One thing having someone like Pone in the team will help with is winning the collision. For all the talk about securing rucks and lack of support, the single most important thing in winning rucks is the collision. It just gives the team that split second longer to arrive and it’s drastically easier to secure going forward than having to take a step back to secure. Missing Skelton and Tupou massively impacted this. Fiji would of won 2 out of ever 3 collisions.
Frost, Arnold, McReight, Porecki and even Slipper to a lesser degree, as a collective don’t help in this area of the game. All good individual players, but not sure if we can carry too many players that can’t dominate the contact zone.
Wales won’t be as explosive, which will help but they will employ choke tackles etc. to mitigate the contact zone. Not sure if we are that smart enough to do similar. This is where our lack of professional games across the entire country doesn’t help, because our collective think tanks aren’t presented with as many game scenarios as welsh rugby has. It’s why SRAU at this time of the year would be of benefit, get some slippery ball scenarios as the humidity rises that brings about proper kicking tactics employed at state level. That brings execution improvements, etc.
