Wallabies v France - June 14 Etihad Stadium

[Pfitzy]

But this really seamed to reflect a lack of confidence in your team, and that perplexed me.

Grammar - The difference between knowing your shit and not knowing you're shit.....

Spelling too. Anyway, on to your comment.

The backs can't execute their game plan if the forwards don't respect the opposition enough to smash it up in close.

Go forward to earn the right to go wide. We weren't doing this because we were going straight out into the 1st or 2nd channel.

THAT is what Link was talking about. You can rave about not seeing us score tries or varying our play, but the fact is we spent a LOT of the first 40 in our own half, against a good French side, and that isn't the place you want to play Test Rugby.

 

[Pfitzy]

I get your comment here but this is something that plenty of other tight five players are guilting of. It needs to be looked at in the context of the phases before and after though. What lead up to it? Had he committed to a ruck which in the end we secured strongly without him and rather than just hang in the pocket he at least provided a block/shield for the half?

But also, what happened next phase? Did he use this position to his advantage and get to the very next ruck if it was one or two passes off? Or did he treat it like his job was done and have a blow for a phase?

Fuck. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth.

I'm not going to watch the game 15 times and take note of every single action of every single player. If you have the time, report back in a separate thread hmm?

EDIT:
But if you're going to bother going near a breakdown, then make sure you are there to have an impact. Have a breather out in the backline and get ready for the next cleanout otherwise.

Just going there, and not putting yourself into a position to get to the next ruck and shift some bodies, helps nobody, particularly if the next ruck is behind the advantage line.

 

[Train Without a Station]

Haha easy tiger. I'm just trying to say it's important to look at involvements in their context. If it's my first example, you can't begrudge a guy for an ineffective involvement when it's superfluous and they have a positive involvement on the next phase. If they don't then fair enough. Bag away!

 

[Pfitzy]

Look I'm a former tight forward - I know you can't contribute to EVERY ruck, and the working relationship I had with my other prop was "every second ruck. Unless the backs chuck it out to the wing, then let the hooker run after it because they're mad fuckers and will chase anything". The only time we crossed the 15m line was for scrums or lineouts!

But just wandering over to a ruck and standing there is not the best use of any forward's time because it puts him in the worst possible position for the following involvement. Yes, other people do it in that side without doubt. But its a combination of that, and a guy as big as Simmons who hits so hard at scrum time based on last night, but just doesn't blow guys off the ball.

Get to a ruck, shift bodies, rest for the next one, then repeat.

 

[Dave Beat]

Link said in one of the snippets of him live "you're not respecting the opposition".

I am sorry to say this because I am a firm believer in his ability, but Link you did not respect our players ability.

Your game plan was to kick out of our territory on every occasion, why?
Do you think the players not capable of varying their play even slightly?

On front foot ball it didn't matter. kick
Regardless of the French position. kick
Even when we were executing poorly. kick

Why did you not trust in your our players? Why couldn't you have mixed it up even a little?

I understand that you tailor each game depending on the opposition. But this really seamed to reflect a lack of confidence in your team, and that perplexed me.

The last six games suggest he has been round a while to tactically set a game plan. I like a game of ball in hand ball movement, whilst not exciting I enjoyed the tactical suspense of that game and believe allot of very valuable points were gained - defence and sticking together without conceding points being one.

 

[BDA]

Link said in one of the snippets of him live "you're not respecting the opposition".

I am sorry to say this because I am a firm believer in his ability, but Link you did not respect our players ability.

Your game plan was to kick out of our territory on every occasion, why?
Do you think the players not capable of varying their play even slightly?

On front foot ball it didn't matter. kick
Regardless of the French position. kick
Even when we were executing poorly. kick

Why did you not trust in your our players? Why couldn't you have mixed it up even a little?

I understand that you tailor each game depending on the opposition. But this really seamed to reflect a lack of confidence in your team, and that perplexed me.

To be fair to link, I think the tactics were fine, it was the execution that let us down. seemed like the idea was to keep the ball in hand when they got the ball in france's half. Unfortunately when they did get ball in the French half the execution was poor (in effective clean-out and a few moments (like the McCallman no try) where we just didn't covert. Add the whole missed kicks issue and it could have very easily been 15 - 20-nil by the end of the game.

I suspect the idea was to play no risk, get a bit of a lead and then chance our arm and show off our backs, but poor execution killed those plans

 

[Dave Beat]

Spelling too. Anyway, on to your comment.

The backs can't execute their game plan if the forwards don't respect the opposition enough to smash it up in close.

Go forward to earn the right to go wide. We weren't doing this because we were going straight out into the 1st or 2nd channel.

THAT is what Link was talking about. You can rave about not seeing us score tries or varying our play, but the fact is we spent a LOT of the first 40 in our own half, against a good French side, and that isn't the place you want to play Test Rugby.

Well I must say very wise words from the front row

 

[Quick Hands]

The backs can't execute their game plan if the forwards don't respect the opposition enough to smash it up in close.

Go forward to earn the right to go wide. We weren't doing this because we were going straight out into the 1st or 2nd channel.

THAT is what Link was talking about. You can rave about not seeing us score tries or varying our play, but the fact is we spent a LOT of the first 40 in our own half, against a good French side, and that isn't the place you want to play Test Rugby.

Too true, but from McKenzie's comments during the telecast, it was a preconceived idea to go out and play a field position, kicking game. I think we all knew that France would be better this time around, but to come out with essentially the same team and play a completely different game plan, 7 days after a big win seemed odd.

The players were obviously playing to instruction - in many cases against their instinct.

I thought it was a good, hard game of test rugby with more movement than the score suggests, but to me both sides engaged in some relatively ineffective kicking.

 

[Pfitzy]

Too true, but from McKenzie's comments during the telecast, it was a preconceived idea to go out and play a field position, kicking game. I think we all knew that France would be better this time around, but to come out with essentially the same team and play a completely different game plan, 7 days after a big win seemed odd.

Pretty sure that NOT playing in your own half was our plan last week. The difference is last week we didn't have to kick to achieve that, and the French were weak as piss.

We chewed off heaps of metres last week because we were more accurate at the ruck, and the French weren't. They stepped it up this week and we stopped advancing.

Just because we picked mostly the same XV didn't mean we could do as we liked.

Change of tactic in my line of questioning: how many of our tries in the First Test started their last phase inside our own half?

 

[Quick Hands]

Pretty sure that NOT playing in your own half was our plan last week. The difference is last week we didn't have to kick to achieve that, and the French were weak as piss.

We chewed off heaps of metres last week because we were more accurate at the ruck, and the French weren't. They stepped it up this week and we stopped advancing.

Just because we picked mostly the same XV didn't mean we could do as we liked.

Change of tactic in my line of questioning: how many of our tries in the First Test started their last phase inside our own half?

I wasn't suggesting we could do as we liked and I wasn't suggesting that we could score from the last phase in our own half.

This wasn't a change which occurred because of something which happened on the field. McKenzie was quite clear that they went out to play a kicking/field position game. This was plan A, not a reaction to what was happening on the field.

EDIT: Does any team ever go out with the plan to play the game in their own half?

 

[Tomikin]

Link said in one of the snippets of him live "you're not respecting the opposition".

I am sorry to say this because I am a firm believer in his ability, but Link you did not respect our players ability.

Your game plan was to kick out of our territory on every occasion, why?
Do you think the players not capable of varying their play even slightly?

On front foot ball it didn't matter. kick
Regardless of the French position. kick
Even when we were executing poorly. kick

Why did you not trust in your our players? Why couldn't you have mixed it up even a little?

I understand that you tailor each game depending on the opposition. But this really seamed to reflect a lack of confidence in your team, and that perplexed me.

I read an article on rugby heaven where To'omua and Jim McCay said this is how they play before the game.. And they need the change up for the world cup

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[Richo]

That will be the last comment of yours I read, one can only digest so much dirge.

Blocked

I didn't realize I was so good at funeral music, and I'm not sure why you're eating it either. But if it's the sheet music, that might be what's got you so blocked up.



Oh, right, he won't read this. All that wit for nothing.

 

[It is what it is]

How come when the French beat us 6-0 in soccer it's a thrashing, but when we beat them 6-0 in rugby it's a close win?

 

[daz]

The ARU could have saved a shit-load of cash on this game. If they wanted the team to kick aimlessly and at every opportunity all night, they could have kept the Wallabies in Sydney and put the Rebels on instead.

 

[Hawko]

This game was not a good display of the Wallabies at their best. The last twenty pages indicate a lot of what went right and what went wrong. But to understand those who thought the game was poor, think back to Bledisloe 1 in 2000. That night neither team was fixated on a field position gameplan achieved by kicking. There was plenty of kicking, but it was still a game with an attacking mindset by both teams; and the result was one of the greatest games of all time.

What was wrong last night was that we went back to the Deans doctrine: "make sure we don't lose", rather than the week before when our thinking was "let's go out and win". Our negative mindset was the root cause of our display.

Some other comments pertinent to that theme:

• Link likes to think he plays different game plans for different games. But when we play one game plan much better than another you have to ask the question "Is it the right thing to do to change game plan for this game?" IMO it wasn't.
• Overall we dominated the game. Had the French won it would have been a grave injustice, but we put ourselves at risk of failure by playing the style we did.
• We have to take a risk to get a reward. That means running good ball from in our half. The general rule should be kicking out of our 22 and only kicking in the rest of our half if we are poorly positioned or under severe pressure.
• Kicking turnover ball is almost always nuts. Turnover ball is almost always achieved when the opposition is not properly aligned defensively and is therefore when they are most vulnerable. White did it at least once last night, maybe more.
• I thought the referee was extremely poor in his definition of advantage. There were a number of times when our backs were off and running only to be called back for a French infringement, the worst case being when he penalised the French scrum. Barnes didn't ref like this before - seems like some NH adjudicator has got in his ear. If it goes badly then the ref can always bring it back, but if you don't play good advantage then you get a NH rugby style predominating, where getting penalties is more important than getting tries.

Three other comments I would make:

1. Genia gets charged down at least twice a game these days. His box kicking is very unreliable. He would not have been a good choice for last night's game plan.
2. Kuridrani did not stand out last night. Next week AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper) should start at 13 with Horne to take 14 and Kuridrani on the bench. (It looks like McCabe is crocked.)
3. As the crowd last night was less than the 31,000 capacity of the smaller stadium, the only possible losses that could have been made using it are from having less corporate seating and maybe some government event top up. The ARU could have recalibrated seat pricing to realise the same dollar income. Surely no reasonable ARU official expected more than a 30K crowd - the ARU knows rugby is not drawing crowds and won't till the public gets excited about their playing style and results against NZ/SA. That's at least six months away. The Etihad decision was just plain stupidity, nothing less!

 

[Ash]

What's being claimed is that the gameplan was changed to practice a different style as Link and McKay want to be able to play different ways. Interesting, if true.

 

[Athilnaur]

Well said Hawko. I'd add that you must play with purpose. It was obvious at the game that the french wanted to slow the game up with extended pauses at every opportuntiy and equally obvious Barnes was happy to oblige.

No good ever came of a Wallaby team allowing a game to be slowed to treacle. We need to be a lot better at ensuring opposition do not dictate the terms of the game or we will continue to struggle every time a strong opposition rocks up knowing how to break our cohesion.

 

[I like to watch]

What's being claimed is that the gameplan was changed to practice a different style as Link and McKay want to be able to play different ways. Interesting, if true.

Then why wouldn't he pick a side best suited to play that game game?
To'omua @ 10,McCabe at 12.......

 

[BPC]

[*]Link likes to think he plays different game plans for different games. But when we play one game plan much better than another you have to ask the question "Is it the right thing to do to change game plan for this game?" IMO it wasn't.

While you need to be able to adapt, there is a lot to be said for trying to impose your preferred style on the game rather than changing to a something intended to counter an opponents expected strategy.

Play to your own strengths, not the opponents strengths.


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[Scotty]

White was very hot and cold, kicked a lot but showed plenty of spark around the ruck. With To'omua and Foley playing badly he was our main attacking threat in the end.

Spare me the chip on the shoulder stuff. Who cares about these hypotheticals? Of course people are always going to see things through tinted specs, it has been thus since Bill Webb Ellis picked up the ball and ran.
.

Chip on the shoulder? No - you missed the point.

Genia's best game is at a much higher level than Whites so when he has an average game he is more harshly criticised.

You must agree that it was just a little crazy that White got MOM on 10 and also by a few on this site!

Actually you probably won't since you think he was our main attacking threat.