Well that was just a shit effort. If I was Deans I would have left the ground early, he cant help a team that doesn't put in the effort.
A really good example of this was not contesting a line out, why dont we do it? it is an opportunity to contest for the ball and even though the odds are stacked against winning against the throw (we try to pilfer the ball but the odds of succeeding are probably worse!) it says a lot about our attitude. From memory it wasn't until Simmons jumping by himself in the 68th minute that we actually tried to steal it. Does a rookie being the only one trying to win posession a sign that some players are taking their position as a given?
I think the backline was terrible all night, I dont think this is helped by forwards constantly being between each back, we are too congested too often. The only spark in intensity was Beale at the death, I know everyone else was tired but he seemed to add some sort of spark.
Forwards were not too good, huge wraps on Pocock again, by far our best, I would revert to S Fainga to start the game as I think he was better than Moore and I think Brown should be gone.The biggest call to make is with Rocky, I just dont see him as a captain, he needs to have the ability to go pshyco when he wants to, tonight he looked like he wanted to kill an All Black but I think he is forced to play fair by the big "C" next to his name. A similar thing occured with Horwill for QLD, he was a better player when he was a nut case. Rocky needs to be let loose and this might actually fire up the others in the forwards. You just dont get the feeling that an Australian Forward is actually ever going to inflict pain.
I hope there is a lot of practice at restarts this week!
NZ were just too good but I think they were lucky the referee got more lenient with players not rolling away the longer the game went, I am sure the NZ physios will have a lot of work removing bruises from the backrows backs from lying on the ball at the breakdown.
Not impressed by the Referee performance at all, why can the video referee be able to give a decision based on a replay but he cant identify an number for the referee if he fails to see a number on the field? I absolutly dont think that the tackle in the 2nd half even deserved a whistle, but the result being that if the number was seem then he would have been put off is just stupid, what if it was a really serious incident? If there is an all in brawl should the players take off thier shirts to avoid identification?
Did anyone see footage of why Mitchell was binned? I cant recall a replay.