Bledisloe #1 - AUS v NZL, ANZ Stadium, Sydney, August 8th

[Floggn']

I haven't read anything that suggests the injury happened in the last game. For all we know, the injury could be FIFA related as all the boys had the weekend off.

Nah I saw it when it happened it was early in the first half you can see him holding his wrist around the 16 minute mark. Pretty good effort really to continue for another 60 or so minutes.

 

[Floggn']

1. Slipper
2. Moore
3. Kepu
4. Skelton
5. Horwill
6. Fardy
7. Pocock
8. McCalman
9. Phipps
10. Cooper
11. Tomane
12. To'omua
13. Kuridrani
14. AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper)
15. Folau

16. TPN
17. Sio
18. Holmes
19. Mumm
20. Hooper
21. White
22. Foley
23. Beale/Mitchell

Sio will be 1. Holmes will be 3 and Foley will be 10 with Gits at 12. Fardy calling the lineouts.

 

[Viking]

Sio will be 1. Holmes will be 3 and Foley will be 10 with Gits at 12. Fardy calling the lineouts.

Nah Sio, Moore, Kepu should be our front row. Cooper and To'omua the halves.

 

[Floggn']

Put a tenner on it? I don't disagree with all those but that will be the front row.

 

[Gnostic]

It's too late to bring in a specialist. Way too late to reconstruct or rebuild a kicking style before the World Cup. Going to be a matter of discipline, routine, and hope for the best from here.

I fully agree, but what an astute technical coach can do is fix issues of consistency with a a kicker who already has a solid base on which to work. Foley, Cooper, Lilo and To'omua all have a solid base on which to work. Foley's action against Argentina was terrible and you could see that each kick was going to miss from how he set up and his action through to the kick. Yet previously he has been average to good in comparison to the other Australian kickers.

Better late than never, but I do despair that it has taken nearly 10 years to realise something that we at fan level have been harping on about since the mid 2000s.

 

[Gillys_ghost]

if Slippers shoulder injuries are impacting his performances as much as they clearly are hes going to need to have an extended break and bring in Sio. Slipper is definitely the best loosehead in the country when fit, probably one of the best in the world at his best, but his past 2 performances are ones of a extremely worn out and broken man. rest him till the World cup, then if its not much better, book him in for surgery and as crappy as it would be for poor slips, he has to miss out on the RWC. fortunately for him he should be around for the next 2 possibly, and would have over 100 caps by the next one i think.

 

[Gnostic]

I don't think we have much of a choice but to do just that. As DD has said above, it's too late now to contemplate any other options.

Having said that, I do think that it is unfair to put the responsibility of teaching how to kick on the Wallaby coaching set-up. Sure, we need to have someone who can review and finesse, but you would hope that a kicker would have a bit of a clue before he got to pull on a Gold jersey. The work needs to be done by the bloke with the boot, and he needs to know that and not wait to be told to train.

I am reminded somewhat of our old nemesis J. Wilkinson, and how he was at training 2 hours early and still there 2 hours afterwards every day, just banging them over like a metronome.

The adage of "practice makes perfect" may apply here. I don't know how many hours a day our specialist kickers practice, but from recent results, I'd suggest they ring their old club coach to meet them down at the local oval and double their workload.

It would be sensible to ape the world's best side to a large degree when trying to at least match their consistent performance. Yes the players take responsibility, but the specialist coaches are there to ensure that they have the necessary critique and technical input.

As a manager I would take that set up as the blueprint to achieve the highest outcomes, and then I would be looking for the 1% improvements to that system to outperform. The hodge podge of coaching that has been the Wallabies since Macqueen, with few real technical specialists in kicking and set piece has led directly to the decline in those areas of performance IMO. The Wallabies set the platform that most Super coaches have tended to follow do not forget, so saying that a kicking coach is redundant by the time a player reaches that level is a spurious argument when the Super coaches have tended to follow suit and dropped the same technical coaches from the roster.

As I have been saying for years I would like to have seen a long time ago, a scrum coach working with all packs in Australia on a consultancy basis, available right to junior levels. Likewise a kicking coach, from the tee and from hand.

 

[qwerty51]

The talk of resting Slipper is stupid. He had a big break after the Reds season. He clearly isn't in need of rest to fix his shoulder, they're fucked and booked for surgery already. How is resting going to suddenly help?

If his form doesn't improve he should just get the surgery now.

 

[Gillys_ghost]

if its serious enough that more rest wont help then i agree, book him for surgery now. if they are fucked then he shouldnt be playing, especially when his replacement is more then up to the challenge.

 

[Dumbledore]

I fully agree, but what an astute technical coach can do is fix issues of consistency with a a kicker who already has a solid base on which to work. Foley, Cooper, Lilo and To'omua all have a solid base on which to work. Foley's action against Argentina was terrible and you could see that each kick was going to miss from how he set up and his action through to the kick. Yet previously he has been average to good in comparison to the other Australian kickers.

Better late than never, but I do despair that it has taken nearly 10 years to realise something that we at fan level have been harping on about since the mid 2000s.

I'm not sure his set up was bad, but he seemed to be getting his planting foot wrong and getting cramped for space. He's got a very wonky kicking style to begin with if we're being real. Those little chip kicks have such a high variance, and can go wrong so easily, that it's amazing it's been allowed to get this far.

What's needed is a national kicking coach who can be made available to all Soup/NRC teams throughout the year, as well as club teams when he/she is in town, while also working to establish a set of guidelines/best practice to be followed for promising junior players starting to come through the ranks.

 

[Quick Hands]

Simmons will be a big loss - wrist surgery.

Hooper cleared to play

 

[Sully]

Anyone who thinks Slipper isn't still our best loosehead needs to go back and look at the last tests scrums in slowmo. This talk of his poor form is bullshit.

 

[Mr Doug]

It's too late to bring in a specialist. Way too late to reconstruct or rebuild a kicking style before the World Cup. Going to be a matter of discipline, routine, and hope for the best from here.

Who was it that said "The first player that you pick in your team is the kicker. The second is your reserve kicker"?!

 

[BDA]

Anyone who thinks Slipper isn't still our best loosehead needs to go back and look at the last tests scrums in slowmo. This talk of his poor form is bullshit.

agree. I rewatched the ARG games last week and Slipper was still pretty decent, although I dont think he's playing as well as he did in 2014.

I think Sio is having a standout season. I wouldn't mind seeing him start against the All Blacks, but definitely would be playing Slipper somewhere in the 23. Again people keep talking about saving our players for the bigger games this season, but they don't get any bigger than playing the All Blacks at home for the Rugby Championship.

 

[BDA]

Who was it that said "The first player that you pick in your team is the kicker. The second is your reserve kicker"?!

would have been some pom

 

[Highlander35]

Yeah, the french would have said Tighthead and reserve tighthead.

 

[blindsider]

he is also part of the Tahs coaching staff for next season and was actually a Dan Parks type player; a slow, but pretty smart 10

Yes slow, but I reckon Parks had a better all round kicking game and a much better place kicker. But I'm sure there's a method to Cheikas madness, good luck to Malone, what a cruisey gig.



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[blindsider]

Simmons will be a big loss - wrist surgery.

Hopefully not by this bloke

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[jamey jones]

1. Sio
2. Moore
3. Kepu
4. Skelton
5. Horwill
6. Pocock
7. Hooper
8. Palu
9. Phipps
10. Cooper
11. Tomane
12. To'omua
13. Kuindrani
14. AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper)
15. Folau

16. TPN
17. Slipper
18. Holmes
19. Mumm
20. Fardy
21. Giteau
22. Speight
23. White but do not put him on the field!!!!!

 

[Fireworks]

4. Skelton
5. Horwill
6. Pocock
7. Hooper
8. Palu

Lineout nightmare.