Kiwis v Tonga

[Matua]

If Tonga don't have any decent halves they'll get pumped by NZ, Australia, England, Fiji, PNG and maybe Lebanon and Jamaica

They didn't lose in the halves, they lost in the pack.

 

[MKEB...]

Tonga had no halves....their forwards nearly matched ours..

 

[RHYTHM AND STEALTH]

Great to see the Kiwis back and playing at home. Test footy is the best footy

 

[RHYTHM AND STEALTH]

On a negative note how sh!t is Aucklands weather haha

 

[Philip_Smith007]

Great first half, first 20mins of 2nd halve to much drooped ball from both sides.
Spine impressive.
Manu over 300m at Fullback, very involved, he would be a great NRL Fullback.
Hughes a great halfback, impressive kicking game.
Brown great at 6.
Smith good service from dummy half, picked his spots to run.
JFH the dominate forward of the game!


Won't know how we will go till we play Aussie. Wet weather seemed to dampen the game.
Sure game wasn't in Tonga? Great to see the support, not sure how Warriors get sellout and that game didn't.

Lots to be hopefully for in the world cup.

 

[Philip_Smith007]

They didn't lose in the halves, they lost in the pack.

They lost it in their kicking game in first half.

 

[Philip_Smith007]

Malitalo seemed to be passionate about playing.

 

[Matua]

Tonga had no halves....their forwards nearly matched ours..

No they didn't. Their overhyped pack was a damp squib. The reason their kicking game was so average is because for most of the match they were kicking out of their half because their pack wasn't getting any go forward. Meanwhile a guy like Leota was coming on for us and just eating metres.

Taumalolo's best run was in the 70th minute meanwhile Tapine was making post contact metres every time he took the ball up.

Their lack of halves didn't matter when their pack can't fire, when they beat us in 2017 they didn't have any decent halves either.

 

[jaseg]

Yeah I gotta agree that Tonga's pack got their shit pushed in. SST/AFB went alright, and that's about it.

Still, their halves were pretty bad on top of that. Staggs is only a 6 if you have a dominant 7, and Amone is probably a 6 himself. I would've liked to see them throw the young Katoa kid out there at 7 (with Amone at 6) just because selfishly I wanted to see what he's got - and Tui/Ata were unavailable as other options.

 

[Beavers Headgear]

Didn’t see a huge amount of it unfortunately but what I did see we were impressive

did Olakau’atu barely get a run for Tonga ? Didn’t spot him much when I was watching

 

[Penrose Warrior]

The TV commentary (apparently NRL stats) had Manu in the high 200s, and the other mob (Fox Sports, I presume) had him in the high 300s in metres gained. Staggers me you could be that far apart?

I actually thought Manu, whilst his running was destructive, kinda played without structure and actually cramped what Brown and Hughes were trying to do.

More impressive was JFH and Tapine, they smashed Tonga apart. NAS was pretty good too.

 

[SpaceMonkey]

On a negative note how sh!t is Aucklands weather haha

No shitter than Sydney this year!