Had a prior commitment and couldn't watch the game till late last night. By the end of it I was really, really unhappy. Yes we scored six tries; yes, most of them are lovely to watch; yes, Alofa deserved another for his brilliant effort; BUT:
- This supposedly improved ruck work is yet to become apparent. I thought our performance at the rucks was very powerful but at the same time the accuracy was woeful. The Brumbies, Sharks, Crusaders and Chiefs will kill us if we don't learn to hunt properly as a pack.
- We dominated the game with our power, not our finesse. Against the Force it worked but I don't think it will against the better teams and may even unravell next week.
- The handling by both backs and forwards was appalling. We spent a whole pre-season preparing for that? And Phipps has to learn to put the ball in front of the player.
- One of our two best players has to be dropped so that we can fit Crawford back into the team to take line penalty kicks, and relieving kicks from within our 22. You cannot beat SA teams when your clearing and penalty kicks struggle to go 20 metres forward.
- Goal kicking will lose us the race to the finals unless a kicker can be found who is both long and accurate. Foley is short and inaccurate; until he can show in training that he can kick straight for 40+ metres, especially on the angle, he should not be given the ball. I would let Beale do the shots for goal and see how he goes, at least he can place kick from distance.
- Our restarts went to exactly the same place every time - just inside or outside the 22 and too far away for us to compete. Maybe Cheika is holding back stuff but it was way too predictable.
Cheika should go through them today like a bucket of epsom salts. The power was there, as was the shape and the back-up running was mostly good. But the skill and accuracy was way down and that's what you want to see first up. We can add the kamikaze power later.
Spiro has this as the Tah's year. On that display I do not think so. Gandalf and Bernie will be rubbing their hands in glee and anticipation for the Canberra derby. The strategy will be to kick it deep to the corners and wait for us to make a mistake. We've got no way to kick ourselves out of trouble. Richard Graham will be banking four points despite his team's display on Saturday. The Sharks, Crusaders and Chiefs will sleep easily knowing that we are so lacking in some of the basic skills.
Much work to be done and not much time left to do it.
