yep they talk about thurston etc, they were also missing Luke Lewis and Sam Thaiday and Mat Scott
Yeah their veteran forwards carried those great sides and made it very hard to beat them, Paul Gallen is another very experienced rep footy player of course. Can't forget what Greg Inglis and Jared Hayne did for that side either, they have gone from being stacked with freaks to a team of very good NRL players.
The origin is bollocks now.the first game was riddled with errors, the big body contact has gone, it really has lost its special category status...and most of all....they aren't using that trial hit out to smash international sides a week or two later.
There has been some lofty projections about the future of the game with the like of Tony Kemp saying we will dominate more than any other time in our history over the next ten years.
I get why he's getting excited, our depth is where we are being pleasantly surprised, but not unlike Aussies problems, we are going to face our own serious succession problems.
Who will replace
Johnson ? Where is the next Foran or Marshall coming from ?
Watching the replay that game is really weird as far as Transtasman clashes go, a lot of unspoken rules were broken.\
The game starts off in typical fashion with an instant try to Aussie. Every Kangaroo side I've ever seen does that.
Then you have that early period where New Zealands chances are decided....often times Aussie convert those early chances and the game is dead inside thirty minutes.
In games where we win we keep Aussies to 12 or less in the first half, and quite often need to keep them to that range in the second half too.
Most of all in the games we have won in the past the Aussies and Kiwis slug it out set for set, shared possesion, and the Kiwis have to hang on for grim death on their own Try line.
Saturday night we took control early, ten or so minutes into it, we are controlling the pace of the game (fast) and controlling the ruck (no offloads from Aussie, the Kiwis, especially Proctor and Hargreaves wrap up the ball and lock it down, dominate in the tackle).
We were dominant in post contact meters, our forwards barely needed big Ken, they rolled over the top of Aussie. There was some criticism by Tony Kemp of the constant dropping a player back on the inside ( he was right we looked like the North Queencland Cowboys, especially during that back to back repeat sets period in the first half) but the real point was we were camping in their half and holding the ball, forcing them to play long range).
If that wasn't strange enough, seeing Aussie start to stress and be forced into taking risks, the second half was the twilight zone, the kiwis came out and played even better than they had in the first half (at over eighty percent completions thanks very much).
Interesting to hear the Kiwi players say that Madge kept talking about winning all week 'you will win the ruck....the kicking.....post contact meters' every sentence was win this win that...they recon they couldn't see anything other than win win win.
I guess seeing our débutantes and lesser known players like Manu, Masters, Smith, seize Trys seemingly from out of nowhere was a bit of a flash back to the old school Kiwis sides, where relative unknowns would grow an extra leg and play ten foot tall and bullet proof.
Very pleasing to see the Kiwis shift the ball to the edges off the half chances Smith
Johnson and Marty Tapau created.
That Kiwis team was intense man. Brandon Smith hanging his head during the Anthem to hide his tears Joseph Manu was moved - (Latrell Mitchell in contrast was totally self absorbed grinning like a smug fk during theirs), Liu looked like he wanted to kill someone (seen that look before, scary, lucky it was only a sports contest) Proctor had his game face on, JWH looked like he had grown up finally, the body language really stood out from that kiwis side, really impressive turn around from our dark recent past.
