Waikato to put more than the Shield on the line

Secondly, the agreement with the French League, Toulouse and UBB was to have the 5 players play as much as they can. If not, forcing guys to travel at the other end of the world to watch a game from their seats was not acceptable from that convention’s point of view.

So Galthié as they all arrived shortly before the 1st game, he had to put all 5 of them for the 2nd game, altering the cohesion.

In the end, 2 of them got injured after game 2 (Barassi and Vergnes-Taillefer).

So at least 8/9 changes were forced.

And here in France, a lot of people are angry that not all of the 42 players involved in the tour have played…! Some had game time at Twickenham, but 4 of them played 0 minute in all of the 4 games.

Couilloud and Berdeu are slightly more balanced, Pau has a more dominant 10 with Simmonds with Daubagna on his side.

I’m quite curious of the Jauneau/Plummer association this year at Clermont! An AB fly-half with an electric French scrum-half.

From the moment Owen Farrell showed up on this tour, sitting in the stands at one of the Lions games, the Lions have gone downhill, looking less organized and motivated.

It won’t be long after the tour ends that we’ll be reading about the negative effects of coach’s decision to put his out-of-form in the team... from those on the tour.

I agree that NLG/Hastoy can work pretty well, they’re well balanced, more than the strong 9 at Toulouse and the strong 10 at UBB.

And man, I’d love Danty to have a good come back, I really like the player and the guy, but I’m afraid it’s a bit too late for his playing style. But still, he could still prove very useful at LR!

That way, 3 Autumn Series + 5 6Nations + 5 ECPR + 10 Top14 games = 23 games.

With that, touring in the Summer could be more viable.

But man, that’s really just 10 out of 29 potential Top 14… For the club paying the salary, for the broadcaster paying for the product and for the viewer buying a subscription to watch the game, 1/3 is really poor…

But yeah, that’s a risky tactic that could have been better exploited by the ABs.

I would be interested to see similar stats. for the Ireland trip out to SA last year. Probably similar to the NZ trip ? And the current Lions tour out here in Australia ? With the big number of Irish players in the match day 23, would think their load would be the lightest against the others.

Just checked some: Freeman played 29 games before Lions tour, 2202 mins. Itoje 28 games, 2136 mins. Conan 23 games, 1279 mins. Aki 22 games, 1509 mins. So with that sample, the Irish bias in the 23 is a factor in the Lions favour….maybe !

Just want to point out that people constantly changing the Laws of the game have unwittingly / knowingly made South Africa change the way they play.

The current Springboks have evolved to not only compensate for the depowering of the scrums and speeding up the game but are thriving, leading the world in innovation and have become harder to beat now more than ever before.

Simply put, “the law of unintended consequences” has come full circle and bitten all of them in the @$$.

Isn’t it absolutely glorious?

Kiwis and Saffers turning on each other.

Can’t we all just, get along?

There’s no doubt Barrett is going through a somewhat lean period with his form, by his very high standards. But we also have to acknowledge he went through many seasons, back to back, as arguably our best forward bar the tireless Savea. Yes there are some question marks around his discipline, probably somewhat exaggerated. But what you couldn’t question would be his physicality, work rate and contribution as arguably our biggest contributor in the pack.

Perhaps it’s normal to go through a lean spell after so many seasons giving 100%?

And a couple of years out from a WC is probably a good time to do it. I’m sure he’ll come right - but if he doesn’t, I don’t get the impression Razor is one for blind loyalty.

He will make the hard calls if he needs to, and there are a couple of good locks to fill big Barrett’s shoes.