The All Blacks Top 20

The All Blacks Top 20

Allblacks.com looks at the top 20 after The Investec Rugby Championship holders won their fifth match this season, and second in the tournament, to retain the Bledisloe Cup after beating the Wallabies 27-16 at Westpac Stadium.

1. The All Blacks are tough to beat at home – it has only happened 37 times. Ever.

37 losses at home ever??? o_O

IMO aaron smith is the best halfback in the world in 2013, but ive always said that genia is the best in the world, based on all the games hes played as a whole.
that opinon of mine is starting to change slowly, but genia needs to seriously up the ante cos stocks are plumetting faster then enron at the moment.

WTF is hansen gonna do when messam gets back???
u cant leave messam out, but luatua is the best loosie in the world in the RC/4nats easy.
love the riches NZ have in the loose forwards, but i would have prefered that cane get more game time, hopefully against the pumas.

McCaws sabatical is proving revelation, lookf for senor players across the world to follow suit, especially if carter matches the same feats next years.

cruden, barret, taylor, slade and benji marshall, whose worried about life after carter???
not tthe kiwis, thats for sure.

All Blacks have yet to concede a championship point in the RC/4nats, hot damn, o_O

Sasu...Depth at five-eighth may be booming but all our all black five-eighths are currently injured.

When you talk about depth and in light of that so called curse of the 10 jersey i was just looking at Gareth Anscombes stats and see that despite sharing kicking duties with Aaron Cruden he has the third highest conversion stats in this years Super XV (30pts)  just behind Carter(31) but ahead of Barret(28).

Morne Steyn has (31). Just makes you wonder what his stats would've been if he had'nt been sharing kicking duties.

Taylor is still a good choice though given he's from Chiefs country but the stats don't lie so perhaps Anscombe should also be considered as he had an awesome year with the Chiefs and especially considering our injuries.

I'm not trying to talk Anscombe up much but how many players could single handedly i'e score all the points (29pts) to beat the Bulls at Loftus.

Admittedly JK dumped him after that but he has since thrived at the Chiefs this year.

I'm just mentioning this in case Hansen decides to bring anyone else in as I WILL HAVE ISSUES WITH THAT! LOL

How about NZs biggest RWC flop. How would you chaps rank them.....France 99, Oz 03, France 07?

Tell em Mozart .................... not to mention all the cheating that transpired during RWC11 ........ & don't argue, cos I'll get Spooofy with all his wonderful analytical scrutinisation to itemise all their dastardly deeds .

 Well said Moz and Bobbok.  These blowhard kiwi bird brains have a hugely inflated opinion of themselves and their capabilities. Ou saSUE  is sure one trumpet player!

@brycy,


from all the reports i read and watched, theres a possibility that both barret and carter will be available for the pumas test???
if so no doubt that both taylor and slade will be dropped the respective No1 and No3 NZ flyhalves.
 
pretty solid flyhalf depth there at the moment and the one week bye between the different touring legs of the RC/4nats does help out a lot.
i hope we can keep our current top 5 flyhalves, but something tells me that slade will be departing very soon, he might as well cash in given his injury record and place on the All Black pecking order.
 
but if all 5 flyhalves were to remain injured, theres can be little doubt that slade will be thrust into the No10, but who would the be called in as back up???
anscombe as u suggested is a logical choice, but given that its effectively our 6th pick flyhalf, and that were also facing the pumas, IMO weepu wouldnt be to far from the picture either.
weepu might not be the fastest player going around, but hes aware of most of the All Blacks dynamics having played for the ABs as recently as june and hes also played flyhalf for the All Blacks, the fact that were playing the pumas is a bonus as well, while theyre still a strong team, they aint no wallabies or Boks.
 
i would love to see ansocmbe though, developing our depth is more constructive for the future and rennie and smith have worked some serious magic on anscombes game, he also has the nice bonus of being familiar with abrlows game which is a big plus,as is his ability to cover fullback, he was one of the top 5 fullbacks in 2013 spXV, so i wouldnt have any problems what so ever with him.

@mozter,
a loss is a loss and very hard to swallow, it doesnt matter if it happens during a RWC, june test series, EOYT or the RC/4nats, they are all unacceptable period.

as for the RWC, this is how i see them.
RWC is still in its infancy with there being only 7 ever, once another 7 RWC comes along, im sure the All Blacks will like everything else in rugby have won the majority of them all.

in the first 7 years of the TriNats, All Blacks only won 4 of them, fast forward another 9 TriNats later and the All Blacks have won 10.

im expecting a similar return with the RWC, but dont worry, the refs will still be around for u saffas to blame, lolz, :o)