whatisthejava wrote:As an external
Positives
You won
LW
Biggar/Sheedy
Jenkins (no 6 I think) was very good
Beard - what an utter prick to play against at the maul
Hooker gave u a solid platform
Negatives
Score line flattered
Back row was beaten by fijji
attack patterns - do they exist
Considering you played 13 for 20 mins
Very much a team built around individual brilliance and the old defence structures
The weirdest thing is I don’t think you look even more likely to score playing 13-14-15.
So glad for cuthbert that he got his try
That’s about it. We don’t look like a cohesive team but one that seems stuck between two stools. I get that there’s a lot of new faces and covid has slowed down the transition from the Gatland era, but we should be further forward now. At very least, there should be a recognisable style.
I’m not sure I agree about Biggar being a positive yesterday. In general I have a lot of time for him but I felt yesterday he was winding the ref up too much.
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I hope we're saving some nice moves for the Aussies. But I'm not convinced of that.
By far the most worrying is that we were playing a second tier country with 13-14 players for large parts of the match and still looked like losing for large parts of the match.
Against that were the missing players and experimental selections: 2nd/3rd choice front row, AWJ missing, underweight back row with Seb for cover, 3rd/4th choice scrum half, Cuthbert instead of Adams.
So we have excuses, but I agree, some kind of recognisable Pivacball should be emerging by now. Maybe next week.
whatisthejava wrote:As an external
Positives
You won
LW
Biggar/Sheedy
Jenkins (no 6 I think) was very good
Beard - what an utter prick to play against at the maul
Hooker gave u a solid platform
Negatives
Score line flattered
Back row was beaten by fijji
attack patterns - do they exist
Considering you played 13 for 20 mins
Very much a team built around individual brilliance and the old defence structures
The weirdest thing is I don’t think you look even more likely to score playing 13-14-15.
So glad for cuthbert that he got his try
That’s about it. We don’t look like a cohesive team but one that seems stuck between two stools. I get that there’s a lot of new faces and covid has slowed down the transition from the Gatland era, but we should be further forward now. At very least, there should be a recognisable style.
I’m not sure I agree about Biggar being a positive yesterday. In general I have a lot of time for him but I felt yesterday he was winding the ref up too much.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I hope we're saving some nice moves for the Aussies. But I'm not convinced of that.
By far the most worrying is that we were playing a second tier country with 13-14 players for large parts of the match and still looked like losing for large parts of the match.
Against that were the missing players and experimental selections: 2nd/3rd choice front row, AWJ missing, underweight back row with Seb for cover, 3rd/4th choice scrum half, Cuthbert instead of Adams.
So we have excuses, but I agree, some kind of recognisable Pivacball should be emerging by now. Maybe next week.
We should have out the game out of sight during that twenty minute time where we had a two man advantage. Struggling to beat 14 men happens but a two man advantage is huge and seemed to be not as decisive as it should have been.
Maybe if LRZs first try had stood then we would have pulled further clear of them. As it was Fiji we’re only a point down after a break so could approach the game differently.
Rugby is about results blah blah and it seems ridiculous - let's face it, it IS faintly ridiculous - to see headlines calling Wales "Rudderless and Awful" when they've just scored 38 points, 6 tries to 2 and won by a three-score margin.
But it's also fair. We WERE rudderless for long periods, there was hardly ever a sense of players being on the same page, Biggar didn't seem to know where his players were going to be from one phase to the next... Individual skill covered a lot of the cracks, but there were just as many balls-ups from players playing "heads-up" as there were successes. Any vaguely organized, well-prepared opposition would have punished us for that performance. Bizarrely, for all the usual talk of an unstructured game suiting Fiji, in the end it suited them less than us, which seems to me to be down to their lack of preparation more than anything else.
But I still think that given a few tweaks, we should be able to take the Aussies. If we've got Wainwright back and they don't have Hooper, I might even call us favourites.
Sandy, I agree a more experienced and settled Wales side should have put them away when they were down two men but the Fijians are a very good and hard side and it’s often the case that teams raise their game when they’ve had a red card. A great learning experience for the players.
We scored some great tries through the forwards and the backs and afterwards thought we did well overall.
Our starting front row were all second choices, we were without our talisman leader at lock and the backrow was so unbalanced it wasn’t true. Our scrum half was third choice and our centres also possibly third choice. One of our wingers is only starting out and other back from a few years in the wilderness. It’s no wonder it took a bit of time to overcome an exuberant Fijian side.
Think you guys may be missing focus on how good the Fiji pack was. Their maul defence was great and they were demons at the ruck. Scrum was pretty good too. They are really close to being the complete package. Everyone seems to be stuck in the unstructured flair cliche but they have much more than that these days.
morepork wrote:Think you guys may be missing focus on how good the Fiji pack was. Their maul defence was great and they were demons at the ruck. Scrum was pretty good too. They are really close to being the complete package. Everyone seems to be stuck in the unstructured flair cliche but they have much more than that these days.
Mate, full credit to Fiji who are a very good team and they certainly did a disruption job on us at the breakdown. But against good opposition we struggle to create tries. We just seem to go side to side with single runners and then get turned over. It all feels a bit poor at the moment.
I think a lot of journalists are underestimating how good Fiji are and equally how much disruption the welsh team is managing. But for a while now our tactics have looked somewhat flat. And often mistakes creep in and ruin our momentum. We can’t afford that against good opposition.
Ireland are a settled side right now, with nearly all their best players available, and good continuity in selection.
I don't think that FULLY explains why they were able to put in such a focussed, efficient performance against 15-man New Zealand, while we couldn't manage the same against 14-man Fiji. There is NOTHING flash or particularly exciting about what Ireland do; they just do it properly, professionally, consistently. Our champagne tastes much nicer than theirs; but I'd rather pour it all down the sink and have a win against the All Blacks, please.
Sourdust wrote:Fiji really didn't deserve that final score; 31-23 was about fair. But then, I suppose, how many times have the Big Boys done exactly that to us? So it goes...
A painfully shapeless performance, rescued by moments of individual brilliance. Best try of the lot disallowed by that daft new law change (or is it just a change of interpretation? Bollocks to it, anyway).
The good news is that Australia are pretty rubbish. The bad news is, they'll need to be.
Not trying to nitpick but not sure what you mean on the law change. I think that was out under any interpretation I ever remember (apart from one ref I played under who thought you could knock it back into play wherever you were as long as you got your feet off the ground).
Essentially, the ball went out of play and the player knocking it back in was out of play both before and after he did so.
As I undestand the laws, if you have control, you don't need downward pressure, and if you exert downward pressure, you don't need control.
Place the ball in-goal, downward or not - try.
Press down on the loose ball in-goal, in possession or not - try. I believe that pressure may be exerted by any part of the upper body besides the head?
I'm fairly sure if you reach the loose ball in-goal and just nudge it instead of pressing, that's no-try.
Sourdust wrote:Fiji really didn't deserve that final score; 31-23 was about fair. But then, I suppose, how many times have the Big Boys done exactly that to us? So it goes...
A painfully shapeless performance, rescued by moments of individual brilliance. Best try of the lot disallowed by that daft new law change (or is it just a change of interpretation? Bollocks to it, anyway).
The good news is that Australia are pretty rubbish. The bad news is, they'll need to be.
Not trying to nitpick but not sure what you mean on the law change. I think that was out under any interpretation I ever remember (apart from one ref I played under who thought you could knock it back into play wherever you were as long as you got your feet off the ground).
Essentially, the ball went out of play and the player knocking it back in was out of play both before and after he did so.
Until about 5 years ago, you would often see players do exactly what LRZ did and be rewarded for it. There was no "in touch" until the ball touched the ground (or another player/object in contact with the ground) out of play. If the ball was in the air, it wasn't in touch.
I don't know if that was a correct interpretation of the laws, or not. But it was certainly a good one IMO.
