Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

  The Build-Up Before this match these two teams most recently both played South Africa, with wildly different results.  New Zealand lost a series, 3-1, in South Africa, to what we might call the Bokke senior side. Essentially everyone on the pitch had multiple World Cup winner's medals and about a million caps (neither part is quite true, but looking at the team sheets you get that impression). Gradually, as the attrition wore more severely on the All Blacks, the matches went from an All Black victory to a close Boks' win to a bit of a hiding in the final test. Although this isn't the place, I think the Kiwis will have learnt more from this than the South Africans. They know the areas where they have to improve, and despite the results getting worse, we saw them improve in some of them during the series, and as they have time to really develop systems I expect to see bigger improvements over the next year. I'm not sure the Bokke have much more they can wring out of the...

  South Africa Women v Wales There are really two things to say about this match, and they’re both good for Wales.  First, in the game against NZ that I talked about a few weeks ago, and the game against the USA that I didn’t watch beyond the highlights, South Africa really dominated at the set piece and their driving mauls after lineouts were a fearsome weapon. The Welsh were not perfect against these weapons, they got pushed off a scrum put in to concede the first South African try, and gave up another after a lineout and good maul. However, those were the exceptions, not the norm, and Wales disrupted the South African lineout and maul routinely and were probably about even, or slightly beaten, in the scrums overall, which is an excellent performance against a strong pack.  The other thing would be the Welsh momentum, for want of a better term. Wales basically dominated every aspect of the first half. South Africa had, generously, five good minutes, and were good enough...

First, sorry this is late. I wrote this at the normal time, then life got in the way. Before I dive into the reviews properly, the Top 14 has restarted. They have reduced the time on the shot clocks for penalties and conversions, this is a local variation, the global experiment stays the same. I’ve seen one kicker timed out, that’s in two weeks, I think I saw one other kicker in all the years since it was introduced, so it feels like it has bite. But, also, the elite kickers seem to have adapted just fine. Those who are “merely” excellent - and in that group are names like Hastoy and Jaminet who have both kicked for France at test level - seem to struggle. The easy kicks mostly go over, but longer and wider kicks that you would have expected them to make are being missed. For example, last year Jaminet kicked 75% from over 50m, out to about 58m straight in front of the posts. Yesterday he missed from 48m straight in front. Conversions on the 15m line were missed, and there wasn’t a win...

  South Africa Women v Black Ferns This match had a few more twists and turns but, in essence was played in two styles, depending on who was in control of the ball. If the Black Ferns kept the ball in hand, and in the field of play, they scored pretty much at will. If the SA Women, or the referee (who was also from SA which helps explain the huge imbalance in the penalty count), got the play to set pieces, then they looked much better.  Unfortunately for the SA Women, set piece opportunities were relatively few and far between. The Black Ferns' handling was excellent, the stats say 13 turnovers lost but I think most of those are spilled high balls under pressure. There were a couple of knocks on, but not many. Penalties to SA and then lineouts tended to relieve pressure, but they then lost shape and handed the ball back to the women in black. If they spilt ball, the Black Ferns rarely need a scrum, they could take the advantage. They even scored two tries whilst down to 13 for...

  South Africa v New Zealand, Test Two If last week’s game was summed up by South African dropped ball unproductive entries into the 22, this game was summed up by a stat that’s not really recorded - the unwillingness of the referee to blow the whistle.  The scrums were a shambles, and some, maybe most, of that was his fault - the cadence between bind and set in particular was all over the place. As short as 2s, as long as 10s. Crouch to bind was pretty consistently 3s. Yes, I timed it because it was so noticeably all over the place. (in the later test there was a bit of variation, but it was about 2-4s so the players still had to listen, and react, but weren't just waiting forever.) If both sides are a mess, and they were sometimes, a chat or better yet a fast reset. But if you’re only talking to one side, blow the fucking whistle. (Again, comparing to the later match, BOK spoke to the front rows once. Gus about four times, and once he called them all over, then only spoke to...

 It's rare that a single stat really sums up the match so completely. But at the end of this match, if you look at the points per entry into the 22, one side had 0.7, the other 3.6, and the side with the higher value won, comfortably, 33-16 and five tries to one. If you watched the match, it's probably fair to say that one adage initially seemed to have been pretty thoroughly demolished: the South African forwards were largely dominant, at least in the set piece. They smashed the All Black scrum. The stats say that the AB won a slightly higher percentage, but don't record the number of scrum penalties that they conceded. The stats record the Boks only had 4 scrums and won 3 for 75%, the AB 14 and won 11 for 78%. I’m not going back to count scrum penalties specifically, I am pretty sure only one of the ten the Boks conceded was at the scrum, maybe two. The AB conceded 14 penalties, and they weren’t all at the scrum, but it’s possible as many as ten were. So trusting that ini...