First half replay from my lounge.
1France kick off. Fielded by White, kicked to touch
French lineout. Throw to 4, knocked back by Simmons for a steal
Couple of phases, resulting in a penalty.
2Foley takes 3 as he creeps it inside the left
3French restart. Fielded my Fardy who is tackled at The Beast's feet. Hooper, Slipper, abnd Skelton fail to shift The Beast who gets the penalty for not Fardy releasing. Strong
4Penalty kick France misses to the right as it hits the post
522 restart Foley goes to the French 35m line. Big tackle Kepu. French passing breaks down and White drags Bastareud into touch with help from Slipper
Lineout Wallabies straight to Skelton. Ball wide, Foley hits Kuridrani on the chest and he goes into contact.
6Next phase sees some good passes from White, Foley and To'omua to put Simmons into contact - straight to ground.
Pass from White goes behind Foley and he drops it, having a peek at the opposition. He scrambles and recovers, losing 20m
Simmons goes up followed by Skelton as Foley hits three targets with accuracy, including THB who goes to deck and has barely any forwards to cover it.
When White delivers the subsequent ball under severe pressure, Foley isn't ready - looks like he's setting up the outsides and To'omua is back and deep. Foley catches and lobs to To'omua.
7BIG cleanout from Skelton after Simmons flops a ruck. Ball goes wide again and White isn't at the ruck base so Kepu steps in.
8Awful pass from White puts Foley under pressure. and he hits Slipper on the chest. Foley forced to clean out because no forwards are there.
He also goes in at a subsequent ruck that he probably doesn't need to, but there aren't enough forwards there.
Who the fuck said it was Dusatoir he ran over? Was the 7
9Foley kicks the conversion
10French restart, Simmons bobbles but takes. Couple of phases and Foley drills it into the French 22.
Dulin puts its out near the 40
11Great take Simmons, ball from To'omua to Skelton who speed bumps Dusatoir
To'omua to Foley who has a peek at the oncoming and loses it backwards
Palu recovers, White puts in the fucking dud grubber kick I was talking about earlier
12French play a phase then Dulin nails a lovely kick into our 22.
Fardy knocks it on at the lineout. First scrum.
13Mess. Reset. Short arm to us as the French wiggle before impact
14Lineout France just inside their half. Numbers against us though Simmons got up for the ball
France call scrum. Good scrum from their loosehead and penalty France. Take the shot and get it. Monster kick Dulin.
17Foley restarts - Hooper offside by about 2 metres but makes the tackle on Dulin. Fofana drops onto the ball as our cavalry arrive, and Foley kicks the penalty
Though he was offside, jeez Hooper has some wheels!
18French restart to Simmons. Palu takes and charges. Slipper takes the next and Skelton gets Dusatoir off the ruck even though Dusatoir wasn't doing anything.
19Foley takes it to the line. Then the first of White's awful box kicks. Forward pass France as TPN and THB cut Fofana in half
20TPN a bit hurt. Scrum Wallabies. French THP goes down, reset.
21Slipper drops his elbow a little but ball out and play on. Folau takes three then next pass from White is poo. Kepu cleans up. TPN into the gap off a Foley short ball. Great line
White produces another crap pass and Foley and Kuridrani let it bounce to THB. Knock on in contact from the Badge.
22Scrum France. Good pressure Wallabies, particularly Slipper
23Simmons penalised for not using his arms when diving at the ball tackler's legs. Uh... ok... Weird but I guess its in the Laws.
24French lineout. Ball to 2, Skelton smacks the bloke as he comes to deck. French kick.
25Solid run Kepu, then Hooper drops it cold from a low White pass. Skelton hammers Dusatoir.
Simmons takes it in, is stopped behind the ad line, and nearly turned over due to poor cleanout but we get the penalty.
26Simmons calls to himself and TPN threads the needle. It was a dangerous call given the Frogs were guarding 4 and 6, but well executed
French have 10 missed tackles to zero at this point...
Some nice passing from White, Foley, and To'omua, but the movement is a bit lateral and Folau has to come in from touch
THB cleans up, but is driven back. Foley takes the line on, makes back the ground lost, then White and To'omua put AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) into contact
Folau gets his hands through two phases later, but tries to offload and stuffs it.
27Yellow card French #3. Looking back at it, Hooper was never getting that ball as French #2 had the ball covered. But its still a pro foul.
Quick tap Foley, a couple of great phases back and forth, then To'omua gives it to Folau. French backs badly caught out.
28Foley nails the sideline conversion. Suck it haters.
29Palu takes the restart and To'omua goes into contact. Simmons goes subsequently but is knocked over, then Foley stuffs the pass to To'omua/Folau
30French lineout. They're knocked over by Simmons and Skelton in tandem, then get a bit hesitant. Foley cuts down their big #5
31Two phases later Bonnevalle gets away from White but AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) nails him
Lineout Wallabies. Good take Simmons. Another box kick - better this time, and Dulin evades AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) but runs into Fardy.
32Good tackle Simmons and TPN together. French just starting from too deep. Box kick. Folau majestic, offloads to Fardy then Kuridrani bosses it up but no support and White (I think?) gets penalised for being off his feet.
33French put the penalty kick into touch around 25 out. Maul and Kepu goes in the side. Good foot speed from the French forwards.
20-6
35Restart, French exit after two phases. Simmons uncontested on the French 30m line.
Foley waits too long to deliver the pass to Kuridrani - needed to go a couple of steps earlier. France kick ahead to out goal.
Bit of a mess after that with errors from THB and the French until the French knock it on. Poor clearance from Foley.
38Scrum just outside our 22 our ball. Another abort as the French wiggle before the set.
39Reset as the French THP collapses. Solid scrum by us picked up by Palu to White. Box kick straight to Dulin.
40Dulin returns a bomb - Skelton and White confuse each other and it bounces. AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) picks up to Slipper in contact, then Fardy and Hooper make yards.
Palu breaks hard through the line shedding tacklers
Another loopy pass by White misses Foley completely and AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) knocks it on.
French scrum ends the half
Hopefully will get to relay the second half some time tonight.
As I said earlier - a number of errors, mostly across the backline.
As I ALSO said earlier, with my usual accuracy, all the hate for Foley should probably include White as well for this half of football. Between them they probably came up with 8 or 9 outright errors handling wise, and White's kicking from hand adds another two or three to his execution failure total.
Rest of the backline had a lower error rate. To'omua and Kuridrani were probably close to error-free, without having watched both of them closely. In general, we were quite lateral and not as penetrative as we should have been, and To'omua was partly responsible for that, releasing nice passes, but to players being shepherded. Maybe Kuridrani could have cut into second receiver a bit more, or a runaround between Foley/To'omua could have created holes.
Its interesting that people say Foley isn't dominant enough and that To'omua could be better at 10 for the Wallabies. I think you're missing the point of having two playmakers.
Folau's try, for example, features Foley several times in the leadup as first receiver, hitting his targets superbly. When he goes openside, the French back three start to move that way, and To'omua's ball finds Folau with space as a result. Why was the space there? The French fullback has left that wing because Foley is going open.
Just like Folau's second try, when Skelton draws an extra man to create space that Folau waltzes right through. That is partly Folau's ability to follow the ball, but partly Skelton's ability to draw a defender.
Similarly, those who think Beale is a better answer at 10 are ignoring the fact that he's coming on late in the games and against a tiring defence.
As I said upon his first selection - Foley is a solid player, and will grow into the role. He's an enabler, not a freak, and his mix of play between passing and taking the line directly fit into a puzzle, they don't change it radically.
On the flipside of that, his clanger rate is pretty low. Yesterday he made three errors in the first half that were outright his fault. But one pass from White in particular was outright garbage that he dropped, and another couple of White passes were so bad they denied any of the backline a chance to do something with it.
