Autumn Nations Series

What a fightback by Australia! I hope they can continue to play like this when I see them in a few weeks. Scooped up a last minute spare ticket from a friend.

Also going to the boks game but I'm trying to put that out my mind after seeing the terrifying team sheet!

Busy bit of travel for you then! And I'm late to the match here, but had 2 folk saying I have to tune in now.

ABs putting Ireland to the sword there. Ireland only really looking dangerous when NZ were down to 14. AB defense shut down any platform from Ireland and they couldn't figure out how to unlock, despite a massive amount of ball. James lowe though, he's so good

I think that's similar to the England game - their only try came from an opportunist intercept they weren't able to break down the ABs defence. Same story today, Ireland's only try comes with the ABs down to 14 and space out wide, and its wasn't particularly creative, just folding right into space until the try came.

Lowe was great, but Hansen & Keenan were basically anonymous. Ringrose really didn't do much either - I guess it comes down a bit to the ABs chocking Ireland of possession too but of the Irish back three the workmate was well down in comparison to the ABs.

Ireland by 5
England by 3 (lol)
Argentina by 5 <- my game of the weekend to watch
France by 30
Fiji by 15 (epic lols)
South Africa by 10 (tears in the rain)

Card count: 8

Ireland by 15

England by 21

Argentina by 12

France by 30

Fiji by 4

South Africa by 12

All Blacks XV (the only game im planning on checking out) by 12
- My Ireland pick is down to Razor's Crusaders bias picking 2 of his boys at hooker this year which has left the ABs with a known weak lineout thrower in Aumua and an understudy who was just as flakey at Super Rugby this year. All while leaving a Super Rugby winning hooker and one of our most reliable throwers at home.
  
  The bias got even worse with Taylor out injured this week they called Brodie McAlister into the squad ahead of Eklund - so there's 3 Crusaders Hookers out of 4 in the ABs squad this week, its actually stupid given the two not named Taylor haven't looked even close to pushing him out of his spot.
- Missed the XV match, Georgia won't be up to much. I'll say NZ by 23

New Zealand by 5
Australia by 2
Argentina by 8
France by 15
Wales by 1
South Africa by 12

You and me called tonight by five, but different ways! Gonna be a great match
- Its been mostly quite trash so far - the wet ball isn't helping anybody!

Discovering I want Italy to win this really badly. I think they might be my 2nd test team. Not sure where I get these masochistic impulses from lol.

Me too. Seeing them lose like this is hard. They have had 15 years more tier1 and done little with it in reality. But the rise of los Pumas is also fantastic to see in contrast
- Performances like that is why it should have stayed 5 nations and just had promotion - relegation with a tier below. Wales & Italy being guaranteed spots in the Test Championship series for so long is a real shame for any of the other 3rd tier teams vying for their spots.
  
  ;)
  
  One thing im finding interesting about the international Rugby at the moment is I think you could say the top tier is probably Ireland, SA, NZ, France and maybe England. Then 2nd tier is very compressed, probably only Argentina, Scotland & Australia before there's a noticeable drop down to Italy, Fiji, Wales, and then an even more noticeable dip to Georgia, Samoa, Japan. After that you're getting into the Portgual, Tonga, Uruguay.
  
  Outside of the top 8 where you could see Argentina, Scotland and (maybe) Australia pulling off wins against the top 5, it seems to me that each chunk of teams you drop down really do seem completely unlikely of upsetting even the tier immediately above at the moment. I haven't quite put my finger on why that might be but im wondering if it comes down to the advantage modern defences have, much better strength & condition plus the best teams having benches where there's just no dip in quality.

Got up and watching the last quarter of Scotland vs SA. How the f$%k is getting the ball from your own 10m to inside the opposition's 22m not an advantage? Particularly when its not an advantage for foul play, or any particularly egregious cheating but a scrum collapsing when the ball was available to use.

Rugby really does get in its own way sometimes.

Yes that advantage was far too long. Scrum was a shitshow all game sadly, Scotland looked well out our depth
- I know the redditors get up in arms when anybody suggests tampering with this beautiful facet of Rugby that everybody comes to the stadium to see; but honestly scrum penalties are just whack these days. A knock-on just shouldn't need to lead to a >40m advantage being given to one team by the referee, especially when if the team had kicked it even 10m it would have been advantage over!
  
  I would much prefer scrum infringements to be free-kicks only unless its a defensive scrum penalty on your 5m line where you might be cheating to stop a potential try scoring drive (although they are exceedingly rare these days). In pretty much every other facet of play the team feeding the scrum is getting the advantage at a restart of having the ball after they previously did not - that's the advantage already!

Some folks like to moan about the haka, but this new trend of having dignitaries come and greet everyone before a match is both kinda cool and an incredibly boring use of time.

When Moana Pasifika played in Tonga for the first time they had the players go up and meet the Tongan royals in attendance, in Japan the Princess came out to shake the players hands and now Michael Higgins the Irish President getting his time. He's a rad dude and all but do we really want to have this much fussing about for meaningless one off games?

England sounded genuinely better this week. Keeping Smith on the field was crucial, and putting that score for your side is fantastic, no matter the opponent. But damn are they weak in D. And the 6n is all about defense.

Well I picked England putting points on the board against Australia who've really struggled in defence this year, I just did not have Australia busting through England's D on the cards at all. Full credit to them, Sua'ali'i looked deserving of his selection which is remarkable given its basically his first game of Union since high school; helped a lot by Ikitau who's been having a great year. Schmidt seems to have really found a good balance with the loosies now, if they can just tidy up on D they'll be back to being a real threat.
- What a match to catch on the radio it was. So good to hear the commentators shout nooo :) Defense was obviously optional yesterday, here's hoping Scotland go like that today too! (Wales v Fiji likely to be a high scorer too)

Bit of controversy in the anthems with the Irish band forgetting that the Aotearoa-New Zealand anthem has two verses and its quite important that we do them both giving equal standing to both treaty partners that establish the country.

Someone always fucks up a visiting anthem. Ireland getting two and denying yous two verses is a joke though!
- Musically I get it because its decking boring; but culturally its really important for us to recognise both partners to Te Tiriti.

IRE v NZ Halftime thoughts:

Rule changes to eliminate escorts protecting the defending jumper on a kick chase will result in more contestable being put up again which will lead to another incident such as Arendse - Barrett, enough of those and someone will get paralysed or killed.
Bit of a trend this year that the ABs ruck protection for half backs is lacking, both for box kicks and giving them clean passes. It tends to be a lot worse for slower rucks where the defence timing or general disruption causes problems. I have no idea if it’s allowed in rucks, but seems to me the Irish loosies are swimming around the sides to cause the disruption at the back. All of that is making things messy for the ABs especially when they forget to get someone in to be the halfback.
10 minutes in, reminded how good Nic Berry has gotten as a referee, comms are great (marked contrast to the ref last weekend in Fiji v Scotland).
Irish tacklers holding on post contact in the wet is really hindering the ABs ball carriers from a clean place - would be interested to know if its a thing players train in the wet because it works really well to shift their body position on the ground.
ABs defence has improved significantly since the first England tests this year, which is letting them control possession and territory a lot better. I’m pretty 50/50 on the coaching team so far but have to admit where there is clear improvement.
I don't really agree with the policy of carding head contacts that are noticed to try to avoid future litigation from players. So you can imagine how I feel about the JB yellow.

Fulltime thoughts:

Sam Cane getting driven back into the in-goal came after he got a knee down in field and so was tackled, it could have been a penalty for all 3 tacklers not releasing. Somewhat surprised the scrum move didn't just go to a Bundee Aki charge with Jordie Barrett off and they instead worked several phases to the right to find the space.

All Blacks taking a quick throw instead of chewing up time on the card was stupid, but fortunately got a penalty off a dodgy cleanout. Brainless rugby. Taking the penalty kick after the the holding-on call moments later was much more sensible, and chewed up a bunch of time plus a brilliant kick with all sorts of trouble on the tee put the score back to 1.

Stop/Start rugby but doesn't seem to be impacting the ABs as much as it has in previous seasons - maybe they've adapted to it rather than hoping other teams won't be able to just get away with it. If anything they're using the stop as much themselves. That and the constant mistakes have made for a mostly very boring game - albeit it tense due to the scoreline.

Not sure I agree with taking the penalty kick after the scrum penalty against the Irish tighthead. The ABs have struggled to get into the Irish 22m and the scores are only behind by 1 going for a line out and possible try might have helped to swing momentum more. Albeit, McKenzie is kicking really well so taking the 3 still put the ABs ahead, but give Ireland territory back from the restart.

Ireland's handling is starting to be a bit of a liability for them, they've had less than parity in possession so these second half drops are hurting them more than it did the ABs in the first half with 2/3 possession.

If the ground was cutting up and the players were looking a lot muddier I reckon everybody would be more understanding of the fairly conservative rugby being played - or rather the lack of rugby being played.

Irish crowd behaving like a Kiwi crowd, mostly quiet and just cheering when something's happened. Not really acting as the 16th man that you'd hope for at a home test!

Jordie Barrett's kick-off catches have been superb and given the ABs a comfortable platform to exit from. And the Irish receipt of the ABs clearance has been woeful in comparison - given up both territory and possession and piling more pressure on themselves. The second half has been well controlled by the ABs, but to a huge part has been helped by Ireland's lack of control. But for all that 10 points up, 9 minutes to go and Ireland are definitely not out of this.

Will Jordan's kicking game is both ill advised and it sucks. He is a long way off being the quality of fullback in test matches that he is allowed to be at Super Rugby.

Nic Berry may well be the form referee in the world right now; comms, calmness, decision making throughout have been excellent.

3 from 3 so far so a guaranteed 3/5 makes this a very successful tour and and overall successful year for the ABs unless they somehow lose to Italy in 2 weekends.
One for the purists tonight with a bar of soap for a ball. And I think he'll be off with a red for the contact. Our first 20 minute in the NH potentially. And they 100% play a lot in the wet in the URC and 6n, so they are very used to floor work. Nic I think should be less lenient of Irish shithousery at the ruck imo, but Ireland are very good at this area
- One of the first angles shown it looked like the initial contact was shoulder to shoulder which rode up to shoulder-head, and given the impact wasn't strong he had gone down just could have gone down more, plus the Irish player dipped a little I'm hopeful that commonsense will prevail and it will remain yellow. After all previous Ireland-New Zealand test matches have shown you can make a completely upright tackle, concuss & break the check of the opposition player and it is a confirmed yellow only.
- He's come back out to sit on the naughty chair after the break so I guess that's still yellow then.
Ireland have always been on the edge of legality in terms of holding on too long after a tackle and interfering at the breakdown. They have been doing it for years but referees have only just started pinging them for it. Berry was all over it last night and it prevented them gaining any momentum.
- I think if anything he was still pretty lenient towards them, and only when they most blatantly rolled into the path of the cleanout or halfback were they pinged. I've noticed in a few of these NH internationals now the counter-ruckers swimming around the side of the ruck and not driving tryline to tryline by more corner to corner which for mine is probably something worth more attention than the current focus on escorts for contestables.

Could Wales and Fiji please stop with the cards? There's a game of rugby to be played!

Autumn Nations Series - Week 2

Friday

Saturday

Sunday