Ireland lose Tadhg Furlong for All Blacks showdown - report

Otherwise you are getting into opinion if you balancing out those +s and -s.

In fairness to BB though it was also after two bad head knocks that he lost all his courage as a player. He's only just got that back this year and looking fearless again (but still has those skill limitations to do what they wanted).

His look to me was a classic 'I got the wool over this young buck this time but by jesus he's big and strong' lol

If they can unearth more players like Feyi-waboso things could change though!

To suggest a team can be good enough to flatline, having no troughs in performance ala Foster, again (or maybe he just meant under Razor), is pretty high praise.

Myself, I think they will fluctuate upto the 80's and back down again. Hard to imagine the standard of International rugby regressing backwards though, reaching the 90 mark will probably not be done again.

Are you talking about that style being good enough to achieve 85%? That would be a different discussion. But as JWH is suggesting, the all blacks style is more about how they are playing than the results, I'm also just happy to see them trying to play some actual rugby.

Sophistication can be built by a professor born coach down the line.

Looking at one of your latter points, the scrum: what would an analyst like yourself make of NZ trying to maximise the 'utility' of Williams & Tu'ungafasii - with the intent to play them together and rotate/swap sides throughout a contest?

The way you noted Williams individual binding habits, which varies like body shapes - suggests to me it could be quite a disruptive tactic to opposition? Or on the flip side, it could be employed to 'stem the bleeding' when a prop like Stuart gets into a groove!