FIVE TALKING POINTS FROM AN ALL BLACKS NARROW ESCAPE
Poor discipline
Rinse and repeat.
The All Blacks shooting themselves in the foot through poor discipline is an alarming problem.
British referee Matthew Carley pinged them 16 times, seven of them within the first half-hour and a mountain more inside the final 10 minutes, and you couldn’t bemoan him for doing so.
He had no choice but to send flanker SamCane and substitute prop Wyatt Crockett to the bin for repeated infringements on the goalline, forcing the home side to cling on with 14 men for the final 20 minutes.
Playing a man down has been a bit of a theme all season and captain Kieran Read knows it. ‘‘It’s not what you want to be doing, especially at the back end of the game. We’ve got to work on it, so we’ve just got to be smarter,’’ he said.
Scotland forced the All Blacks to concede many of them through pressure, but it’s the ‘‘silly’’ ones coach Steve Hansen spoke about a fortnight ago which hurt., such as the one flanker Vaea Fifita conceded with 11 minutes to play, when the All Blacks had just scored to go 22-10 up, only for him to be offside from the TJ Perenara box-kick.
No yellow card
Don’t be surprised if Scottish fans and media make some noise about All Blacks wingWaisake Naholo avoiding a yellow card in the 28th minute.
We’ve seen players cop both yellow and red cards for colliding with players in the act of contesting a high ball all season, and the Murrayfield crowd was baying for blood after Naholo connected with fullback Stuart Hogg.
It c didn’t warrant a red card. But referee Matthew Carley was set to reach for yellow before TMO Graham Hughes suggested a penalty was sufficient punishment.
Carley had another look and, after another chat with Hughes, decided the mitigating factor - Scotland halfback Ali Price made a nuisance of himself - was enough to wipe out the need for a card. The home crowd howled in disbelief, but the young British referee got it bang on.
The Ioane factor
If anyone was holding out hope of seeing Julian Savea return to the leftwing for the national side, they can forget it.
That’s Rieko Ioane’s spot and it’s difficult to imagine anyone else playing there unless he gets injured (touch wood). Ioane, one of the best All Blacks this year, was superb against Scotland in the penultimate test of the season, finishing with 87 metres on 10 carries.
But what’s arguably most impressive about the 20-year-old is his ability to make the first man miss with his explosive speed and power.
He used both to setup the All Blacks’ opening try early in the second half, when he somehow busted free of a crowd of Scottish defenders and offloaded to hooker Codie Taylor. A few phases later, he dished try-scorer Taylor the final pass.
Wasteful Scots
Talk about blowing a golden opportunity.
The home side spent about 10 minutes inside the All Blacks’ 22m, 72 per cent of the game was played in the All Blacks’ half, and Scotland enjoyed a ton of possession and territory.
However, they squandered chance after chance to cash in, particularly when they dominated the first half but had to settle for a 3-3 scoreline at the turn.
At one stage, they strung 19 phases together and were plugging away at the line, only for the ball to hit the Murrayfield turf.
To name a few, Huw Jones, Zander Fagerson and Tommy Seymour all made costly blunders, and Scotland will look back at the first half and believe they should have been leading by at least 17-3.
Scotland will also rue their inability to put the 14-men All Blacks away in the final 20 minutes.
❚ By ROBERT VAN ROYEN Matt Todd N/R TJ Perenara N/R
Lima Sopoaga N/R Anton Lienert-Brown N/R