Who can smell an All Black choke??

[Kiwishark]

Robbie Deans for All Blacks coach. He's no choker, his Crusaders win practically everything. Never, ever, ever have the "rest" policy again, mm kay?

Robbie Deans is a good candidate, but I tend to think we should keep the current mob, more or less. The news reckons Henry is announcing his resignation tonight, so if it were me I'd be picking Steven Hansen.

I think there's merit in having continuity (Deans doesn't have), and someone who has coached the All Blacks at the WC before, knows all about it. Obviously there will need to be some changes in how we go about preparing etc. But their track record over the 4 years has been outstanding, maybe in having a second chance at the big matches we can't get, they will have learnt from their mistakes. Maybe Deans in for Henry as assistant and we'd have all Canterbury Coaches.

We change coaches every 4 years, hasn't worked yet.

 

[mightybears]

yeah the forward pass was a shocker, but the blacks just fell asleep in the second half, a very strange display-on paper they are the best in the world-needed some harder pool matches?

a few of the stars just didn't front, and deans is a shoo in for coach you'd think

 

[edabomb]

Robbie Deans is a good candidate, but I tend to think we should keep the current mob, more or less. The news reckons Henry is announcing his resignation tonight, so if it were me I'd be picking Steven Hansen.

I think there's merit in having continuity (Deans doesn't have), and someone who has coached the All Blacks at the WC before, knows all about it. Obviously there will need to be some changes in how we go about preparing etc. But their track record over the 4 years has been outstanding, maybe in having a second chance at the big matches we can't get, they will have learnt from their mistakes. Maybe Deans in for Henry as assistant and we'd have all Canterbury Coaches.

We change coaches every 4 years, hasn't worked yet.

From everything I've seen of Hansen I think he is a halfwit. I'm all for Henry staying, maybe if we kept a losing Cup Coach we'd learn from our mistakes.

 

[JJ]

Robbie Deans is a good candidate, but I tend to think we should keep the current mob, more or less. The news reckons Henry is announcing his resignation tonight, so if it were me I'd be picking Steven Hansen.

I think there's merit in having continuity (Deans doesn't have), and someone who has coached the All Blacks at the WC before, knows all about it. Obviously there will need to be some changes in how we go about preparing etc. But their track record over the 4 years has been outstanding, maybe in having a second chance at the big matches we can't get, they will have learnt from their mistakes. Maybe Deans in for Henry as assistant and we'd have all Canterbury Coaches.

We change coaches every 4 years, hasn't worked yet.

Deans was Mitchell's assistant at the 03 WC - where we did better than at the current one, with a much worse team...

 

[Turbo]

"We wanted to show we were ready. The haka was a big moment. It was a way of challenging them face to face," France prop Pieter De Villiers said Sunday. "Certain players told me that some of the All Blacks looked away or lowered their eyes. In a way that was comforting. It hurt them mentally."

 

[weasel]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKXevf**kZZ8

 

[Manu Vatuvei]

IMO the whole "All Black dominance" theory pushed by the media did nothing for NZ in the end

Correct, it did nothing because we did nothing with the ball. But we totally dominated possession, which suggests to me that the line-out/scrum/forwards in general did their basic job better than the French.

The French loved the tight play and NZ totally played into their tactics

If they loved the tight play so much, how come they couldn't secure any ball? Was it their tactic to give NZ the ball the whole game?

NZs tactics were certainly the problem- we were too scared to get the ball wide (we started out playing some good rugby but in the second half we basically monopolised the ball and were too scared to do anything with it) and too scared to run hard at the line and even risk giving the ball away.

The media were going on about the "mistake rate", but the possession stats show that mistakes weren't the problem- we would've been better off throwing caution to the wind a bit more and making a few more mistakes.

In all honesty, New Zealand did enough to win. Our forwards outplayed theirs because after all, the forwards have the responsibility of securing possession and we killed them in that area. The ref obviously killed us (whinging or not, that's undeniable) and without the sinbinning or the forward pass try we almost certainly would have won. Where we f*cked up (and I think you're agreeing with me here) is that we played it tight and hence turned the game in to an arm wrestle. In union, it's possible to win the arm wrestle and yet lose the game. If we wanted to really blow them off the park (which we might have if we had played "pretty" and used the backs more) we needed to chance our arm.

 

[Kiwishark]

Deans was Mitchell's assistant at the 03 WC - where we did better than at the current one, with a much worse team...

I'm aware of that. Hence I separated Deans and Hansen:

I think there's merit in having continuity (Deans doesn't have)

Having Deans on board would mean each coach would have WC experience which is maybe something we've lacked, and something I think we should have.

 

[bayrep]

I have to say I have actually enjoyed this RWC we have seen some of the minnows lift - Romania, Georgia, Tonga, Fiji. Samoa were a little disappointing but they still pushed Eng. We got to see Japan score their first ever points at a RWC with a draw. We saw some good upsets in Fiji, Eng, Fra. Arg (who I picked as a dark horse) could actually go through and win the whole thing and who would have picked that 12 months ago? I haven't brought into the media hype this time which I think has helped. There has been some great tries scored and some good finishes. There has still been the blow out scores but not as many as in previous RWC and even then you have seen what it meant to the minnow teams what it meant to play the major nations on the world stage i.e. Portugal. I would be sad to see the RWC reduced to 16 teams as there has been talk of doing. We are only into our 6th world cup but we are seeing improvements. How many nations have won the soccer world cup? and that has been going for over 75 years.

 

[mightybears]

We are only into our 6th world cup but we are seeing improvements. How many nations have won the soccer world cup? and that has been going for over 75 years.

3 FROM SOUTH AMERICA[BRA,ARG,URG] AND 4 FROM EUROPE [ITA,ENG,FRA,GER] SINCE 1930.

 

[bayrep]

Thanks man, it sort of makes my point football being the true global game has had only 7 different winners since 1930 and the RWC has achieved 4 already. Thats not to say that RWC will get many more in the years to come, but this world cup has shown an improvement from the lesser teams, its been good to see.