Trois changements pour l’Ecosse contre la France samedi

Angus Gardiner was heard on multiple occasions coaching the English around offending at the ruck & even praising them for obeying him. A bit of this is expected but there must come a time where the ref just does their job. It also avoids accusations of bias.

Aumua did not except to play 75 minutes when Taylor got concussed after 5 minutes. Fortunately Aumua had the fitness to perform at test level standards for 75 minutes

When the All Black teams were in their golden period of greatness from 2010-2015, there was no “dual playmaker” BS. Dan Carter (or Aaron Cruden, when Carter was unavailable) ran the show. Nonu would pop up as first receiver only when Carter was buried in a ruck. Nonu did often make clearance kicks outside of Carter at second receiver, but very rarely as first receiver.

The dual playmaker was a flawed concept created after the the 2017 Lions series was tied to overcome a blitz defence. Based on the All Blacks failures in 2019 and 2023, it failed.

As Steve Hansen would say, “time to flush it down the dunny” (the dual playmaking concept) rather than create revisionist history of how the Carter era played.

Dominance also really has to be a about effort and ability. It's getting harder to dominate, so you're not as likely to see "clear" dominance, but that doesn't mean such a team isn't the same head and shoulders distance above the others in areas like effort and ability. The full team, organized offense and then defense, of that Ireland era hits both marks for me well ahead of everyone on what they were doing, if not done with the ease or such wide margins in the outcomes.

So 10's shouldn't be replaced, except of course Marcus Smith who had the Poms in a winning position, for a guy coming back from injury who hadn't played recently.

Riiiiiighhttt.