I think Tate's absence will be keenly felt. He's gone from strength to strength. His 60 minute feature on the wing in Lions 2 was incredible.
I don't know.....I think we saw again last weekend why he isn't a regular starter. Great footballer, but not that great a nine.
I'm being hypercritical here, but this is the sort of stuff that always happens when Tate starts. If I see it, the coaches do too.
We start the game with one of his poor box kicks that hands the ball straight back off the kick-off well inside Australia's half. We don't touch the ball again before a try.
Then he gets turned over after a half-break - ABs return the ball all the way back and kick the penalty (Tate misses a tackle off the quick tap)
Then just after 10 mins when the ABs go just about the length of the field for the Savea crawling try, Tate misses two tackles on the line. They aren't tackles that a half back would be expected to make necessarily, but still key.
Just after 15 mins, he throws two fairly poor passes pinning the recipient behind the ad-line, then has a snipe that goes nowhere - while he's trapped a the bottom of the ruck McReight steps in and throws a genuinly bad pass of the floor for a knock-on and turnover.
Two minutes later he leaves injured