Rugby Champs Review of 2016 thread

[cashead]

The annual tournament ended with the most dominant display ever by the All Blacks, finishing up unbeaten with an average of 30 points and 6 tries per game, and a bonus point in every round.

How would you say the tournament went for the teams? What are the points they need to work on?

1. All Blacks
- Complacency. Probably not a major issue, but if they're turning into the 800-pound gorilla tearing up their opponents regularly, they might be ripe for an ambush later. That said, their being miles ahead of their opponents right now is hardly their fault, since the NZRU is not responsible for the set-up with other teams.

2. Australia
- Consistency in selection. They play like a team that are a disorganised rabble, and despite a rally near the end, they were clearly a team bereft of ideas and leadership. Maybe a change in captains is in order, but whom?

3. South Africa
- They're playing like a team without any real identity, caught between what they know will be difficult but beneficial in the long-term (working on their attack play) and reverting to type when results are mixed at best (reverting to a kicking oriented game). They arguably have the tools, but there needs to be some serious thinking beforehand.

4. Argentina
- They're playing a style that they're not suited to in terms of skill. They were actually right up there in the attacking stats, but they have struggled to complete what they're doing. The Twickenham test was a classic example, where they were in a position to win, but kept knocking on or passing into touch.

[Spy]

The All Blacks were brilliant this year. An interesting change in defensive systems has been effective, and they've dealt with the loss of a large handful of all-timers remarkably well.

I think the jury's out on how Australia's year will be judged. They'll probably lose to NZ on Saturday, which means two 3-0 series defeats in a season, one inflicted at home by England, who Australians HATE losing to. But if they have a creditable NH tour, which is almost unprecedentedly tough, then they'd probably figure that in the washup it went OK. Australians don't need much success to regain confidence.

South Africa were woeful.

I liked Argentina. Really ambitious, which ultimately didn't quite come off for them, but I thought they came closer to looking like a top-level team than they ever have. They've got the players to play this kind of style now. I hope they persist with it.

[canta_brian]

Agree with Spy re Argentina. They are trying to play an all court game like the ABs but as Cas said they don't have the skills. In many ways it is good that they have decided that rather than doing a SA they have been prepared to stick at it. They may improve and quickly become a real contender. Also the ABs are pretty good at dealing with a kicking game so they are not likely to beat us with that type of play, so maybe loosing a few along the way with a dropped ball or three is worth it in the long run.

[Mikey Brown]

To be fair, feveloping a wide game that can even remotely contend with the All Blacks is going to put them in a pretty good place facing a lot of the NH teams. The general tactic of 'move the big Argie pack around enough to knacker them out and get on top in the last 20' has often been enough for some not-so-impressive NH sides, it'll be interesting to see if that's still the case.

I really don't know what to expect from the Bokkes in the Autumn.

[cashead]

I think the biggest concerns for the Wallabies, Springboks and Argentina is finding a captain they can have on the pitch for the full 80, more so for Australia (South Africa are already in that process, obviously, with Strauss on the way out). Most front-rows swap out by the 60th minute these days, and I thought Moore's captaincy was particularly weak.

For all the whinging the Aussie press and coaches did about "getting a raw deal" from the refs, they can not ignore the fact that Moore spent the majority of his interactions with the referee arguing and challenging everything. Name any ref that isn't going to get tired of that shit after 5 minutes. And then that just creates a situation where the next ref to pick up the whistle is going to be wary of Moore being insanely combative about everything going into the next game, and so on and so forth. He also had a tendency to come flying in when the ref was trying to talk to the other captain about something their team is doing, basically screaming at the guy about something unrelated. Watch the second Bledisloe test for an example of this, when the All Blacks get penalised for something (doesn't really matter), and Poite is having a word to Read. Moore comes flying in, all up in Poite's grill, screeching at him about something else (I think this was the one where he was like "what about Retallick? Huh? Huh? What about Retallick? Retallick! What about him! Retallick!"), at which point Poite tells him to fuck off. That sort of thing doesn't happen in a vacuum.

For the Boks, it's an issue of "whom?" Coetzee knew for a while that Strauss was winding up his test career. The SARU have stipulated that their captain needs to be based in South Africa, so that puts out contenders like Frans Louw. Whitely might be the obvious choice, but then the question is "would you pick him ahead of Duane Vermeulen, who would also be a solid choice had he not been playing for Toulon?" There really also needs to be a serious look at the selection policies as well, seeing how quickly South African players get snapped up by European clubs, as they'd obviously be a fairly attractive prospect for them due to the quirks of the Kolpak ruling. It really eliminates a shitload of good captaincy candidates like Vermeulen and Louw.