Faletau ruled out for season after injury 30 minutes into comeback

Great to see Proctor at 13. Although the Canes did their usual underperformance in Canberra, he completely changed the trajectory of their season and the Hurricanes wingers were running in tries all over the place. Huge opportunity for Kirifi too.

Awesome to see form rewarded.

Back 3 does not look good at all. In the age of the high ball this could easily costs us the game even against a new look French team. The Chiefs absolutely went to pieces against the high ball in the second half of the SR final and couldn’t get into the game as a result. Nearly every high ball resulted in the Crusaders getting the ball back. LeGarrac will do that all night. Neither Reiko or Reece can kick, so neither of them are the winger that drops back to cover backfield. This will mean BB has a full time job covering the backfield, as well as playing 10, a role both he and DMac have struggled with in recent years.

The coaches obviously have some kind of plan for this, but if things go horribly wrong this will be where it happens.

We must also start embracing the 6-2 bench split. Other than a halfback, a specialist back on the bench is a complete waste. I’d rather have a fresh loose forward coming into the mix in the last 10 or 20 minutes than a 12. How much impact did someone like ALB ever have coming on at the end of the game?

An Instagram flanker got onto the plane on the back of 3 or 4 decent club games.

And NZL always plays below par between RWCs compared to the North as we don’t play enough sustained rugby. We just don’t have the numbers or finance to sustain a strong PWR type comp let alone play regular test rugby like say the 6N. So a RWC campaign allows us to focus on a mission over several months.

And no, we didn’t “get lucky” at RW2021. Opposition players cracking under pressure is not “luck”, it’s poor execution & happens in all matches. Btw, there’s no such thing as “world champs in name only”. You either are, or you aren’t.

Daly is supposed to be great around the squad as well. Really liked by everybody.

This is what I think Faz Jr is there for. He may be a love/hate marmite player for fans. But every other Lion, English or Saracens player has said great things. Allright Cipriani, but the other 99.9%.

Its very late to be making a break to the test team once he actually gets there anyway. He will probably only get a run on the Wed between tests.

Might be too early to call but im seeing us doing the double over the All Blacks in NZ 🤷‍♂️

But the killer reason for a move is $millions. In 12 years it will be the only way to justify these tours.

Steyn won the last series for the boks having not played test rugby for 5 years.

but i think his dad will resist selecting him too frequently. like he’ll get a game off the bench, but he definitely won’t be in the test side, and he might not even start any of the midweek fixtures. he’ll be in the squad for his leadership.