Mid-year Internationals: week 4
Mid-year Internationals: week 4
Times in BST. Sorry SH. Wales already won by a point, so probably best match already done. Anyone want to predict score lines for the rest? Think I'll watch the Chile on iplayer later, not feeling the need to watch that one live
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Cannot see any upsets sadly
NZ - 20ish Aus - 12ish SA - 50+ Sco - 40+ Arg - 20ish
Schmidt has kinda necessarily selected a team with a lot of changes as its the last chance to get some game time before TRC starts. It looks like a lot of changes but he has selected combinations together so cohesion should be better than you might think. Still, Georgia are a decent team and even after these Wales wins the Wallabies might be short on confidence.
Looking at the ABs performance at home against England, and the selections from Razor if its Lautoka style hot & steamy in San Diego I could see Fiji pushing the ABs - especially if the lineout is even worse this week and we have arguably 2 worse throwers in Aumua and Bell so it could happen. Matthew Carley is a decent referee but it'll be NH style breakdown so anything could happen, Fiji have really good forwards.
Unlike Schmidt, Razor hasn't really selected combinations either, Aumua is propped by 2 Crusaders, then when the front row swaps, Bell a Crusader will be propped by a Highlander & a Hurricane. Instead of playing Barrett-Proctor in the centres, he's split up the Hurricanes pairing to give Jordie a rest coming on from the bench. We've got no specialist playing 7 - Blackadder is very much a utility loose forward. And then in part due to injuries and perhaps favouratism coming on at halfback is Hotham who is for sure a prospect but couldn't even nail the starting 9 in a terrible Crusaders team.
Anyway, its very much Kiwi rugby fan style to rose tint things so i'm just trying to play devils advocate - but if i'm Fiji this is definitely not a team to be scared of. Get everything right, get lucky with the weather, a card or two due to some accidental head contact and it could be all on against a team which might not have the tools (in the forwards especially) to right the ship.
Experimental time really. First big post world cup window, and pre big tourney preparation, not a huge suprise to see new faces and combos, and testing olderones too. I wouldn't expect much of anything starting tomorrow to start for TRC on any side
I wonder if the ABs need to look to how SA use their forward bench; start Aumua, Williams & Tosi, for a bunch of size and grunt in the first half then bring on Taylor, de Groot & Lomax for the 2nd 40-45 minutes as needed.
Our usual method has been to bring those guys on later in the game when it starts to break up; but against teams like Ireland, South Africa, England they're not fatiguing (bc of all the pissing about referees allow) so the game isn't breaking up.
Its kinda how I see Schmidt using Tupou / Alaalatoa - that way he gets the most out of a big body and still has a great player to come on in the 2nd half when things might get tighter.