1 tony woodcock
2 adriann strauss
3 owen franks
4 brodie retallick
5 sam whitelock
6 steven luatua
7 Richie McCaw
8 keirean read
9 aaron smith
10 tom taylor
11 james oconner
12 christain leilafano
13 marcello bosch
14 ben smith
15 israel dagg
All Blacks team performance was simply outstanding and so many players in the ABs starting 15 just missed out.
there were some close calls though,,,,
strauss and hore, hore had a brilliant game and strauss had a relaitvely error free game , but hore made more of an impact everywhere on the field in his game. i gave it to strauss thpugh cos hore was a little dodgy with more then a couple of his lineout throws,
aaron smith and martin landjao was another close one. ultimately though smith was very instrumental with the ABs field and this was despite the heavy target the wallabies had tagged him with. being under fire and preforming the way he did gave him the nod ahead landajo who was also great for the pumas.
leilafano and nonu was close, similar top strauss/hore, nonu had more of an impact the leilafano did, but he had way too many handling errors coupled with some miss tackles and that all piled up against him compared to leilafano who was solid but comparative impact was lower, as was his handling errors and miss tackle count.
bosch over smith was another close one, smith had an error free game but boschs impact was just too great to ignore.
About half the team are NewZealanders and given that Australia did not play to their potential, the team is far to weighted with NZ.
I would have thought more Argentinians would make team of the week.
South Africa played shit, and hard to argue for the inclusion of any other than Strauss, or Bismaark when he entered the fray.
Although some credit must go to Argentina. I think it was probably the best I have seen Argentina play.
I will watch the NZ/OZ game again but surely some of the forwards from Argentina must be included. Not many are household names as not playing SuperXV week in week out, and as they are in Portugese I can't remember many of the names.
@sharkbok,
"About half the team are NewZealanders and given that Australia did not play to their potential, the team is far to weighted with NZ."
IMO the criteria a player needs to make in order to make any team of the week and how i always base mine, is how they preform in the match.
how the opposition or who or who the opposition is completely irrelevant, otherwise u could make the silly argument that no players from the Boks qualify given that the pumas are a 10th ranked team.
each players performance and the level of impact they had with their team are the only criteria.
in saying that, leguizamon/McCaw is another close battle for team of the week i should have originally included, but as i did my peyper penalty assessment, i was keeping close tabs on McCaw and his work rate is through the roof. i cant prove it yet as i would have to watch it again, but im pretty sure that McCaw was 50% of the time one of the first 3 NZ players to every breakdown, o_O
long live the king, :o)
@mozter,
u think bosch was poor???
No Sasu I think his opponent was poor. Overall I agree with your team, but I think the ABs would have won with a ventriloquist's dummy at 10....Morne won the test.
@mozter,
bosch definitely got the better of jj, but dont wirte jj off bro, both he and serfontein will be important to the Boks in the near future as JDV is at the moment.
and at least he wasnt as bad as AAC who IMO was the worst 13 period.
i hope barret or carter are fit by the time the pumas come round, cos with taylor injured we might just have a ventriloquists dummy at flyhalf, LMAO, :oP
Cant say I'm convinced. Not so sure Ben Smith is the super star he is touted to be either....O Conner zipped past him rather easily
@mozter,
ive noticed some of the defensive lapses in ben smiths game too, saw a lot of it against the NZ spXV teams too, nothing that cnat be fixed.
but for what its worth, oconner is a gun and im pretty sure hes scalped a good chunk of the All Blacks throughout his bledisloe career.
the rest of ben smiths game though is sheer class though.
