tahs part time "Kicking Coach"? If so, he needs to have his hours increased.
The Tahs set piece seemed to be very effective, with probably 4 tightheads, and 4 lineout wins. Usually a team that can secure 8 set piece turnovers will win a game comfortably. Poor decision making and equally poor execution by the Tahs negated this potentially massive advantage.
Ben Robinson ran into contact too high with poor ball security. For a long term International standard fatty, he sure played some park grade footy in all but the set piece.
Imitating some of his predecessors in Club Wallaby, TGC seemed to be reluctant to use the fresh legs from the bench until it was too late for them to have a genuine impact on the game. While the Tahs lifted in the final 10 minutes of the game, the damage was done and it was a case of too little too late. I was trying to work out what the Tahs game plan was because it seemed to be to complex for this scribe, and more importantly it seemed to be beyond the capacity of Tahs to execute it against a motivated and confident opponent.
Axel Foley seemed to have done his homework on the Tahs, and he prepared his team accordingly and armed them with a simple but effective game plan that they executed well. There wasn't much evidence to suggest that the same was done by the Tahs.
Crowd was a pinch over 20000, but they seemed to make less noise (rated at 120 on the Pfitzometer) than that produced by the smattering of Force Fans who were there (rated at 125 on the Pfitzometer) Couldn't even hear @Pfitzy.
Not all that impressed with the kids who were booing and yelling abuse at the Force Kickers when they lined up shots at goal. Maybe it is the Irish blood in me, but I think that is a little too Aussie Rules-ish behaviour. The kickers are professional enough to block that sort of stuff out anyway so all it does is confirm how poorly these kids have been taught the values and principles of being a good sport. In a Jesuit sense, the die has already been cast for these poor things.
My mob got done like a dogs breakfast, but afternoon footy is still great and arriving home when it is still light is a great bonus.
Best for the Force was Hodgson (Edit to correct typo) McCalman. Would have been Alby M, who played a blinder but he lost out on a recount due to his Yellow Card.
TL;DR:
Tahs were bad, especially Beale, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper), & Naiyaravoro. They had enough opportunities to win the game comfortably but were unable to do so because of poor decision making and execution.
Force were good. They had a simple game plan, which was executed well, proving that they respected their opponents enough to have done some homework on them. They created scoring opportunities through their aggressive defence and attack.
Congratulations to the Force, who were just too good on the day, having out thought and out played the Tahs.
