I do wonder what else some want from To'omua
He tackles strongly
Takes the ball up directly
He can step into the 10 roll when Foley takes on the defence, he isn't selfish
Got out of jail? We bombed something like 2 certain tries as well as a few other opportunities. That's before we even consider where their prop was penalized for coming in from the side of a maul marching forward 5m out probably should have conceded either a penalty try or more likely yellow card.
How many times did the Puma's even have the ball inside our 22?
We might not have capitalized on all of our opportunities but we certainly didn't "get out of jail". It would have been one of the all time lucky wins if Argentina won.
His distribution has been poor. Something that was the highlight of his super rugby season. I am confident he is a superb distributor some of his short balls in the past 2 years have been world-class. He is a great play-maker at super rugby level but hasn't been able to translate this to Test level.
So in a way he is in poor form with poor passes. I think this is mainly due to him adapting to the position.
IMO he just needs time to adapt, I'd like to see him hitting the ball at pace a lot more and I'd like to see his distribution get back to being great. Need a bit more balance in his game. Defence has always been good.
Instead we came close to a draw. It's games like that we expect to put the knife-in and be ruthless. We dominated possession for large parts but some-how was unable to translate that into tries.
the world is full of 12s who aren't great at distribution, and he isn't too bad.
I just think we can be a bit glass half full at times, in reality we have no one better and his strengths out way his weaknesses.
Well people need to get some realistic expectations Seb.
In 2013 we won this fixture 14-13. In 2012 we won it 23-19.
This year the Puma's have continued to push the Springboks and the All Blacks. If anybody expected a thrashing I'd love to know where they expected it from.
9 & 10 won't change, but as much as this will get shot down there is a case to start Beale over To'omua..this is more to do with the latter's lack of form..he was pretty good against the Boks but aside from that has had a pretty quiet test season and not really fulfilling the role of second playmaker..and it worked for the Tahs so why not? Don't shoot the messenger..
30/11/13 Australia 30 – Wales 26
23/11/13 – Australia 21 – Scotland 15
Just for reference, our last year of fixtures has been:
13/9/14 – Australia 32 – Argentina 25
6/9/14 – Australia 24 – South Africa 23
23/8/14 – New Zealand 51 – Australia 20
16/8/14 – Australia 12 – New Zealand 12
21/6/14 – Australia 39 – France 13
14/6/14 – Australia 6 – France 0
7/6/14 – Australia 50 – France 23
30/11/13 Australia 30 – Wales 26
23/11/13 – Australia 21 – Scotland 15
16/11/13 – Australia 32 – Ireland 15
9/11/13 – Australia 50 – Italy 20
2/11/13 – England 20 – Australia 13
19/10/13 – New Zealand 41 – Australia 33
5/10/13 – Australia 54 – Argentina 17
28/9/13 – South Africa 28 – Australia 8
4 of those 15 games have been wins by 20 points or greater. 6 of those games have been against teams ranked higher than us at the time (NZ, SA and Eng). That leaves 5 closer wins against lower ranked teams. One was an easy victory against Ireland, so that leaves 4 actual tight results. One was the weekend which Argentina were 7 points down, but never really accumulated pressure and challenged. One was part of a 3 test series where we dished out hidings on either side, and the other two were away games on a 4 week tour.
Until Beale can defend and take contact to a level that 90% of regular Super Rugby players can, the Wallabies will be better off when they have no need for him in a team. He will always be a risk in defensive and a risk in contact the way he currently performs. Flyhalf was the best position to minimize those risks and he struggled to have an impact there.