My hair turned grey watching that game.
Our defense was absolutely sensational and our attack exactly the reverse. The lack of composure from Cooper, Genia and, at times, Beale was very disturbing. Equally, though, I thought there could have been some more leadership from Horwill on that front. The forwards weren't really there to take the ball up in tight either -- although, to be fair, they didn't have much opportunity with all the aimless kicking. Pocock was absolutely unbelievable, as were the locks in defense.
McCabe had a cracker. As someone who was sceptical about playing him, I'm happy to see him do so well. Great work to set-up the Horwill try. His tackles were fantastic. However, our defense did not decline at all when Barnes came on -- what we lost in physicality we made up for with organisation. Since Cooper won't be dropped, I'm hoping that McCabe's shoulder gets better. It's almost silly to have a player of Barnes calibre on the bench, but this "soften them up then outsmart them" strategy at 12 worked.
No one is really talking about our scrum, but geez I thought it did well. I think it was only penalised once, and that was on a reset after we were unlucky not to get the free kick. We were also unlucky not to win the feed in the second half when we wheeled their scrum quite effectively. That we got through scrum after scrum in our own half without giving away points was absolutely crucial to the win. Shame about the lineouts...