KOB1987
John Eales (66)
Sorry mate, my badGood onya KOB, thanks for nothing
Sorry mate, my badGood onya KOB, thanks for nothing
Am i the only one who thought Fainga'a had a cracker of a match? great carries, great breakdown work just to name a few.
Since the soap dodgers lost to the Darkness does this shift us back to no. 3?
11 Tomane - poor bastard found himself isolated on D too often, but made some strong runs and always threatened the defence. Quiet night for both our wings on attack, because the Welsh were rushing up hard inside their own half.
14 AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) - delayed the awarding of a try with superb defence, and also cleaned up some messes as well. Isolated in defence a couple of times and did the best he could.
DEFENCE - needs work, but you can see the Cheika/Grey combination evolving the way it did at the Tahs. There are some first up misses. There are some alignment problems. But the intuition about knowing when to let the ruck lie, and when to go for the drive, looks to be developing.
-thought Cheika got the balance of the pack wrong. Not enough go forward. McMahon to the bench for me.
- When Skelton came on, Marto wouldn't stop going on about how skelton's weight in the scrums would improve the scrum. The opposite was actually true. The scrum went to shit when he came on. When he gets himself into a good position he's pretty sturdy but more often than not his body positioning was poor. Good to see him get more experience at test level (will be good for him) but he really needs to work on his set piece play. He's clearly a very handy guy to have in attack (got us over the advantage line and draw in defenders) but is nowhere near the finish product. needs more time.
- Think there is going to be some growing pains with Cheika because the players havent quite grasped the game plan. It was really just some indivdual brilliance from a few players which stopped the welsh from running away with it in the first half.
Exciting game. happy with the win - a nice psychological edge heading in the RWC.
Kuridrani probably would've been my pick of the Australian players.
Foley is right up there for his kicking and that try saving intercept in the first half. But, the missed penalty kick for touch, couple of forward passes/bad decisions, dumb grubbers and lack of direction on attack tempered his game for me. Kicking from hand was a bit of a mixed bag, he came out a bit ahead I think, just needs to put the grubbers away.
On attack, I thought Biggar ran his backline better than Foley.
Did LILO do enough to hold out To'omua? I'd say no.
Front row, Hooper and Ben McCalman all good. Carter good as well. Simmons and McMahon needed more impact.
Good win.
New coach.
2 new caps.
Congrats Faulkiner and McMahon
And I will stick with my earlier prediction - we have played our hardest match on the tour - although I do not expect Ireland and England to be anything other than difficult.
Gatland was probably thinking that he wished his 10 wasn't injured 5 minutes into the second half.I don't get why Wales went into their shells in the second half. What was Gatland thinking?
Last year I thought Wales were damn lucky to be within two tries of us, this year I thought at half time we were lucky to be within two tries of Wales.
Then Wales came out and played one-out ball in the second half, basically gifting us the game. Can't argue with that, but last year I thought we looked better.
Early days yet for Cheika and Gray, though. They need plenty more time.
it might well have been the better option to have had Matt To'omua at 10 rather than Foley who was hidden for most of the game on the right wing in defense.
-thought Cheika got the balance of the pack wrong. Not enough go forward. McMahon to the bench for me.
- When Skelton came on, Marto wouldn't stop going on about how skelton's weight in the scrums would improve the scrum. The opposite was actually true. The scrum went to shit when he came on. When he gets himself into a good position he's pretty sturdy but more often than not his body positioning was poor. Good to see him get more experience at test level (will be good for him) but he really needs to work on his set piece play. He's clearly a very handy guy to have in attack (got us over the advantage line and draw in defenders) but is nowhere near the finish product. needs more time.
- Think there is going to be some growing pains with Cheika because the players havent quite grasped the game plan. It was really just some indivdual brilliance from a few players which stopped the welsh from running away with it in the first half.
Exciting game. happy with the win - a nice psychological edge heading in the RWC.
Not sold on that lock pair. Simmons is basically a must for the lineout so Horwill is really the only possible change.