Montpellier sign Portugal star Nicolás Martins

I think Cane was a bit too highly specialized e.g. when he was in a pod, the defense were almost certain that he wasn’t going to be the ball carrier and could focus on tacking one of the other two in the pod and blocking Cane’s cleanout.

Incredibly Larkham seems to have found a bit of mongrel, goodness knows where from (he probably doesn’t even know and no one was more surprised than he was) to tell his players to stop fart arsing around.

The Reds should win if they knuckle down and earn the right to razzle dazzle. I can see their desire to want to go to another level but they aren’t there yet. Slowly slowly catchy monkey.

The Reds are lucky JS is not playing.

In 2022 I thought Papali’i would be the way forward. But he’d never quite regained the form he had in the 2022 Super Rugby season.

I think that viewing a player, in isolation, isn’t a great way of doing it. Especially as a good loose forward trio hunts as a pack; and the entire pack and wider team work as part of a system.

Requirements for player capabilities are almost like ‘Moneyball’. They can either come from one or two players e.g. lineout throwing or goal kicking, or can be spread across the team e.g. tackling, cleaning out, and turnovers.

As stated I think the missing piece with the All Blacks is that they are not busting the line and breaking up the opposition’s highly organized defenses. For instance. If the Springboks forwards had to run 40m meters up and down the field regularly, as the All Blacks have broken the line, then they will get tired and gaps will appear. The Springboks are like powerlifters, very very strong. But if the pace of the game is high they will gas out. But their defense needs to be penetrated for that to happen.

But as you mentioned it, I do recall the turnaround in bristols fortunes that season midway through so I had a look at the teams for that game and bears had around half a team on the pitch and a few more on the bench. I don’t know the crusaders well enough to have a decent view on their strength but I’m sure you will, so their squad was as follows:

15 Chay Fihaki, 14 Manasa Mataele, 13 Jone Rova, 12 Ryan Crotty, 11 Macca Springer, 10 Rivez Reihana, 9 Willi Heinz (c), 8 Christian Lio-Willie, 7 Corey Kellow, 6 Dominic Gardiner, 5 Jamie Hannah, 4 Quinten Strange, 3 Seb Calder, 2 George Bell, 1 Kershawl Sykes-Martin.Replacements: 16 Ioane Moananu, 17 George Bower, 18 Ryan Coxon, 19 Antonio Shalfoon, 20 Fletcher Anderson, 21 Noah Hotham, 22 Taha Kemara, 23 Levi Aumua, 24 Taine Robinson, 25 Jack Gray, 26 Gus Brown

that said, some of the worries people have over ireland are missplaced. They had a great 2024, started 2025 by beating England - a more impressive feat in retrospect than most realised at the time, and their age profile isn’t as bad as often implied.