He missed one difficult kick, and a couple of averagey kicks made difficult due to the wind. By slipped a lot of tackles you mean broke tackles, not missed tackles, I think? He did make some good linebreaks, but personally I don't see how they were any different to Donald's...
It was by no means a bad game for Cruden, but it wasn't a great game - though the same could be said for Donald.
You'v said that any player can look good against a poor team (like Otago) Ranger, and Waikato were poor for much of the game, so how come Cruden wasn't able to capitalise?
His goalkicking wasn't great. But maybe its just a problem of different philosophies here, i don't mind too much about goal kicking. I see the primary job of a first five is to be a play maker and direct a team.
The thing that makes Donalds broken tackles different from Crudens is the means in which they go about beating a defender. Donald busts tackles with raw strength, and Cruden slips past them with guile. At ITM cup level this difference is insignificant, a broken tackle is a broken tackle and who cares how the they manage to go about doing it.
BUT, this difference becomes very important at international level, where all the players are bigger and stronger. Cruden is still able to wrong foot and slip past defenders and will break just as many tackles at test match level, but when Donald tries to outmuscle players, it just wont work, hes strong enough to pull it off in the ITM cup but not against South Africa (unless hes playing O'Gara).
Its the
exact same situation that the selectors had in mind when they chose Conrad Smith out of the NPC and Wellington club rugby before that. There were plenty of players breaking just as many or even more tackles than him, but the difference was how. The big polynesian centres from Marist and Norths were busting tackles with strength and Conrad was slipping tackles much like Cruden does.
I would also argue that Cruden was able to capitalize to some extent. He scored one try and had more linebreaks than anyone else. Also, you have to bear in mind that Cruden doesn't have any other players to draw focus from him. When defending Waikato, you have to watch Willison, Tokula, Speight, Muliaina etc because they are all attackers that can tear through your line, this gives Donald some breathing room to attack with. Against Manawatu, Cruden is by far the biggest threat and they can afford to drift off other players to shut down his running game. You could see tonight that Jack Lam had been given direct orders to watch Cruden like a hawk. He mitigated Crudens running game somewhat but as a result Waikato didn't have his presence as often in the forwards and got done at the breakdown
