ABs - Destroying the French twats!

Ratima gifts possession back to France with a poor kick. France on attack. Less than 5 to play.

Rieko Ioane knocks on and that could be the game . . . 

All Blacks have a penalty but they're deep in their own 22. 2 minutes to go.

Ioan e knocks it. And now the French could score.

All Blacks have a lineout inside their 22. This is last chance saloon . . .

Dmac loses it. One more chance as they get another lineout.

France win. Good game. A good night of rugby!

Jordan held up and that's the game.

Now that was a test match. All Blacks threw away too many scoring opportunities through bad decisions and lack of patience. Terrific French defense though.

Congratulations France….all these teams France, NZ, Ireland, NZ and the Boks are so close. The difference is the Boks don’t make mistakes like Ioane did at crucial moments. It’s all paper thin. 

I though France might win and on   Superbru gave then to win 7 points - but must admit that to my mind New Zealnd played better rugby than France - but two critical mistakes by NZ players gave France the advantage and they used both,   

Anyway the fact is the Tight 5 of the  Springboks - plus Du Toit. Pollard and De Allende helped.  The decided try by Kolbe set up by De Allende made the difference, .

Congrats to the commentary team on their 4 hour stint.

Lol!

Congrats to the Frogs. ABs have improved a lot but not being able to put the nail in the coffin is once again a problem. Great game though.

Welcome back JW - how areyou ad family?   

I wanted the AB's badly to win - but felt that home ground advntage could lead to a  Frog win.    I wonder why  some players make silly mistake two f which l tp French tries,   I like that new flank forwad of the AB's a lot.    Will benefit and strengthen the team  in future.

Enjoyable game and I’m glad I backed France for this one. At least we’ve had a northern hemisphere win against one of the big three this weekend ! 

Hi Clevermike, thanks for the good wishes. We got to watch a good game of rugby, shame it didn't turn out to be a win for the ABs but the team has really improved. Looking forward to the game with Italy and especially for next year! Boks are looking really good also.

Big debate down here about the decision to go for a penalty instead of the lineout ...... Razor says it was the captain's choice....................imo.  lineout.

I said it was a big call in the live commentary at the time and that the penalty better go over, which it did. I'm not sure how the All Blacks felt about their chances of scoring a try at the time. Their last try at that stage was Roigard's halfway through the first half. All the attacking they've put in during that amount of time for no result while they got 12 points in penalties had to be playing in the captain's mind. The three pointer would have meant they only needed to get back in the French half, force an error and they were in business, but the French managed to keep them pinned in their own half. Hindsight is easy, it's always a tough decision. I'm sure next time they'll take the lineout - and if it doesn't work out they'll wonder if they should have taken the 3.

I thought they played well and even dominated France for the most part. The problem was their execution close to the line. Four incidents I can recall off the top of my head - a completely unnecessary slow lob pass that canceled out a 2 on 1, a poor kick by Beauden when they were attacking down the left deep in French territory, Williams losing control of the ball trying to offload it and knocking on after he ran a beautiful line that all but left the tryline open, the French stealing the ball on the ground just two meters from the line after another sustained All Black attack all but got them there. These are all instances of them losing patience and forcing a play or just not being accurate enough in execution right on the final hurdle. 

Same with the last French try where once again the All Blacks tried to force an offload that wasn't quite on, ball went to ground, French got it and away they went.

This is fixable, they just need to calm the fuck down. As I also mentioned in the live thread, the French defense was outstanding. They scrambled on defense and tackled like I haven't seen a team do in a good while. I thought the All Blacks attack looked really good for the most part and you can actually see the progress as opposed to the Boks who just seem to settle back into the 10 man stuff all the time. They need to move on from Ratima though. He is simply not test quality and it hurt them when he replaced Roigard.

I think the All Blacks can be positive. New coach, 8+ of their frontline players retiring or moving on last year, there's going to be a shaky period. It hasn't been good for them, but they're showing signs now of getting it together.

I'm in total agreement that the forwards coming through for the Boks are not dominating. 

Wiese isn't new any more, but he's been good since game 1. Outside of a couple of silly penalties, he took to test rugby easily. 

Nortje has probably been the best of the true noobs.

...and then nobody else really. 

Why is this guy not there?