My thoughts
espite talk about how poor NZ's scrum is, it was actually considerably stronger than Tonga's while Woodcock and Owen Franks were on. It started falling to pieces when Ben Franks came on for Woodcock (which is why I think Crockett would have been a good idea, as while both B.Franks and Afoa can scrum on both sides, they're not brillaint. Ali Williams, Ben Franks both looked pretty poor tonight. I thought both Cowan and Weepu cleared the ball far too slowly and Sam Whitelock once again didn't really show much form. Him as a blindside option still scares me. Toeava was 50/50. Touches of magic with his trade mark errors. Never understand why he has handling problems for the All Blacks but when he plays for the Blues at fullback his handling is very good, he seems always nervous. Hosea Gear would have finished his tries...just saying.
In terms of good players, Hore did very well at the breakdown I thought, seemed to have much more of an impact than anyone else. Kahui looked quality on the right wing despite a few errors. I'd still be nervous of playing Dagg in a big game, sometimes he pulls off some brilliance and other times he puts the team under pressure, but overall good game. SBW looked good at 12 despite failing to finish off any tries. Nonu was just class all game and Jerome Kaino was easily the best forward with ball in hand.
The referee was appalling. He wasted so much time, and consistantly played into Tonga's hands. The number of time a Tongan player was down with "cramp" wasted up probably close to 10 minutes and yet he didn't hurry it up untill the last few minutes of the game. The time wasted on scrum resets was appalling. For a start, the All Blacks scrum when Ben Franks was on wasn't brillaint, but half the penalties were guess work and simply wrong. Either award a penalty try or referee it correctly but don't waste 10 minutes on scrum resets. Also there were several rucks and mauls that Tonga set up that had no forward momentum and was not cleared yet he ruled in favour of Tonga, however when the All Blacks set up a rolling maul and it was going forward he'd call "use it". Not to mention some of his joke call on not releasing quick enough, especially when it was fairly quick and Tonga took three times as long. He really ruined this game as a fair contest.
Anyone else think that the opening ceremony was the most pretentious rubbish ever?! God it was wanky. Not being a dick, but I don't think I saw a single white person in the entire thing other than the Canterbury kid, the kid who looked like Peter Pan, John Key and Bernard Lapasset. It showed only Maori/PI culture, which is important but not the entire New Zealand. Wish we copy and pasted Beijing to be honest.
