British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand

bendertherobot

Surrey Commuter wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Interesting sour grapes comment on twitter yesterday along the lines of 'you should win, try playing a team made up of the southern 4 nations.'

Not a bad point, but, which AB would you drop to make way?

Do you not think we should have a British or Irish coach?

Like county cricket maybe we could have a quota for overseas players.

What relevance does either point have to mine?

meanredspider

bendertherobot wrote:

Interesting sour grapes comment on twitter yesterday along the lines of 'you should win, try playing a team made up of the southern 4 nations.'

Not a bad point, but, which AB would you drop to make way?

This just raises the point that in some sports we split GB up and in some we don't (Ireland in rugby is a bit weird anyway). If the Southern team competed at, say, the Olympics as one team then fair enough. Besides all that, anybody who has played any even remotely sophisticated team sport (and rugby union is pretty sophisticated) knows how difficult it is to pull together a team of people that don't often play together. I'd suggest that, if it were possible, an ABs team would beat a team made up of Southern Hemisphere players (incl ABs - obviously impossible) for that very reason.

It's just sour grapes. One of the Kiwis cheated, got caught and got sent off. It's not as if the game was entirely one-sided up until that point anyway.

Whatever, the decider should be a hard-fought game - the Kiwis out for revenge and the Lions full of confidence.

surrey_commuter

bendertherobot wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

bendertherobot wrote:

Interesting sour grapes comment on twitter yesterday along the lines of 'you should win, try playing a team made up of the southern 4 nations.'

Not a bad point, but, which AB would you drop to make way?

Do you not think we should have a British or Irish coach?

Like county cricket maybe we could have a quota for overseas players.

What relevance does either point have to mine?

Lol - misread your post. I thought they were moaning about the intl. nature of our British Isles team

Pross

To be fair the All Blacks are basically a combined team of all the best players from New Zealand and the South Seas islands anyway.

secretsqirrel

bendertherobot wrote:

Interesting sour grapes comment on twitter yesterday along the lines of 'you should win, try playing a team made up of the southern 4 nations.'

Not a bad point, but, which AB would you drop to make way?

They should try it. They will then understand how much of a disadvantage it is managing a compilation team rather than a team with a development and support structure.

Garry H

Kiwis = born whingers.

pblakeney

Garry H wrote:

Kiwis = born whingers.

Really? I found them to be far more upbeat then our nation of depressed moaners.
Don't the Aussies call us whinging Poms?

meanredspider

PBlakeney wrote:

Garry H wrote:

Kiwis = born whingers.

Really? I found them to be far more upbeat then our nation of depressed moaners.
Don't the Aussies call us whinging Poms?

Yeah - we're always moaning about ourselves...

bendertherobot

4 week ban for SBW. Pretty much puts to rest any thoughts that it was not a red. (Not that there were too many of those)

crispybug2

bendertherobot wrote:

4 week ban for SBW. Pretty much puts to rest any thoughts that it was not a red. (Not that there were too many of those)

Amongst my rugby playing mates the general consensus is that SBW got off pretty lightly!

FatTed

Last time ABs lost at Eden Park was 1993

bendertherobot

FatTed wrote:

Last time ABs lost at Eden Park was 1993

laurentian

Saturday will be very interesting. I'm expecting a ferocious game - Lions on the verge of immortality, New Zealand needing to rebuild it.

crispybug2

The Lions name an unchanged team for the first time since 1993

Still think it'll be a All Black victory

Pross

Huge kick for Farrel here!

Pross

All square with 2 minutes left. Some donkey has gone offside from the kick off!

Pross

Warburton showing why he's captain.

Pross

Series drawn, probably a fair result. The Lions missed a few chances in the second half but got away with one at end there thanks to Warburton persuading Poit to give an accidental offside with 2 minutes to go although the Lions also had some decisions go against them.

meanredspider

So much for the ABs destroying the Lions

Pross

meanredspider wrote:

So much for the ABs destroying the Lions

I'm surprised I have to admit. I can't work out if the Lions played well in this series or if the ABs were off form. The matches had high intensity but both sides seemed to make lots of errors and discipline was poor at times. Unfortunately it has probably ensured Gatland will stage in charge of Wales for a while longer yet.

meanredspider

I have a very firm conviction that belief in sport is really powerful. I've felt it myself in my own sport but seen it so often in others. Lions will have had belief and ABs a seed of doubt.

narbs

Sean O'Brien in the running for tw*t of the tour.

bendertherobot

Meh, it's not as if it's not a Scot, Welsh or English player always doing this after a tour

dinyull

It's amazing in all of the criticism of players in sports becoming robots that a player who gives his honest opinion is called a tw@.

Give me media trained vanilla answers all day every day........

Pross

I doubt they'd have won 3-0 but I certainly think there are more innovative coaches out there. But then maybe with the limited amount of time the squad has to gel it needs a coach who keeps things basic. Gatland has had his time and his brand of rugby now looks tired, slow and boring much as Woodward's did by 2004.

crispybug2

Pross wrote:

I doubt they'd have won 3-0 but I certainly think there are more innovative coaches out there. But then maybe with the limited amount of time the squad has to gel it needs a coach who keeps things basic. Gatland has had his time and his brand of rugby now looks tired, slow and boring much as Woodward's did by 2004.

But if you watch a lot of New Zealand's play during the test series they employed Gatball quite a lot themselves!

Pross

Scott Baldwin seemed to misunderstand the concept of joining the Lions!