Dominant Blues hand heavy defeat to Highlanders despite late fight-back from southerners

I think the game is actually in a really good place atm, it has a really good balance between attack and defense. Changing to that ruling would heavily swing it into the defenders favour, so you need to come up with another law change favouring attack to keep an equal balance.

Another game gifted to you with your opposition forced to play with 14 men for the last 10 minutes of the game.

Perhaps next year!

He was shifting to make the tackle as he should, and obviously pulled out as he should when he had to decide his man, Kolbe, wasn't going to receive the ball.

The fact that the ball had been kicked downfield during that sequence is not something he's going to know or should be expected to know. The laws should really be changed for the onus to be on Kolbe to run into the hole, not the player (even if for player safety alone, with his injury, they should be made to avoid contact).

It's not something we should have to say that were thankful for, it should be the case with every ref, but obviously it's not.

Did I hear right and Darry was an unused sub as well? Strange ploy and one I think I can definitely remember being in Fosters playbook when his teams were struggling a lot.

If you bring a level headed discussion that all changes. Don't be like those other lowest common denominators another words.

Hardly "unbelievably" unlucky, that is text book yellow card. Sure the refs had started getting more lenient on them recently but that was a good call I felt.

Are you trying to start some sort of counter conspiracy to help out your tired forwards SB haha? Agreed though, at all the small things the ref didn't seem to like SA at all.

Both those players on the wing is a 'safe' option. Both at the back and you're having to handle a different team. Sure those teams are likely to be weaker on defense but who cares about defense?

Beaudi didn't do anything? I think he did get more space yes, but he had cover coming over both times and just ran the line, couldn't do much more (and I'm not sure what Jordan could have done different if he had the same situation).

Agree that Jordan needs to get back to his electric best before he reaches Fassi level, but at least his general rugby play helped drive the better direction in the backline tonight. Big improvement from last week.

Aumua was also good and should have back on (regardles of, or perhaps exactly because of, how good Codie was).

I want to see Hotham, he's been the best half I've seen at 3 or 4 levels of the game now.

Not sure you were making the point, but yes ALB needs to be kept (and seen if he can improve there on Barrett) at 12. This test confirmed he's also not upto the required distributing at 13.

Would love to see Proctor (have game time to prove his a better benchie option, perhaps as the only back, than ALB) get a go but Reiko's defense was exceptional this morning.

Fully agree with back three. Would love to see Beauden remain in the team, or even the 23, but I suspect Love and Nanai-Seturo are far better options now.