summer rugby

heaslip played well
warbs decent
croft okay

for me did not gel as a unit

Not sure i can take another two weeks of this.

Adam Jones has been underestimated his whole career – why take off the most important Lions player??
Almost cost us the game…

next week I’m watching with the locals 🙂 hope it goes out way!

@a_a – agreed – I can’t take another two weeks of this stress

Stream went down for the last 10 mins, perhaps a good thing given the drama, only came back for the missed kick at the end. I thought the Lions showed the right attitude, there was no great celebration. Lots to work on. Gatland had it right IMO talking about game management.

1-0 up, it will feel good in a day or two

tom , yes – but it’s usually been about a day late on the other games.

678- not brilliant but not disastrous. Room for improvement, shall we say. Oz back row probably edged this little battle today.

IMO our (starting) front 5 were all great, but hard to say if they all “won” their personal battle ‘cos the Oz front five were excellent too. Real fight up front.

10-12-13 were good, but JD’s biggest impact was taking their best kicker out, BOD’s was taking out their 10 out for Cuthbert’s try, and Sexton’s was taking a nap when the winger ran past him. Sorry, not fair. they did their jobs well, Johnny’s kicking from hand was good.

and 11-14-15 were great – we won ‘cos of the points from them. They all took their chances so well to get points on the board. Put 1/2 pee in Gold and they win.

But we were very lucky.
Pretty much everything that could go wrong for Oz did, and you have to feel for them losing 3 centres (and a FB) and ending up with a 7 and 9 as backs.
If they can get fixed for next week, will be another great test.

It just wasn’t his day

Interesting. Will Garland change the back row then?

Very entertaining and finely balanced game today.

Oz were very impressive, especially with the three injuries resulting with the team having to reshuffle. I thought the Lions would have the edge with Ozzies injuries.

Cuthbert and North took their try’s very well and kicking was great. Room for improvement for the Lions and I expect Oz to be stronger next week too. Stream kept failing so hopefully I’ll be down the pub to watch the 2nd test.

Great result for the All Blacks too and what a début for Beauden Barrett, started and finished a great try!!! Some massive hits from Bastareaud.

I am veryvery drunk!

here’s hoping your this side of the world!

tom,
possibly -but probably not
Think our front five would probably appreciate a little more help from a player or two with a bit more grunt close in. Lydiate (if fit and on form) or SOB would add a bit.

Thing is, of the three playing today, it was Heaslip who was a level above the other two. Looked like he carried them, particularly in the tight. Don’t think replacing him would gain us anything.
But to be fair, Croft was probably our top line out operator.
And the other one is captain undroppable. Not sure the addition of Tipuric would have made this better.
So change is probably unlikely.

We could sacrifice Croft, but we might then need to bring in Grey for the linout. But you wouldn’t want to leave out POC or AWJ on today’s performance, specially as we’re trying to up the grunt, not lose some.

So- until I change my mind again – the best selection for next week would be:
Keep the front 6.
Keep Heaslip.
Bring in SOB at 7 🙂

it’s not going to happen, is it?

On the subject of obvious improvements that G***** will ignore:

Murray in at 9, and then see what Sexton can really do 🙂
And Roberts or Manu (whoever isn’t broken) in at 12 to take advantage of the backs getting some good ball.

And get Tommy Bowe fixed.

Any non irish changes?

Keep front 5 with poss addition of Parling. Keep subs as late as possible.. Nearly cost us today.

6,7,8 – spoilt for choice but obvious change won’t happen

Not sure about my old fav, Phillips? But Secton a shoe in.

Centres depends on fitness but time to drop BOD if Roberts and Tuilaga and Davies (played well IMO) are all fit?

Back three simple – especially if Bowe is fit.

Aussies look more dangerous in open play, so need to play more to our strengths. Good to see line out working – well done Youngs and jumpers. Backs not firing at 100%.

After a few hours relaxation, Blimey we were lucky there!!!!

1/2p MOM for kicking and tackling today. Balls of steel.

youngs for phillips

Very unlikely to see any changes to first 15. Phillips for all his errors is miles better than the next option. Defencive line speed needs to be better!

Phillips for all his errors is miles better than the next option

Normally I’d agree (well he’s not miles better) but not if he carries on like he did today.
They keep telling us that you’re only as good as your last game. I hope we’d all agree that the team needs to be picked on form rather than reputation.

Zokes leave it alone please. I’m no AA fan but to keep this up is futile and will lead to the thread shutting down. So please stop all of you!

And AA Phillips on that evidence is not miles better, he had a stinker, or more likely the oppo did a great job on him. He looks a little off the pace and a little too predictable. I still think he is a very good player that plays 9 different than nearly every other 9 in the world but maybe too one dimensional which makes him easy to defend against at times. At others granted he is a nightmare to defend against, just don’t think that will be against Oz or NZ.

Just watched it, god l love rugby!

No nead for the anti welsh comments zokes, the welsh contingent is clearly the backbone of that team, they did not play well today but at least they won. If you take the welsh out we would be very ordinary. Philips was poor but I think they were on to his game, wouldn’t surprise me to see him dropped but he has so much more experience which makes that a hard call.

And tomorrow it’s the U20 rugby World Cup final, England v Wales. England to win.

Zokes, some fair points, but really why the constant stuff with AA? He is sensibly ignoring you and it adds nothing else to the thread. I hate reporting post but am sick of what’s becoming trolling now. Lets focus on the rugby and leave the silliness behind, please.

As an Englishmen (with a little bit of Welsh blood in me), there was a point where I also thought that the Lions played like England on a bad day. Aimless kicking with Phillips being one of the culprits.

Phillips didn’t have a great game but it wasn’t all his fault – we were under a lot of pressure at the breakdown. We didn’t play the ref particularly well but this was exacerbated imo by playing Croft at blindside; for all his excellent lineout and loose play we really missed a classic blindside. I think Croft unbalances any backrow he plays in – not an issue if your tight 5 are dominant but if you’re struggling at the breakdown you really miss a competent practitioner of the traditional blindside dark arts.

I think the same thing happened last time in SA.

I’m simply speechless that anyone could point a finger of blame at croft (co incidentally (?)) a minority Englishman in the team. Warbs didn’t do a job today and it wasn’t down to heaslip or croft. Phillips was just plain shonky. Hesitant, indecisive and poor execution of tasks. Poor deliver, poor decision making. Nothing whatsoever to do with croft.

Tallie – I think the front 5 were dominant at least for the majority of the match. Front 3 very good.

Phllips aimless kicking is a Gatland tictac. Kick long and defend. His running bought very little success this week. Oh well it frees up others from the attention of defenders. Many a welsh supporter has criticised Phillips for all his faults as seen today and lived to regret it when he doesnt play even when others have looked much sharper coming on for the last 15 or 20. It was ever thus.
Biggest issue is who ref next week. Pollacks interpretation at the breakdown was odd to say the least but aus were all over it.

What did Warbs do wrong wrecker?

Not a lot, but we weren’t in charge of the break down and had very little success in slowing down aus ball (partly due to refs poor interpretation as you’d said) but I just wanted to see more from the lions open side and captain. You know sometimes when you see a good open side, you’d swear there were 4 of them on the pitch? I didn’t get that from warbs today. No doubt you disagree, but that’s just my opinion.

Just to stop any paranoia I’m English and a long (suffering) time England fan so country of origin has nothing to do with it. I’ve thought the same about Croft ever since the last Lions tour – he’s great if you’re on top but can cost you in a tight game. As an aside I do get frustrated with England’s / the Premiership’s inability to acknowledge that open and blind side are different positions that require different skills and characteristics.

Croft didn’t have a bad game (apart from one basketball pass on the wing when he could have just taken and given) – he did exactly what he always does and probably what he was selected for – excellent lineout and hung around out wide looking to use his pace. I’m just not sure this is the right option against Australia given we’re clearly struggling at the breakdown.

Warburton wasn’t great and Tipuric should probably get a run out if there wasn’t the captaincy to consider.

The ref neutered the opensides, Hooper wasnt anything either. I’d have to watch it again sober to add anything more. I dont remember Croft doing much at all. Warbs tackled, rucked and aus got little joy at the breakdown apart fro via the ref when the lions tried to steal it Vunipolas pen was very dumb had he not watched tbe previous fifty mins?

As for Tipuric he’d have been pinged off the park and about as much use as tits on a snake with that ref. I imagine him and Pocock watched that game in tears from tbe sidelines. Who is the ref next week?

I think the Aussies have a lot more to worry about, our set pieces were Excellant. The open field stuff never really got going for us but that could change. Aussies were well up for it and I think almost at there best but set pieces let them down, much harder to turn that around.

Hooper was neutered by playing centre for a big chunk of the second half and I don’t recall the Aussies getting pinged much at the breakdown apart from the obvious professional foul on their 5 metre line? They also got a couple of turnovers when we got isolated but it was more their ability to slow our ball down / prevent us getting quality quick ball that I found frustrating.

I refer the thread contributors to this post.

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/summer-rugby/page/13?view=all#post-5064505

Last chance before I close it.

The Aussies had a lot cleaner and quicker ball than we did.

Couger yet again could you point out what I have done wrong?
PS please close the thread if you are finding it gives the mods too much work. Whilst I enjoy talking about rugby I dont enjoy the abuse and will happily take it to a rugby forum.

please close it.

The Aussies had a lot cleaner and quicker ball than we did.

thats a team issue, the balance of the backrow is all wrong. The coaching staff also seemingly failed to adapt the tictaks at the breakdown to ref it would appear only sam got the memo not to compete for there ball. Also whoever decided to take off adam wants shooting.

Couger yet again could you point out what I have done wrong?

The fact that you’re still able to post, unlike some, should answer that question.

What happens with the refs then,will they have super 15 refs for all tests or maybe French,argie? how does it work?