Re: Allan Lewis strikes again
Virgil said:
So hows the loss and Dean in particular being taken back home?
Given this is not a rugby-centric country it barely raised a blip on the sporting community as a whole. The cricket season has started, the AFL draft was on - and the leaguies are still in shock from losing the LWC to NZ.
I thought it was a great result (the LWC) though I never wish that my country loses to anybody in any sport - but if it has to be to somebody, let it be the Kiwis (unless it's rugby union of course) - and in cricket I had to give India a big pat on the back for being too good for our spoilt brat team. It was a good result for world cricket and I suspect it will do us no harm in preparing for SA and the Ashes tour later on.
But I digress.
As for the referee - I thought he was a lot worse in Hong Kong where he was literally appalling, but Wales were the better team on the night and deserved to win.
I thought Wales were a great chance to knock us over as we had been lucky the week before in Paris, and they had played well despite losing to the Boks and Blacks. Of all the Euro sides, and probably of all top rugby nations, they were the team with fewest new players post RWC.
Oz had chances to score tries in the second half. Their try late in the game indicated how they should have played with good possession in the 2nd half but they persevered with pick and drives at the money end of the field instead and surrendered the ball as they have so often this year. Yet they seemed surprised.
The referee had nothing to do with that nor with a host of other deficiencies. Add in Mortlock's early injury which was more detrimental to us that any during or pre-match to our opponents, and things didn't look good. That injury knocked the stuffing out of us for quite some time.
It does not stop one from thinking "what-if" the ref did this or that, especially the card to Moore yet none given to Ryan Jones for a similar incident, but these miss the point that Oz could have scored more points and should have covered the breaks that Wales made, but they weren't good enough to do either.
The assessment on Deans will be quite good. I'd give him a B- but not a B+. He gets a big tick for introducing a lot of new players. Most teams do this post RWC but we thought that some of the players he picked for the various squads during the year weren't good enough, at least I didn't, but they all showed promise.
He doesn't get a tick for our good showing against the All Blacks (though we lost 3 tests to 1), because we were just as good against them with Knuckles. But he does get a tick for our win in Durban.
His biggest black mark was not fixing the bane of Knuckles Connelly - consistent inconsistency. For Connolly the tame game against the Poms in the last RWC was inexplicable as they weren't that good IMO - full marks for their improvement during the RWC and all that but we knew them well and still we didn't front up.
This year the Wallabies won against the All Blacks in Sydney but followed that with a flat losing display in Auckland the following weekend. Likewise a win in Durban was followed by our being thrashed in JHB. Yarda, yarda.
The other big negative was a lack of skill shown by the backs. Sure, the players available in the S14 don't compare with those of prior years in their ability to pass the ball accurately both ways at speed, to add value to the players inside and outside of them by using the ball better, nor are many of them elite kickers of the ball either for distance or to create attacking chances, but one didn't see the improvement during the year that one expected.
He gets a bigger tick in the forwards though one thinks that much of it is attributable to forwards coach Foley.
Usually they were diligent in the physical contests, choosing when to compete and when not to, but they didn't have the weight of participation that the All Blacks have and indeed Wales had, in those contests where counter rucking was on the cards. Nor was defence against weighty counter rucking big enough or timely enough as it should have been. They didn't shift opponents enough; literally.
I'm still not on the Deans band wagon, but I hope that I have reason to change that next year.
