Another disgraceful Aussie performance. Why do they look so lost when one man goes off.
I lack the size (and fitness these days) but I've got a lot more rugby smarts than most of these guys. If the Crusaders defense was up so fast why no chips or grubbers. They've got to try something different. It's the same ol' plodding stuff each week. Either Wessels is not the man that others have been talking of or these guys are brain-dead. I don't think it's effort as they were obviously trying.
I usually like Ruru but he had a shocker.
Debrezini is soft.
The Fijian wingers were both poor - why do we get the poor ones? (Isi is not a winger!)
Positives (and Yes, I am scraping here) :
The front row stood up against one of the best packs in the comp. except for two slips just before and after halftime (well, compared to last week).
I thought Rangi was good - lots of low tackles and didn't seem to miss many.
Others that stood out amongst the dross - Mafi & Hodge (despite the Yellow).
Even the laziest big man I've seen got through some good charges when he came on.
BTW, why is it that even when NZ teams do things poorly, it always seems to come off. I don't have the skills to go back through this game, or others that I have watched recently, and make up an example video but I wish I did so I could get my point across better. I have seen quite a few bounce passes from Kiwi teams recently and they always still end up with the ball. If an Aussie guy manages to knock back a kickoff or a bad pass it still goes back to a kiwi player. I could go on but it struck me how well they manage to make a bad situation good. I would even say this includes bounces of the ball. It's almost like a rugby god is looking over them. On the other hand, this never seems to happen to any of the Aussie players or teams.
Is it skill (a lot of it may be but I'm here to say some of it isn't)? Is it just luck (not mathematically possible all the time)? Is it because they work so hard off the ball? Could be part of the reason - but not always...for example there was a point in the game when a pass was a bit high for a back line player and it went straight through his hands. Blow me down, it went straight to the guy outside him. It was definitely not skill as there was no way he meant that...but it still came off. This almost never happens for the Aussies. This is just one example but it seems to happen all the time. What is it???