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You omitted the ability to kick. I grew up in an era when kicking was the bugbear of the game. Today not being able to kick is the bugbear.

The selection of Petaia at 13 is the most radical I can think of since the infamous day that Reg Smith, a fairly good second rower was selected at prop against the Springboks. He had never played one game at prop at senior level. It reminds me of an article I read in "Harvard Business...

It might be a red herring, I suppose. It would throw Eddie Eyebrows into a bit of a spin for sure.

Smells of desperation. But that is appropriate, because we are desperate.

Emigration from places like Tonga is driven by economic necessity. There is very little local employment, and any family of commoners who does not have at least one member working overseas is living in poverty.

If Kerevi and the whole team are not due a blinder it will be the last game for quite a few of them, in national colours. That should be pretty good motivation, I would have thought.

We had a huge explosion in interest during our World Cup. How is the game doing here now? Is there any reason to believe that things will be different in Japan?

Hugh Roach playing pretty well at Tasman, apparently.

I was really impressed with Cron's coaching at the club level. He turned Norths around pretty spectacularly, I thought.

Did we have any bigger forwards knocking the door down? Hard to think of any, offhand.

Great news. Carn the Brave Blossoms. (What a wonderful name!)

And even then we still won't be sure.

Overhead camera angles from directly above the action would solve all our problems I suppose. One day. It would certainly help in understanding what on earth is happening in the scrums.

It is impossible to adjudicate offside from the armchair at home.

The ratings are not just about numbers, the demographics are important, too. I would hope that the rugby audience is pretty attractive to blue chip advertisers.

Yep, it looks to me as though Poey might just have had his day, and a wonderful day it was. Petaia looks really good, but unless and until he gets through a whole match without injury he has to be considered too much of a risk in a must win game. So my hope is that he does get a whole game...

Are you saying that sometimes the lesson is that there is no lesson?

Eddie Jones is reportedly going to make a lightning trip back for Jeff Sayle's funeral. That would be a remarkable gesture on the eve of a crucial game for England.

My only hope is that we can keep these young guns in our game, and on our shores. Is that too much to hope for?

I grew up in an era when Randwick were really dominant, and also when they were a beacon of attacking rugby. No kicking, as a matter of principal. Great memories, sometimes painful in terms of win/loss ratios, but kudos to the club, and Jeff Sayle will be remembered as a stalwart for a long...