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New Zealand v Ireland - Test 3 - 16 July 2022

True, but they haven't dominated the WC since it's existence (though recent record ain't to shabby)

Also the draw being what it is with NZ being on the tough side makes it a little trickier. If they were on England and Australias side I'd say pretty much guaranteed a final.
I don't know mate, this could be one of the closest world cups ever among the top 5-8. The way things are going the only "guarantee" looks like England winning Pool D.
 
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World Cup is pressure. ABs have a history of choking under pressure (or more precisely, the pressure of fulfilling expectation) at World Cups. The only thing that's "random" is the ref but that's no different from a regular test match.


Ireland were brilliant but from an AB perspective, we stink. We haven't been this bad in a long, long time, and it's not just results. We're playing like a bunch of clueless school boys. If you're not that bothered about World Cups you're still ignoring the blatantly obvious -- the ABs right now are a pathetic shadow of their usual selves and it's mainly down to the coach.
Yes we choke, doesn't change that the outcome of the World Cup had Randomness in the sense of what can be controlled.

Doesn't matter if we had the best coach, our probability of winning would be less than 50 per cent. If the best coach and players guaranteed you would win then the crusaders would never lose a single game because they have the best coach and players in super rugby.

And I'm not ignoring anything. I'm gutted we lost, even though I enjoyed the series, I've always said foster and his assistants aren't up to the job, I just happen to also see all of the other many factors contributing to us not being great and can make other rational arguments to put things n context rather than being blindly black and white or plainly ignorant about everything.

Even though foster isn't great, 99 per cent of comments form fans that are saying so are way off the mark . People who don't even watch super rugby coming in and saying we should ditch this and that player without being able to offer an alternative, or offering a much worse alternative because actually they don't have a clue, without understanding that most (certainly not all) of the players currently selected would also be selected by other coaches (and definitely most of the players people are claiming should be dropped). People saying we have the best players in the world when we don't. People saying robertson is perfect. People saying it's all fosters fault without recognizing the assistants. (Wayne smith is the main reason the all blacks were dominant for so many years, and he was an assistant)Etc. it's a shame because the rational and balanced argument still ends up at the same conclusion. The overblown argument gets there but at the cost of being a dick, being disrespectful, and often at the cost of the complainers not managing to even enjoy the game even f we win (or any game if its not the World Cup, and then they don't enjoy that either because we lose, and then when we lose they definitely blame the coaches even f they were the best coach)

The same black and white thinking is what leads people to not be able to contemplate that there is a lot of what is effectively randomness dictating results. You can't control the bounce of the ball, you can't control the weather, you can't control injuries, you can't control deaths in the family of players, you can't control fully how one players issues filter into the feelings of others, or how the culture evolves because of events outside your control. Yes you can control things to some degree, but unless you can fully control them you have to accept that is effectively randomness. You can't understand and therefore control how people deal with the pressure of a World Cup (even Henry who was reappointed after 2007 because he claimed that being through a World Cup put him in a position to know how to deal with one the next time, couldn't control it as we choked just as bad in 2011 even though we randomly won). The selector of coaches can't control what happens in the personal lives of coaches and therefore how successful they are. You can't control fully how many red cards you'll get unless you concede in the contact zone which will put you worse off as a team. And yes, you can't control the ref.

I haven't heard a single person argue that foster should be the coach, ever. I have only heard people try and balance the overblown arguments or people accepting foster is what we've got. I want the all blacks to win, so if we don't have the best coach I'll still back the one we've got.
 
It is definitely the inconsistencies that rile everybody up. There is such a disparity in post-TMO outcomes and that is the unacceptable part. Real-time is often hard but it's been referred upstairs! The clock has been stopped and play has already been interrupted. There can be no excuse for not doing the analysis properly.

We all see it happen in real time and we think "Ah, we know the protocols, that's going to be a red". We hear the recapitulation - "No change in line, no significant dip, no attempt to go low, no mitigating factors" yada yada yada.

Referee: "So that's a yellow card, is that correct?"

*Big, pregnant, pause*

TMO: "That is correct, yes".

It's a general scenario and you can substitute the yellow for an incorrect red. But I give up when it happens. I just give up. It's a freaking lottery man. In the Porter instance, he had oodles of time to get low and he didn't. Ta'avao didn't have the same luxury defending against a very sudden change in line - he had no time to readjust. Under the laws, it is still a red and fair enough (and Peyper was really apologetic about iirc).

Card them all appropriately or do not card at all. It is that simple.

I actually think having the referee and TMO mic's open really doesn't help and its something that should be scrapped - at least for foul play incidents.

In practice, the TMO is very much constrained in what they can say as they know they risk undermining the referee in public.
 

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