Beauden at ten was a mistake
Beauden at ten was never the problem, the bloke winning two World Player of the Year awards tells you that much. The problem is nobody ever built an attack around a proper driver after him, so we've been playing headless chook footy since. Anyone saying the fullback experiment "won us nothing" clearly forgot those finals runs were on his boot half the time. 🤡 Put NZ$20 on it and I'd still take that over half the "game management" experts in this thread, sure thing mate. 😏
12 posts
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✓Two World Player of the Year awards he won at a different club with a different pack in front of him, so that proves exactly nothing about the Blues. Would you build an attack around a ten who drifts to second receiver the moment pressure arrives? Give me one actual game from that stretch where we controlled tempo through him.
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Fullyback was our best footy in ages 🔥 he made the line bend andPerenara won us nothing? nah mate he earned those finals runs 💪 missing him already tbh...Heart with the team, head on pause.
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GloryDays has a point about the sample, Beauden's awards came with the Canes pack, and the six flat weeks at fullback showed it. Still miss him though. 📊Numbers > vibes.
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the six flat weeks, aye, that took me straight back to the amateur days when we'd shift a five-eighth to the back and watch the whole shape go munted for a month. seen it all before, and the lesson never changes, you don't paper over a missing driver by shuffling jerseys. Canes pack or not, Beauden still read a game better than anyone we've run out at ten since, and that's the part the young ones forget 😉Seen it all, lads.
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GloryDays, you're telling me a bloke who ran the Canes attack behind a dominant pack would suddenly stop playing ten under pressure — where's the evidence the move was the problem rather than the coaching around it? The flat six weeks happened because we still had no genuine second playmaker anywhere near the side, fullback or not. Show me the numbers on our attack during those weeks and I'll happily change my mind.Hype isn't an argument.
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Kev's got a fair question buried in there, and I've had the same argument at the pub more than once. I keep my own table every round. Even simple ones, just who actually calls the play at second five vs who takes it to the first receiver, and the flat stretch after the fullback shift shows up in it plain as day: the ball got shifted wider, no one stepped in as the decision-maker, and we stopped bending the line. That said, I could be wrong, but I reckon the coaching box deserves at least half the blame Kev wants to hand them. An All Black of Beauden's calibre doesn't forget how to play ten overnight; someone needed to build the shape around him and nobody did. Ultra88 is dead right that shuffling jerseys papers over a missing driver, I watched the same munted shape at club level for years. The nuance is that both things were true at once: the move exposed the gap, and the coaches never filled it. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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Kev, put $20 on him succeeding at ten and tell me how that went 😏 Shuffling jerseys fixed nothing, but two finals runs say the coaches weren't the whole story either, sure thing mate.Any stat can be bent.
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@Gary_Legend I'd take that NZ$20 bet the other way tbh, bloke ran derbies fine before the shuffle 🤣 glad I just watch with a pie instead of punting.Memes are analysis too.
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Gary's NZ$20 question and Kev's coaching point are two halves of the same problem, really. My table says the flat stretch after the shift was real, but I could be wrong about how much of that was Beauden's role versus what the coaches gave him to work with. I'll stay agnostic on the verdict until we've had a proper driver built from scratch, bro, that test hasn't been run yet. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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@FrontRowFan honestly, the coaches had to own up to that. You can't throw Beauden in there and expect magic if the system isn't built right 💪. Our lot never make it easy, we just needed the structure to back him up... nah, it was just chaotic. 😱🔥Heart with the team, head on pause.
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It feels confusing watching all the tactics discussed, maybe I'm wrong but did it just seem like a big change? 😊