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Wallabies Watch

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Sully

Sully

Tim Horan (67)
Staff member
I think you have to consider your lineout when picking Palu. He's not exactly a lineout option. He looked the best I've seen him for years last weekend.

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jay-c

jay-c

Ron Walden (29)
Richo said:
I really do not understand how anyone could watch Palu last Friday and think he isn't the best option at 8. I have a lot of time for Fotu Aluea, but Palu consistently bends the line, offloads and does key work in defense. I don't think it's even remotely a coincidence that Hooper and Dennis were much better this week in terms of arriving first at rucks, as Scott pointed out on the podcast. If Fotu is there, he should be on the bench. That's it.
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^^^ totally agree> he playeed better in that game against the chiefs (all round performance) thatn ive ever seen from fotu
would not hesitate with fotu on the bench> love the tag team idea> the tahs showed us all last week that big men who bruise the opposition and bend the line have such an important role to play in game of collisions
 
Scoey

Scoey

Tony Shaw (54)
I don't really feel that Palu is the player that some think that he is. I can concede however that this may be due to my perception of him more so than his abilities. I don't think it's surprising that most that sing his praises are Tahs fans. This is a common occurrence with players like Palu. Unless you're really watching a team play it's probably easy to overlook a lot of what some of the players add. And lets face it, most of us don't really watch a team like we 'watch' our own. Anyway, it was hard not to notice what he did on the weekend - he was an animal! :)
 
qwerty51

qwerty51

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Sully said:
I think you have to consider your lineout when picking Palu. He's not exactly a lineout option. He looked the best I've seen him for years last weekend.

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF700T using Tapatalk HD
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with him as a lineout option, he does fine there. Better than Fotu.
 
Groucho

Groucho

Greg Davis (50)
Richo said:
I really do not understand how anyone could watch Palu last Friday and think he isn't the best option at 8. I have a lot of time for Fotu Aluea, but Palu consistently bends the line, offloads and does key work in defense. I don't think it's even remotely a coincidence that Hooper and Dennis were much better this week in terms of arriving first at rucks, as Scott pointed out on the podcast. If Fotu is there, he should be on the bench. That's it.
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Palu also has 50 tests of experience vs. none for Aluea.

You don't promote a debutante over a 50 test player in a crunch match unless they have considerably more on offer. As it is they're probably about the same.
 
qwerty51

qwerty51

Stirling Mortlock (74)
It's absolute madness to play Fotu over Palu in the 1st Test. He has zero experience packing at 8 in a Test scrum. We're coming up against the best scrum in the world, we're most likely going to be going backwards and we need our most experienced 8 there to handle that.
 
T

Train Without a Station

Guest
Based on the Wallabies recent history (say last 5 or so years), what good is experience? What so they've been there and failed before? If we have all these experienced big match players, why do we always seem to lose the big fucking matches?

A dead rubber in Hong Kong or Wales Test series when we've already beaten them the last 3 times aren't big matches.
 
Richo

Richo

John Thornett (49)
Train Without a Station said:
Based on the Wallabies recent history (say last 5 or so years), what good is experience? What so they've been there and failed before? If we have all these experienced big match players, why do we always seem to lose the big fucking matches?

A dead rubber in Hong Kong or Wales Test series when we've already beaten them the last 3 times aren't big matches.
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We don't have many big match players. Also, our coach sucks. Oh, and the All Blacks are really fucking good.
 
Groucho

Groucho

Greg Davis (50)
Train Without a Station said:
Based on the Wallabies recent history (say last 5 or so years), what good is experience? What so they've been there and failed before? If we have all these experienced big match players, why do we always seem to lose the big fucking matches?

A dead rubber in Hong Kong or Wales Test series when we've already beaten them the last 3 times aren't big matches.
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We don't always lose the "big fucking matches". We keep losing the "small fucking matches". Our win ratio would be far more respectable if we did better against Samoa and Scotland.
 
qwerty51

qwerty51

Stirling Mortlock (74)
Train Without a Station said:
Based on the Wallabies recent history (say last 5 or so years), what good is experience? What so they've been there and failed before? If we have all these experienced big match players, why do we always seem to lose the big fucking matches?

A dead rubber in Hong Kong or Wales Test series when we've already beaten them the last 3 times aren't big matches.
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What a stupid argument. What big matches has Will Genia won? Should we tarnish him because of that?
 
USARugger

USARugger

John Thornett (49)
Groucho said:
We don't always lose the "big fucking matches". We keep losing the "small fucking matches". Our win ratio would be far more respectable if we did better against Samoa and Scotland.
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No actually, it wouldn't. Speaking as someone who spent a good portion of yesterday afternoon going over Deans' coaching stats from 2008-2013 simply reversing those three (remember, we've lost to Scotland TWICE under Deans, consecutively) losses would only put us at a W/L of 63.38%. If you refer to my earlier post in the same thread (April 30th Wallabies Selection) a W/L of 60% was "unacceptable" in JON's own words, maybe Hawker has lower standards? On the flip side JON remarked he wanted somewhere in the 70s-80s for winning percentage, which he failed to mention has only been achieved by one Australian coach, ever.
 
Joe Blow

Joe Blow

John Hipwell (52)
I doubt we could have the luxury of both Fotu and Palu in a 23.
If Mowen or Higgers start at 6 they are legitimate lineout options as are Smith and Gill at a push.
Palu's lineout work will not be all important.

If we start with

6.Mowen/Higgers
7.Smith
8.Palu

we can finish with

6.Smith
7.Gill/Hooper
8.Mowen/Higgers
 
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