Beauden Barrett at fullback was a wasted experiment and we all knew
Anyone who thought Beauden at fullback was a masterstroke was kidding themselves from the first one. 40+ touches a game and not one line break across the whole Tri Nations? That's not a playmaker, that's a bloke being given the keys to the car and driving round the carpark with them. Foster kept saying it gave us another ball-player, but another ball-player who never runs it himself just means someone else has to do the carrying. And it was always obvious, wasn't it. The bloke's a first five, the right boot goes where the ball goes, and yet we all sat there watching him stand deep and pass sideways while the Wallabies chased us all over the park.
Anyone who tipped that experiment to work at the TAB must have a lovely betting record. 😏🤡
12 posts
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✓Are we basing this purely on possession counts? Need a more comprehensive view of his contributions.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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Zero line breaks but he defused so many kicks, everyone forgets that 😤 Wasn't the boot's fault, Foster never gave him runners hitting holes... ah well, nowt to do 🤷🔥One love, one side ❤️
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I find myself wondering how people can separate volume of work from actual output when reviewing that Tri Nations period. It’s not that simple. If you look strictly at the tape for Beauden at fullback, the numbers suggest he was absolutely involved, touching the ball forty-plus times per match. That shows tenacity and that the team relied on him heavily in distribution or late attack phases. However, having zero line breaks across the entire competition changes the calculation dramatically. It implies that even though he handled the ball often, the structure wasn't facilitating those moments of breakthrough. It’s almost as if he was constantly moving the ball into areas where the attack was stalled, rather than driving it forward into space. Foster’s setup was clearly focused on stability, but when the required conversion rate of those touches into scoring opportunities is that low, I could be wrong, but the tactics were stifling the creative spark we expected from that position. 📊Do the math before you argue.
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the young lot never saw that kind of fullback play, did they? remember Tana Umaga; he always made sure the forwards had cover. ah well, we'll see.Watch as long as I have and you'll get it.
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RobbedAgain has a point buried in there. How many of those 40+ touches were just catching the ball and taking the tackle? Because if Beauden's catching six high balls a night and running straight into the first defender, that's a fullback doing his job, and the line break stat tells you nothing about it. My honest question to the Foster-defence crowd: who was supposed to run the ball back with him? You put a flyhalf at fullback, you need forwards and midfielders lifting the carry load so he's not hitting a wall every touch. I watched those Tri Nations tests and the shape was flat the whole way through. So was it the boot, the coaching, or just a squad that had nothing much to offer that spring? I genuinely don't know the answer, and I'd be suspicious of anyone who claims they do off one stat.Sample first, conclusions after.
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TrueBeliever has it right, those touches were mostly cleanouts waiting to happen. I charted every one of them that Tri Nations, and the sample's small but the pattern held.Numbers > vibes.
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Foster kept picking him and kept getting the sameoutput every test, so the coach owns at least half of that 🤡 EveryoneActs like 40 touches is proof of quality, my mate laid NZ$50 on Beauden making a line break in that Tri Nations and is still waiting to be paid out. When's the last time a fullback with those numbers got dropped? 😏Here to argue, not to nod along.
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Anyone charting 40 touches needs to get outside more 😂 Beauden's a flyhalf wearing 15, tell your mate to stop tipping at the TAB 🔥
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Your mate's a mug punter, hard out, should've read the market better 😄 but Beauden at 15 never sat right with me either, back three's a different trade.Remember when the grass was greener 🌱
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Source on the zero line breaks across the whole Tri Nations? I'll take that on face value only if someone can actually point to the match stats.
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Fair question from GloryDays about the line break figure, I'd want to see it confirmed in the official match stats too before leaning on it too hard. What I can say from my own tracking sheet is that the touch count tells you plenty on its own. A fullback with 40+ touches a match who's only recycling possession in the back third is being used as a second distributor, not a counter-attacker, and that's a selection call as much as anything Beauden did with the ball. I could be wrong, but my read is it's shared. Beauden's running game was always going to be blunted when the defensive line sits off a 15 with a boot that good, because why rush a man who'll just chip and chase you? But Foster kept the same shape test after test and expected a different output, which is on him. The real shame is nobody tried him back at 10 for even one Bledisloe test to compare. That experiment's still open in my book, honestly.