Hansen, so hot right now. Hansen.
The Sydney Bledisloe cup game pitted the reigning world champions NZ against, as always, Australia. NZ enter every RWC as favourite and this time round is no exception, they’re 13/10 with my turf accountant, taking up 43.5% of the book. Australia’s price is now 8/1, in from 9/1 after winning at the weekend, which is about 11% of the same book. Continue reading
Paul O’Connell’s expression says it all. Ireland were seconds away from a first win over New Zealand in the history of games between the two countries, but it was snatched out of their hands.
Amidst no small dollop of carping and moaning about what a pain in the arse it was, we mentioned at the end of the last Ruck Marks article that we’d try and run a similar exercise using Ireland’s November tests as our subjects. We surprised ourselves by actually carrying this through [just like we carried through our tag index … all the way up to ‘D’] with a Boxeresque appetite for dumb labour. Continue reading
Steve Hansen was right: New Zealand didn’t play that well in the Christchurch test. Some of that was forced on them by an aggressive, hard-nosed Irish performance, but they also made a number of unforced errors. Ireland didn’t perform cleverly or with the required level of concentration and aggression in a number of areas in the Auckland test [especially after the first half hour] and as a result handed New Zealand not just the result, but also the big performance. England caved in a similar way in Lansdowne Road in 2011, and let Ireland play close to their potential. Continue reading
Just like they change their watches when they arrive in the new timezone, the Irish coaches should change their calendar. Continue reading
Steve Hansen, NZ head coach: he’s been around the set-up for a long time, and he has previous experience as an international head coach with Wales. With so much emphasis on the All Blacks winning their home World Cup, there was always going to be an odd honeymoon period afterwards once they took the William Webb Ellis trophy, but his first squad is a bit of a shake-up.
The New Zealand All Blacks have picked a 35-strong training squad to prepare for the forthcoming visit of Ireland for a three match test series in June, and it’s pretty interesting to see the turnover of personnel since their victorious World Cup. Continue reading
Digging Like a Demented Mole 