Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

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...

 Before I dive into this, I want to say that I’ve watched 17 of the 18 games (weird broadcasting choices meant I missed Japan v Italy) and enjoyed watching most of them. At least 12, maybe more. So, as a spectacle, at least for a rugby tragic like me, it’s been great.  As a competition, The Nations Championship, I don’t care. I’m aware of who is ranked where in each table, but that’s because I’ve spent time haunting various websites that are shoving that information in my face rather than any real interest. Maybe, come finals week, I’ll care more, but I doubt it. However, it’s brand new. Maybe in ten years time I’ll care more when there’s some history to it, and some rivalry has built up. But at the moment, there are some rivalries, but they’re more within the groups than between them. In August New Zealand and South Africa are going to have The Greatest Rivalry series. There are definitely rivalries between the Home Nations that are over a century old, nearly 150 years now, a...

 Into the final week of the July window. This piece will look solely at this weekend's performances. I aim to write another piece about the overall Nations Championship opening three rounds and the concept overall from both a fans perspective and my take on the coach's perspective(s).  Australia  There were a lot of options here really, but Australia were low on confidence and could easily have lost this game. Instead they came out fired up and blew Italy off the park. Italy are not a great side, but they’re better than what we saw here, and that’s really due to what the Wallabies allowed them to do. Schmidt's farewell might not have been a great run, but it ended on a high. They fell off a bit in the second half, some of that was an improvement from Italy, some was a tiny loss of focus from the Wallabies - it’s hard to maintain that focus when you’re six tries to one ahead - but they remained the better side, if not as dominant.  New Zealand  Officially this wa...