Geekzone Rugby (Union) Discussion Thread

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Networkn
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#3148063 16-Oct-2023 12:14

Sam Cane really should have been man of the match, his performance was equal to Ardies, he was a monster. I wouldn't have wanted him to not be on the field.

I hope as he shook hands with Peter O'Mahony he winked, and said, not THAT shit, huh? :)

Handle9

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#3148289 17-Oct-2023 00:47

I’m sitting in the lounge waiting for my delayed flight home to Dubai (via Istanbul).

My final reflections from the weekend before I exit the thread again.

• Dupont is a wizard. Watching him in person is amazing. If you ever get a chance go and watch him live. He has such impact. Truly a great and the best player I watched all weekend.

• Ireland New Zealand was of such an insane standard. I believe that New Zealand had zero knock ons and Ireland fed zero scrums.

• South Africa France was chaos personified. France looked so good with the ball but kept screwing up their clean outs and making mistakes. South Africa was able to create chaos and bring their broken field runners into play.

• Libbok is a special, special player. He’s the next great flyhalf. Watching him in warmups you see how amazing his hands are. Pollard looked hopeless compared to him. Once he gets his goal kicking in order he’ll dominate games.

• If you ever get a chance to go to Stade de France get amongst it. It’s an amazing stadium. There isn’t a bad seat in the house. The noise was insane, I was croaky as hell after both games.

• The supporters have all been amazing. Kiwis, South Africans, Irish, French, it’s been a blast at the fan village. We had a beer before the game yesterday with a German guy who played club rugby over there. We had so many conversations like that over the weekend.

This trip cost a bit of money but it was worth every dollar.

Handle9

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#3148290 17-Oct-2023 00:48

networkn:
Handle9: I’m dropping in for a special guest report from Paris.

Paris is buzzing with heaps of Irish supporters but also plenty of kiwis and Boks. It’s going to be quite cool tonight, it’s down to 15 degrees and still 6 hours to kick off. It’s literally 10 degrees cooler than the same time yesterday.

It’s going to be a great night, regardless of the result.

I am super jealous. It was my dream to come to France for the RWC, unfortunately, it didn't work out. This is the game I would have most wanted to attend, along with SA/Ireland. I can only imagine the atmosphere.

I'll need to settle for Australia in 2027 by the looks.

Sounds like it was a blast, congrats.

Australia will be good but this was special. The spirit at the ground, and total abscence of agro was so great. I couldn’t be happier.

invisibleman18

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#3148365 17-Oct-2023 11:10

Nice. Have been to games at some of the recent World Cups in NZ (rugby, cricket, women's football, U20 football), but as an England fan they mostly haven't been great fun. My dream to go an overseas football World Cup or Olympics one day.

How did you find the area around Stade de France? Have heard anecdotally that it's pretty rough (full of pick pockets etc) and I know there was a lot of trouble outside before the Champions League final a couple of years ago that delayed the start of the game. No issue this time? I guess security would have been pretty tight being a global event.

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#3148369 17-Oct-2023 11:18

networkn:

Sam Cane really should have been man of the match, his performance was equal to Ardies, he was a monster. I wouldn't have wanted him to not be on the field.

I hope as he shook hands with Peter O'Mahony he winked, and said, not THAT shit, huh? :)

"Cheers POM, it's okay to be a sh!t Sam Cane"

Agree he should have been MOM.

GV27

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#3148385 17-Oct-2023 12:31

Weirdly most of the negative opinions on Sam Cane I'd heard prior to this World Cup had been more from a CTE/neck injury risk and not anything of the sort to do with talent or form.

I mean... has that ever really been in doubt?

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networkn

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#3148397 17-Oct-2023 13:01

GV27:

Weirdly most of the negative opinions on Sam Cane I'd heard prior to this World Cup had been more from a CTE/neck injury risk and not anything of the sort to do with talent or form.

I mean... has that ever really been in doubt?

Honestly!? Social media has been rabid in their criticism of him. Calling for his removal as captain, removal from the team, removal of his head (yes, seriously). It's been fairly constant.

It's less so last couple of months.

Part of the problem is that 'casual' fans don't understand and don't really notice his value, because he does less with ball in hand, unlike Ardie. Ardie couldn't do Ardie without someone like Cane doing Sam Cane things.

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#3148422 17-Oct-2023 14:05

No its just you are ignoring form over the last 4 years! I dont disagree he had a great game, as he has done before. He has lacked consistency, and may be due to injury, but when someone else is knocking on the door you better be damn good.

Remember Ardie was a number 7, and thats who Sam was competing with until Foster turned him into a number 8. Much of this mentality is why I will be glad to see the end of the Foster era. We have a 10 at 15, a 15 at wing, 2x wings/Full backs at center. A 7 converted to an 8, and an arguably more consistent 7 on the bench. We let talented players leave in said center positions because we for some bizarre reason backed a code swap that was yet another failure. Lets not get into how half way through his tenure he needed to sack most of his assistant coaching staff..

And the truths of this approach have been some pretty terrible statistics and 'firsts' for an AB team. Come Saturday I hope we havent forgotten who won in Christchurch last year.

The good news is Cane just needs to play like he did two more times and he will be remembered for being World Cup winning captain.

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#3148437 17-Oct-2023 15:02

We seem to be very high at the moment but let me say that last weekend would mean very little if the ABs dwell too much on what happened last week.

The work is not done, it has barely begun.

Hope they have another gear or two in them.

networkn

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#3148454 17-Oct-2023 15:28

itxtme:

No its just you are ignoring form over the last 4 years! I dont disagree he had a great game, as he has done before. He has lacked consistency, and may be due to injury, but when someone else is knocking on the door you better be damn good.

His stats are consistently amongst the highest in most of the time to ruck, clean out, dominant tackle, first to ruck stats etc. It's not flashy, it's not noticeable unless you are looking for it, but it's how you give your team the best chance for front foot ball or, chance to repel attacks. His strengths are what he does without the ball.

He is and has mostly been mr dependable, He is level headed, and calm under pressure. I thought Whitelock was a better candidate for captain, but I am not unhappy with Cane as captain.

Remember Ardie was a number 7, and thats who Sam was competing with until Foster turned him into a number 8. Much of this mentality is why I will be glad to see the end of the Foster era. We have a 10 at 15, a 15 at wing, 2x wings/Full backs at center. A 7 converted to an 8, and an arguably more consistent 7 on the bench. We let talented players leave in said center positions because we for some bizarre reason backed a code swap that was yet another failure. Lets not get into how half way through his tenure he needed to sack most of his assistant coaching staff..

And the truths of this approach have been some pretty terrible statistics and 'firsts' for an AB team. Come Saturday I hope we havent forgotten who won in Christchurch last year.

The good news is Cane just needs to play like he did two more times and he will be remembered for being World Cup winning captain.

Well, to be fair, Ardie has been an exceptional number 8. Better than anyone else we have tried there. He and Cane work extremely well together. It was 100% the right decision to convert him. BB couldn't be in the team if not at 15, or he would be on the bench. RM is a far better 10 now that BB would be. Papa'ili has been very average from the bench for the AB's in my opinion.

He needed to sack his assistants, because they didn't perform, as is clearly evidenced by how much better we are since they were replaced. They weren't his first choice and he was probably on reflection, too generous in allowing them to stay at the end of 2021. Having said that, loyalty in the AB's has paid off, look at Nonu and Reiko Ioane.

Fosters internal reviews have been overwhelmingly positive and the players will go to the mat for him, as they did in SA, when he was facing the sack.

Foster inherited a team in decline, had a very rough period to deal with in Covid, which affected our development cycle considerably.

He has had a lot more to deal with than your average AB's coach of the last 30 years, and yet here we are, at a Semi Final, having won one of the most titanic battles ever faced by the AB's, when most unhinged fans were stupidly predicting we wouldn't get out of the pool stages.

Handle9

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#3148510 17-Oct-2023 18:36

invisibleman18:
Nice. Have been to games at some of the recent World Cups in NZ (rugby, cricket, women's football, U20 football), but as an England fan they mostly haven't been great fun. My dream to go an overseas football World Cup or Olympics one day.

How did you find the area around Stade de France? Have heard anecdotally that it's pretty rough (full of pick pockets etc) and I know there was a lot of trouble outside before the Champions League final a couple of years ago that delayed the start of the game. No issue this time? I guess security would have been pretty tight being a global event.

It’s not a flash area but there were zero problems. We watched the early games at the fan zone near the basilica and it was great. Beer was really reasonable (€5 in the fan zone, €8 at the ground). It’s got decent access with a metro station and they had empty trains every 2 minutes after the game.

We stayed in a not flash area 3 stops away which was also fine and great as it was 15 minutes from getting to the metro to getting home. The games are 9pm so you need to consider that.

Security was tight, especially as France has a terror alert after the Arras beheading but not intrusive. You can’t really compare football crowds with rugby crowds, they are very different. I saw no agro all weekend.

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#3148778 18-Oct-2023 12:56

Its looking like either way its us or Sa to be first to 4 WC's. Master coaching by Fozzie, dropping us to the worst in our history, just to put us under the radar for this WC ;-p.

I felt so sorry for France, imo they were the better team, certainly more attractive football. But they squandered 3-4 solid chances at it. It felt like Sa and France swapped hemispheres in style of play. I hope the ab's have a set plan for the non stop up and unders.

Both or either team could trip up however, as unlikely as it seems.

Pacific nations have represented with pride, Samoa only losing by one pt to Eng, then Fiji by 6 in a QF. Portugal and Georgia had some good results too in the grand scheme of things. Its been a very healthy RWC for the sport.

networkn

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#3148851 18-Oct-2023 14:21

Rassie has been pretty badly behaved, but he can be entertaining and there is no doubt he has a very deep understanding of Rugby and is willing to try new things and attempt to innovate. I mean before him, who else had ever put a 1 hour video together criticising a referee and posted it online?

Seriously though, this was worth a watch.

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#3148854 18-Oct-2023 14:27

Richard Knowlers pick for the team to play Argentina on Saturday morning 8am NZT.

Possible All Blacks team to play Argentina: Beauden Barrett, Will Jordan, Rieko Ioane, Jordie Barrett, Leicester Fainga'anuku, Richie Mo'unga, Aaron Smith, Ardie Savea, Sam Cane (captain), Shannon Frizell, Scott Barrett, Brodie Retallick, Tyrel Lomax, Codie Taylor, Ethan de Groot.

Seems pretty likely. There could be temptation to play Whitelock and have Barrett come off the bench and Telea is in the mix so LF may less out. He could potentially be an option to bring off the bench in place of ALB.

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#3150468 20-Oct-2023 12:34

A lot of people seem anxious that NZ is going to take Argentina less than seriously. I'd suggest there is next to zero chance of that. I believe their focus is laser sharp and the memories of overcoming Ireland in 2019 and falling to England, are extremely visceral.

I expect Argentina to really challenge us, we will need to be sharp to beat them.

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