[2016 Rugby Championship] New Zealand v Australia (27/08/2016)

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

I think its very telling. SBW obviously rates Hansen, for him to come out and say something like that is kinda unusual. And im not a SBW fan in any shape or form.

And TBH SBW is spot on the money this time. That award that cheika got was a bloody disgrace to the sport.

You're right Cheika should never have gotten it, it was disgraceful. Stuart Lancaster clearly deserved it, did World Rugby not see the way in which England decimated Uruguay? Absolutely fantastic display of World Class coaching. How he was snubbed is beyond me #JusticeforLancaster

 

[RoosTah]

In 2015, in Hanson also deserved to win the Coach of the year, for sure. But World Rugby needs to recognise the efforts of all countries. ABs already wiped out player of the year , team of the year. Hanson met his expectations, he coached a team that were favourites to victory.

Cheika and Wallabies exceeded expectations. World Rugby wanted to recognise Wallabies achievements in 2015 and the Coach of the Year seemed liked a logical award.

A win is a win and a loss is a loss, doesn't matter who was taking which game seriously or not.

I think people need to understand the difference between great coaching and great systems... Hansen has continued Henry's incredible success at the All Blacks, but the mark of a truly great coach isn't whether he can come into a gig with the dream team and not f##k everything up, it's coaching on limited resources and doing something no one expected.

On that measure I thought Cheika was a worthy candidate in 2015, but in retrospect it definitely should have gone to Eddie Jones - what Jones did with Japan was orders of magnitude more impressive than anything anyone else did last year.

Hansen may well be a brilliant coach in his own right, but there's plenty of examples out there of very average guys who coached all star teams and looked like geniuses; in league Chris Anderson couldn't coach his way out of a paper bag and yet led the Kangaroos to a clean sweep of England when he was inexplicably given the national coaching gig over a decade ago and Tim Sheens coached them to a record winning run that included a thrashing of a very talented looking NZ Kiwis side in the 2013 Rugby League World Cup final despite being pretty well useless at the Tigers for years. Both guys just had the good fortune to be coaching sides bursting at the seams with freakish talent and so their job was pretty easy.

 

[smartcooky]

Oh come on dr0p kick, please do stop being so ignorant.

Hansen has the best pool of players in the world to select from, I won't deny he's an incredible coach and easily the best in the world, but my local club coach could've won that World Cup with those players available to him.

Over the last 8 years Hansen has been almost certainly the most dominant coach across any sport, but the 2015 Coach of the Year Award wasn't for the last 8 years, it was for 2015, and in 2015 Cheika turned a failing Oz side into a team that reached the RWC Final while Hansen turned the #1 side into the world into the #1 side in the world. In 2015 as an individual year Cheika deserved to win the Coach of the Year.

I think you seriously under-estimate Steve Hansen's role in this team. If you think he "just coaches the players" then you have a lot to learn about the way NZ rugby works.

Take a look at what happened to England under SCW after they won the 2003 RWC. A few retirements of key players and they turned from a team of champs into a team of chumps. Reason? SCW had no succession plan, no long term plan at all

After 2011, we lost a lot of players, and even more (818 test caps of experience) after the 2015 RWC and yet it does not appear to have slowed them down. Just having a great talent pool does not allow you to have a monkey for a coach and still maintain your dominance... you can check with the Brazilian Football team to verify this!

Hansen and his team have planned for the retirement of key players such as McCaw, Carter, Mealamu, Nonu, C. Smith, Slade et al, by careful and skillful management of playing time for their eventual replacements. The result of this planning is that the replacement players have plenty of experience when they eventually have to step up to the no 1 role and starting position

When McCaw retired, his replacement, Sam Cane already had 30 caps under his belt (16 of them starting)
When Carter retired, his replacements, Aaron Cruden and Beauden Barrett already had 70 caps between them; 35 each
When Mealamu retired, his replacement, Dane Coles already had 36 caps under his belt (21 of them starting)
When Smith and Nonu retired, their replacements Fekitoa, Crotty and SBW had 52 tests between them (Fekitoa 10, Crotty 14, SBW 28)

None of this happens by accident or luck, it happens through the establishment of faultless systems and highly competent management. Hansen has taken an excellent team under Graham Henry, and made it even better. To disparage him as some useless chimpanzee coach in charge of an excellent team is to completely ignore the vital role he has played, and it still playing, in making the team what it has become.

 

[RoosTah]

I think you seriously under-estimate Steve Hansen's role in this team. If you think he "just coaches the players" then you have a lot to learn about the way NZ rugby works.

Take a look at what happened to England under SCW after they won the 2003 RWC. A few retirements of key players and they turned from a team of champs into a team of chumps. Reason? SCW had no succession plan, no long term plan at all

England is a vastly different kettle of fish mate, and your analysis ignores the fact that they have no real central authority controlling all the clubs like you do with NZ Rugby - they're all private owners with their own agendas that have often stifled player releases and development programs. Woodward himself confirmed this after quitting post RWC2003 - he managed to get buy in up until that win, but then it was all back to personal interest first and zero cooperation. You just don't have that issue in NZ - your system is structured like a perfect pyramid with complete buy in at all levels and basically the entire system revolves around corporation All Blacks.

That doesn't mean succession planning wasn't handled well; it was, but all those systems and the clean out and restructuring of NZ rugby is still largely a legacy of Henry that Hansen inherited. Sure, he's kept it going and may even have refined it, but at the end of the day he's still just running the house that Henry built and so we just don't know what the man's worth is on his own.

I know you kiwis think this is sacrilege, but as I wrote above a coach's worth should be measured on what he can build by himself with limited resources, not whether he can walk into a brilliantly set up system and keep it running smoothly.

 

[nzlizard]

I think it is safe to that Hansen is the best coach in the world and has been for the last 2-3 years.

When he got the job from Henry a lot of people thought he would fail when the had to start selecting his own players and building his own team, what we have seen in the last 2-3 years is a master class in succession planning and talent building.

Reading over posts from previous thread and other forums, everyone said this was the year to knock the AB's over and that Aus would be deadly this year, NZ lost so many players and people doubted we could recover and Aus has a young dynamic squad.

Part of the AB's success is the pool of players to pick from, no arguing that, however the reason these players are so good is that talent is identified early and they are given the opportunity early to get involved in the AB camps and culture, however this culture is built by Hansen and his team, not just maintained from Henry but built ontop by Hansen. This is coaching success.

He determines the style and game plan they play, he manages the bench that has become the best in any rugby anywhere.

These are strategic coaching practices, something that Cheika has shown such a lack of this year.

 

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

Succession planning is quite easy to do when you're guaranteed to win every game. For example, if England want to blood some new caps they have to wait to face Italy, Fiji etc. and bring them off the bench because they have to fight for their victories and can't afford to be putting in some fresh caps when they feel like it. The ABs just blooded a 21 year old 12 vs the 3rd ranked side in the world (I think?). My point is that it's not to impressive that Hansen had players to take over from Mccaw, Carter etc. because he can throw out young guns and get them caps whenever he wants. Other teams can't.

 

[austingtir]

This is whats wrong with the Wallabies. Cheika is the biggest cry baby ever:
https://nz.sports.yahoo.com/rugby/a/32460931/cheika-blasts-poite-files-rugby-complaint/
You can see after every call against him he's up in the coaching box acting like a caged organgutan that just had its banana stolen.

Poite was crap theres no doubt about that but I could see calls going both ways that were extremely suspect in particular the scrums.
Its not Poites fault if Moore is a ****house captain that has no idea how to go about approaching a reff without coming off as being a total ******.


Hansen never acted like this after the Sydney loss last year or when bad calls go against us he just puts it aside and gets on with it.

 

[GoTheNaki]

Succession planning is quite easy to do when you're guaranteed to win every game. For example, if England want to blood some new caps they have to wait to face Italy, Fiji etc. and bring them off the bench because they have to fight for their victories and can't afford to be putting in some fresh caps when they feel like it. The ABs just blooded a 21 year old 12 vs the 3rd ranked side in the world (I think?). My point is that it's not to impressive that Hansen had players to take over from Mccaw, Carter etc. because he can throw out young guns and get them caps whenever he wants. Other teams can't.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel the difference between the two nations is quite simple. If you are good, you are good. 17, 18, 19, 20, it doesn't matter in NZ. You will receive exactly what you need, in order to compete for the position you want, on any team. I don't quite believe that this happens in the UK. A lot of clubs seem to put limits on themselves, and their players. E.g. "This player is too young", "We've had this player here for years before this other one" etc. This kind of thing here, breeds competition, talent flows from everywhere, our structure here is made for it. But this is what happens with a #1 sport in a country. If you had the football structure you have there in your rugby, and a tenth of the popularity, you would be fighting for the #1 rank every single year.

 

[Pieter Steph du Teague]

This is whats wrong with the Wallabies. Cheika is the biggest cry baby ever:
https://nz.sports.yahoo.com/rugby/a/32460931/cheika-blasts-poite-files-rugby-complaint/
You can see after every call against him he's up in the coaching box acting like a caged organgutan that just had its banana stolen.

Poite was crap theres no doubt about that but I could see calls going both ways that were extremely suspect in particular the scrums.
Its not Poites fault if Moore is a ****house captain that has no idea how to go about approaching a reff without coming off as being a total ******.


Hansen never acted like this after the Sydney loss last year or when bad calls go against us he just puts it aside and gets on with it.

TBF Hansen meeting Poite for tea the day before the game does seem pretty dodgey. Obviously it had no real bearing on who won the game, and I don't think Cheika should be wasting his time filing useless and petty complaints, but nonetheless, it is dodgey.

 

[The Jones Boy]

... and there I was thinking this was a thread for the discussion of the second test between Aussie and the AB's ... what was I thinking...

Not a great game from a spectators point of view.
The Wallabies were actively trying their guts out to slow down the play the ball.
At every opportunity that the AB's had possession.
This makes for a more stifled and tight game.
Real test match fare.
The referee didn't seem to grasp what was going on until it was too late, if he saw it at all.
But hey, it's up to the AB's to play whats in front of them.
The AB's seemed to fail to find third gear and a lot of that is down to the tactics that Cheika used to try to stifle the game. Fair play to him, he stopped the AB's from getting 40+ points on the board.
It was a defeat but nothing like the week before in Sydney.
Losing a nail biting three match series at home to England was hard enough for the Aussies but then they had to step up to face the AB's and nobody was really sure how the AB's were going to go in Sydney especially with a few injuries.
Nobody suspected that the Aussies were not going to front up. Not even the Aussies.
So they fronted up this weekend with a greater desire and hunger but it still didn't matter.

Now you can point at their pack, or their bench, or their coach, or their injuries. You can put all those elements into the same box and it still would't stop them from being a very good team except for the one key missing ingredient.
Confidence.
The Aussies are renowned for their cocky swagger and when they have their tails up they are a tough side to beat. There is no replacement or substitute for confidence.
Aussie need a different captain.
He is not the kind of leader who instils confidence in the players around him and like Robshaw, the captaincy kind of holds him back in his own game. He seems to want to actively agitate and upset referees in test matches, thats never going to be a helpful activity.
If Aussie could just pull out a win and possibly string a couple together they would quickly start to look a different side.
See how Eddie Jones has brought confidence into the England team after their RWC debacle.
String together some wins in the 5 Nations, build the confidence and then BAM! break new records away in Australia.
The Wallaby brand is currently getting dragged through the mud after 5 games against the 2 best teams in world rugby.
They need to play some lesser teams and get winning ways back into their diet. That will do them the world of good.

Here's my 2 cents worth.
For the last 12 months, the best player in the world , for me, is Jerome Kaino.
What a Giant of a player. He is so important to the AB's and his work at ruck time, or in the line out, 'monitoring' opposition open side flankers, or charging down kicks and scoring tries, or most importantly, taking hits from the opposition and bouncing back up and delivering enormous legal tackles on the opposition, and of course his engine, for me Jerome Kaino is the stand out no.6 in the world and the best player in world rugby.
Always a pleasure to watch this guy take the field.

 

[ianw16]

TBF Hansen meeting Poite for tea the day before the game does seem pretty dodgey. Obviously it had no real bearing on who won the game, and I don't think Cheika should be wasting his time filing useless and petty complaints, but nonetheless, it is dodgey.

Didn't happen, according to Hansen: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11701192

 

[austingtir]

TBF Hansen meeting Poite for tea the day before the game does seem pretty dodgey. Obviously it had no real bearing on who won the game, and I don't think Cheika should be wasting his time filing useless and petty complaints, but nonetheless, it is dodgey.

Hansen was just on news said he said Gday to poite because same hotel and thats it, the story is complete BS.


Winge winge winge pretty much sums up the Aussies right now. Cant blame them though I guess bet they are wishing they kept dingo Deans on about now.

- - - Updated - - -

Here's my 2 cents worth.
For the last 12 months, the best player in the world , for me, is Jerome Kaino.
What a Giant of a player. He is so important to the AB's and his work at ruck time, or in the line out, 'monitoring' opposition open side flankers, or charging down kicks and scoring tries, or most importantly, taking hits from the opposition and bouncing back up and delivering enormous legal tackles on the opposition, and of course his engine, for me Jerome Kaino is the stand out no.6 in the world and the best player in world rugby.
Always a pleasure to watch this guy take the field.

Funny how I said this before the game and got the usual snide comments from the band of merry men on here.

At the rate he's going he should certainly be playing next year against the Lions and maybe even another WC but thats a stretch. I reckon he's easily our best forward atm. Alot of the work he does goes unnoticed.

 

[RoosTah]

This is whats wrong with the Wallabies. Cheika is the biggest cry baby ever:
https://nz.sports.yahoo.com/rugby/a/32460931/cheika-blasts-poite-files-rugby-complaint/
You can see after every call against him he's up in the coaching box acting like a caged organgutan that just had its banana stolen.

No mate, what's wrong with the wallabies is there's no production line of talent and Rugby's profile in Australia has fallen through the floor and probably in a worse place now than it was in the 1960s.

Me and the 6 or so Australians left watching Union were all pretty resigned to this loss, but not many of us think it's Cheika's fault - in reality it's just the result of over a decade of mismanagement by the ARU that has killed the juniors stream and the public profile of the game.

Recently on Triple M radio they went to downtown sydney to see if people knew who the Wallabies biggest players were, and man it was embarrassing. The town has more AFL fans than Union now, and THAT is what is wrong with the Wallabies - not Cheika getting annoyed at Hansen talking to the ref before a big game.

 

[austingtir]

No mate, what's wrong with the wallabies is there's no production line of talent and Rugby's profile in Australia has fallen through the floor and probably in a worse place now than it was in the 1960s.

Me and the 6 or so Australia's left watching Union were all pretty resigned to this loss, but not many of us think it's Cheika's fault - in reality it's just the result of over a decade of mismanagement by the ARU.

Yep mismanagement got rid of the best Coach australia was likely to have since Macqueen and Eddie Jones. Should of kept the Dingo on instead of backstabbing the crap out of him. Players like O' Connor if controlled properly could of been gold for you guys far better player if he'd been managed right than Foley or Quade put it that way.

 

[RoosTah]

Yep mismanagement got rid of the best Coach australia was likely to have since Macqueen and Eddie Jones. Should of kept the Dingo on instead of backstabbing the crap out of him. Players like O' Connor if controlled properly could of been gold for you guys far better player if he'd been managed right than Foley or Quade put it that way.

You're kidding right? I was a big supporter of Robbie, but he had longer in charge at the wallabies than any other couch in history and his record wasn't exactly great.

This idea that all we need is the right coach is just garbage - we've cycled through a bunch in the last few years, but all of them have had to confront the fact that the cupboard is empty on the talent front and any promising players that do emerge - guys like Latrell Mitchell come to mind - often would just rather play Rugby League and some are even now going to the AFL too.

Seriously, rugby has dropped to about our 5th ranked sport in terms of public profile, funding and player numbers after AFL, NRL, Cricket, and even bloody soccer. It's pretty hard for a coach to fix that when they're going up against a side like the ABs where they're representing a country almost singularly obsessed with the sport. I mean, the game barely even exists in Australia outside of Sydney and Brisbane to begin with - head to Melbourne, Perth or Adelaide and try talk to anyone about a sport not AFL and you'll draw blank stares

 

[InsaneAsylum]

RoosTah you are on the money. It's a sad state of affairs - I grew up in an AFL city and I love union but it has a finite life in Aust.

The only way to resurrect union in Aust is for the Wallabies to be competitive with NZ, that will draw in the crowds again but we can't compete with NZ because we don't have the players or the structure to develop the players.

The ARU are actually lucky there are so many kiwis living in Aus and it's a short flight across as we have seen in Sydney, the crowd is almost fully black, that's the only way the ARU can make a profit - from kiwis otherwise the crowds would be dismal, they'd end up playing Bledisloe cup's at Concord Oval again. either that of say good bye to the Bledisloe and the Wallabies altogether.

 

[nzlizard]

Yeah shows just how much of a **** coach Cheika is, all the excuses in the world and not even true either.

Moore gets ignored by the ref cause hes a ******, plain and simple, if I was a ref and he behaved like that I wouldn't want to talk to him either, the other thing about that is the bull**** little slaps and pushes the aussies did, Poite spent a lot of his time actually telling the AB's not to retaliate, apart from when he spoke to both captains I don't recall him saying to Aus at any time, let it go, cause the AB's didn't really do it.

So fair enough, the ref was most prob sick of the bull**** that the Aus team was doing, it cuts down the communication channels straight away.

Don't get me wrong the AB's also did some ****ly stuff but pretty much just retaliating.

Cheikas needs to get his guys playing rugby and let the actions do the talking, instead of trying to fire his players to get the ****les in.

 

[RoosTah]

RoosTah you are on the money. It's a sad state of affairs - I grew up in an AFL city and I love union but it has a finite life in Aust.

The only way to resurrect union in Aust is for the Wallabies to be competitive with NZ, that will draw in the crowds again but we can't compete with NZ because we don't have the players or the structure to develop the players.

The ARU are actually lucky there are so many kiwis living in Aus and it's a short flight across as we have seen in Sydney, the crowd is almost fully black, that's the only way the ARU can make a profit - from kiwis otherwise the crowds would be dismal, they'd end up playing Bledisloe cup's at Concord Oval again. either that of say good bye to the Bledisloe and the Wallabies altogether.

Yeah, the kiwis are bizarrely going mental at Cheika over showing a bit of emotion and questioning an interaction between Hansen and Poiter (seriously, who gives a crap?), but the bloke is far from "the problem" with Australian rugby.

For me the alarm bells started ringing earlier in the year when the ARU couldn't even get a naming sponsor for its 3 test series against a high profile team like England. That right there said everything about where the game is at; even after an unexpectedly successful World Cup Cup we couldn't get enough corporate interest for a massive series against the team we probably hate the most.

- - -

 

[TobesHodges]

Actually all of England is what rugby needs to lose.

People like this and a Nlizard make want to leave this site Thanks for the last couple of years guys, but I'm out Ciao.

 

[Bada-Bing!]

Looks like there will be no citing

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby/...ks-under-scrutiny-from-wallabies-for-incident

Seems it looked worse than it really was.

The important bit is....

[TEXTAREA]"competition governing body Sanzaar has apparently said there will be no citings from the match, with no incidents referred by either team."[/TEXTAREA]

Wallabies management knew about it, but they didn't deem it worthy of mention to the match review committee.


ETA: ninja'd by rats

This is just ridiculous from a consistency point of view. Tom Francis got banned for Wales in this years' 6 Nations for 8 weeks for brushing Dan Cole's face and making contact in the eye area. Just because Wallabies don't make a referral, can't the citing officer make one of his own? Regardless of whether Franks meant to eye gouge or not, what his his hand doing anywhere near Douglas's face/eye area? Just seems one rule for one and one rule for others.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/35796218