All Blacks Not Getting into the Power Band

I liken the All Blacks on Saturday night, and in the Wallybee game, as being like a high powered 500CC GP motorbike going in and out of its power band. Sometimes the All Blacks look like they can destroy anything for periods of up to 20 minutes, then they seem to cough and splutter (make errors) and slow down to a more leisurely pace.

The All Blacks did not deserve to win against the Yarpies but they are also not that far off the Yarpies by any means. The game was error filled although to be fair the penalties helped to prevent tries in the first half which would have made the score a lot harder to reign in during the second half. Ruan Peinar’s dodgy boot definitely helped but would the All Blacks have continued to give away penalties if his boot was on target – I doubt it.

Several people I spoke to late last week agreed with the All Black selection except for Leonard replacing Cowan, especially when Cowan had such a good game against the Wallybees. I couldn’t understand it either. I noted one commentator saying it was to keep Leonard in the side and keen. If that is the coaching staff’s motivation then they have learnt absolutely nothing from the failure of strength and reconditioning. However, I really hope that Henry’s actual strategy was to rest him for this Durban test because Henry probably thought “we only need to win one away” so saving Cowan fit for the more winnable one in Durban may end up being a good move. We shall see.

The mess at the end with Piri Weepu farting about behind the ruck so that the Yarpies could re-organise their defensive line made me wonder which South African bookie got to him. Then Eaton running ahead of the pass (or was it Weepu poor passing) just makes you wonder if it is worth putting green subs on with 5 minutes to go in a tight and winnable test match.

What do you say about Tialata doing a drop kick? What that heck was inside his head when he made that decision? Fat blokes do not do drop kicks.

The Boks played pretty well and put a lot of pressure on the All Blacks in the first half which produced a lot of penalties but I thought we defended well and responded to a massive 40 minutes.

We have to get our lineout sorted. Why do we not contest the lineout? I presume this is so that we can be ready to defend the maul drive but clearly we are not able to do that. Perhaps an alternative is to disrupt Matfield receiving the ball in the hope that it may also disrupt the formation of the maul by causing Matfield to have to flick it to the half back.

The All Blacks need to practice swinging the maul around and attacking the tail. Some form of releasing the opposing pressure at the same time as driving the front of the maul towards the touchline which should swing the tail out forcing the ball carrier to have to chase to keep with his mauling buddies may allows our scavengers to pick off the tail. We have to do something to stop their effective mauls. And I do not think Ross pulled down that maul – he was clearly tripped and fell under their feet :-)

All in all not that great of a game to watch if you are not a Yarpie. The All Blacks are just a slight adjustment of the mixture away from achieving a full throttle performance in the power band for 80 minutes. But I have been saying that for a while I guess!