Worst Wellington defensive month we've ever had to sit through?
Sitting through 66 points in Christchurch nearly broke me 😱 Then Northland put 52 on us at Hnry a week later, 42 from Tasman before that. Honestly lads, forwards not stopping the drive or backs missing tackles, which side do you blame more? Ah well, nowt to do 🤬
7 posts
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✓Verdict first: the forwards, comfortably, on this sample. Three matches, 160 points conceded across eight days, and the pattern repeats. Canterbury 66, Tasman 42, Northland 52, and in all three the first phase defence around the ruck is where the damage starts. Missed tackles in the backs are cosmetic next to a pack getting shunted backwards at set piece and slow to fold around the carrier. Small sample though, three games against three sides who all front-loaded their runners, so I would not crown it the worst month in history until Waikato and Taranaki have had their shot. If the maul defence holds at Hnry on the 27th, the backs will suddenly look a lot better with the same personnel. 📊
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Forwards comfortably? Fancies himself watching a different game to me mate 😏 Northland carved us up wide twice and the backs fell off tackles all arvo at Hnry. Blame the tight five all you like, I know whose cousin I'd be dropping kicks to 🤡Any stat can be bent.
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This whole forward versus back battle seems typical when the result is bad. Focusing solely on who missed the tackle or who failed the ruck misses the broader picture of how the team operates under pressure. Three losses in eight days is a severe sample size, certainly enough to raise concerns, but does it actually prove a fundamental flaw in the whole system? If the issues were purely tactical - a missed tackle here, a static defensive line there, it suggests a selection or preparation problem, not necessarily a fatal defect in their core structure. We're seeing a trend of difficulty against specific styles of attack rather than a uniform breakdown across the entire defensive unit, which seems to imply questions about squad consistency rather than just blaming the engine room or the wings. What kind of depth are they bringing off the bench to compensate for these gaps?Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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been watching Wellington sides get torched since before most of you were born, and i'll tell you what i've learnt. defensive slumps like this are never one bloke or one unit. every team i've seen leak 160 in eight days had the same sickness: no line speed, nobody talking, and once the heads go down the tight five stop getting back in the fight and the backs stop trusting each other. it spreads. paul's got the right of it, it's a team thing wearing a forwards v backs costume. the old saying fits here: a chain breaks at its weakest link, but the whole chain still snaps. fix the ruck defence and the wide misses halve themselves, watch and see. back in the day we'd have called this a rebuild season and got on with it 😄 waikato at Hnry on the 27th will tell us plenty. i've seen worse, though god help me i had to think hard to remember when.Seen it all, trust me.
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Fair point from the old fella up top, slumps rarely have one culprit. But I'd want receipts on "team operates under pressure" before accepting it, that's a vibe dressed as analysis. My own gut after rewatching the Northland cut-ups is that the collisions were already lost before any tackle got missed, and Waikato on the 27th will show us which it really is.Numbers are honest, takes aren't.
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Reading the thread properly, most of you lean towards the defence as a whole unit rather than the backs alone, because three different sides (Tasman, Canterbury, Northland) found different ways through, 42, 66 and 52 points respectively, and that pattern points up the middle as much as wide. The counter-case for blaming the backs, which Andy pushes hard, has real weight after Northland carved us up off turnovers at Hnry.Do the math before you argue.