how did we do?
no cards -
(although Vaa'i might have had a yellow on another day for the check on the Uruguay winger, who then made an ER episode out of it, currently being piloted by NBC I hear)
less than 3 penalties in each half -
7 in total, so I'll let it pass
penalty kicks finding touch -
all found, although Jordie made about 6 meters with his first one I think (don't we have a left footer on the team anywhere)
set pieces to remain tight -
great scrum, nearly awarded a penalty every time, I don't think the Uruguayan scrum was dominated that much by the French. Lineout worked well too, as did the maul defence, pushing the south-Americans backwards quite easily.
good kicking in general play -
not a lot done, one box kick from Cam was short, and when BB came on he put his usual aimless kick down-field.
So I have to give the AB's a good score for successfully doing these things.
On the critical side, BB kicked long when we hadn't kicked long all game until he came on. The kick gave the Uru's 25 metres of free space to do as they please. BB also powered one over the dead ball line from 40 metres out when given a massive hole to run into, and Christie on his inside. Dmac had another exceptional game and really we have to start with him, and keep BB on the bench only for injury back-up.
Leicester gone done like a Xmas dinner early on, coming up to tackle, and his chase back on the winger was slow and lethargic, being outsprinted by his own forwards ( a prop and Jacobsen I think). He redeemed himself somewhat by really hunting for work in the last 30 minutes, but I think he needs a few more years before he's ready.
Some poor identification & communication between the forwards and backs, particularly the instance where Dmac is the sole defender in a ruck, and all the forwards move ten meters away preparing for a set of something, exposing us to an easy counter ruck, and not only does Cam not clear it asap, but he then decides to snipe around the ruck and gets tackled, and the closet player is ten meters away. The ref called it back for an earlier infringement, so nothing came of it. But I just can't believe that professional players would make such basic errors.
