On that, how come our players seem to get isolated so much? I was watching the Wales v Argentina game after ours in the hope of finding some sort of silver lining, Wales could be the Wallabies a lot of the time if you were colour blind, but as bad as they are even their players manage to not get isolated like ours do.
Schmidt himself said if it was a must win test they both probably would have played
The biggest issue in my opinion is the amount and intensity these guys are made to train at. This fascination with a "test match Tuesday" where they bash the crap out of the players is well overused in my opinion. If load is such a factor they should be prioritizing the games over trainings like the NFL does
1/ Your 10 is a dwarf
As usual, the likes of Skelton will test these guidelines out the most. No way will his club let him have an additional well off after the test windows.
Yes but I’m not referring only to lynagh, Potter got isolated badly on the weekend at least once and our big ball runners often manage it as well
By my count, the cleaners missed their cue for at least 10 breakdowns against Italy - there were a half dozen in the last 15 mins alone. We can't even blame fatigue - a lot of them were replacements who hadn't been on long.
Good insight but I guess leaves me none the wiser for my initial query - if it's not fatigue, and it's a core responsibility of these guys that they presumably have been practicing since the U13's, then why is it happening? (or not happening as the case may be).
Hopefully Carter to start & O'Connor on the bench then
I don't think we know enough about the team structure, or each player's role within that to say what's happening, especially with the limited camera angles we have available to us.
Yeah, one of my bugbears is the lack of work off the ball in Aus rugby, a good chase does the isolation, but units working hard to get back provide support makes that chase more risky
Honestly I don't think the players know enough about the team structure at times. Players going by themselves, other players standing off when they are closest to the ruck. It's really on the game drivers at 9, 10 to organize this. There doesn't seem to be a plan after 3 or so phases so it's really hard to just expect players to be right where they need to be to clean. The communication doesn't seem to be there. It's an area I think we clearly miss Nic White in
And other than pride, does it really matter? 7th may as well be 8th or 12th?
It doesn't matter at all in our case as we know we are going to be in Pool A with one team ranked above us and 2 teams ranked below us. And unless that team ranked above us is South Africa or NZ the pool could have been exactly the same even if we did finish up in the Top 6, depending on further results over the next 2 weeks of course.