Annywayyy..... back on track. Here's my random thoughts:
Much better second half, but man it pisses me off that the final win was only by 1 - credit where it's due to rugby's cancer though (English media) as none of them are claiming that was reflective of the game. Which is nice, for once.
Ben Smith had a screamer, Dane Coles stepped it up, Richie missed a tackle, but if that's all you saw him do, then rugby's not your game. His work rate is totally off the charts, rumours of his demise have been somewhat exaggerated.
I think we would have lost if Ben Smith hadn't caught Tuilagi and turned the ball over. 17-3 at half time is very very different from 10-6.
I am fucking SICK of seeing opposition players in our backline. I'm not saying their offside or whinging at refs or anything, but every game this year I've seen NZ teams play, backline moves are eliminated as there is an opposition defender ready there for the intercept. We never seem to be able to take advantage of this by exploiting the holes that this naturally should create and it's pissing me off. In the first half, England backs get the ball, they would make 20-30 metres by spinning it due to our sliding defence. We'd make nothing as we'd have to rumble it up into forwards (Poms were committing so few people to rucks) as anytime we'd look to spin their would be a fucking white shirt in the way. NZ super teams & now the AB's need to learn how to exploit this.
I see some folks (including Keith Quinn) think NZ got rub of the green big time on the ref calls again. WTF ever. I don't care bout the held up try much, but the ruck before that was a fucking joke. Ball rolls out to nobody, AB's rush forward, ref calls no, hand from guy on the deck pulls it back in - all right in front of Peyper??? WTF??? The early team warning was what it was, but still not sure what Peyper saw for 2 of those penalties... If 2 guys charge forwards out of a maul clearing people out the way, shouldn't that be penalty to Black? Whitelocks was dubious at best. I get a headache trying to understand the rules these days.
Anyway, got the win and for 20 minutes we were back. I'll take it. No Conrad this week, so that could get bloody interesting of the Poms put Tuilagi back in his rightful spot. Although assume Fekitoa starts... this could be something special - in both meanings of the word.
Oh, and the streaker should have been tackled harder. If it hurt him, that's his problem.
