Brumbies claw out a home win at the death - 18-16 over the 'Saders

& I reckon Lealiifano is doing ok. He shows enough promise that when he gets it right he’ll be looking very classy. Kicking game needs some work obviously, but I think his general play has been pretty good…he’ll keep improving.

> gregan captained Australia with with the worst delivery of all time.

Have a look at the current Wallaby scrumhalf in action if you want to see worst delivery of all time. Awful. Gregans pass was amazing…I’m not sure you were watching the same guy as me. Quite an odd thing to say.

i mean`t to say when giteau returns and doesn`t like the coach`s style,who will the players back?friend seems “likable”enough,hope he does well.

Just to comment on the forwards for a moment –

I think Alexander has made his claim to start at loosehead after the scrum definitely improved when he replaced Henderson.

In my view Henderson has been on the decline since last year.

However, the scrum shouldn’t be a big issue next week as they play the Force. And I don’t care what last year stats say because the Force certainly have the weakest scrum of the Australian teams.

It’ll be interesting to see if Friend favours Salvi again over Kimlin. Kimlin put in a lot of good when he came on and it might be a good idea to have a 4th lineout jumper against the Force where Sharpe seems to still guide them well in that department. Although having Salvi on might help to nullify their backrow which is certainly an improving aspect of their game with Pocock and Brown.

Anyways, the Brumbies will need to sharpen up for this game because anything less than complete destruction of the Force won’t help them going into a game 2 weeks later against the Tahs.

Mr Grumpy….. you don’t like Andy Friend?

Care to discuss?

And you’d like to get rid of one of the best centres in the world because of the Nucifora debacle? I find that to be utterly absurd.

I had no issues with Phibbs or Holmes delivery last night. In fact, I felt both played pretty well and offered different things to the team. When Holmes came on he certainly lifted the tempo a bit.

However I have to agree partly with one of the above posters with Lealiifano being a little out of his depth when he’s surrounded by real talent. Friend should probably give him another opportunity, but Lealiifano has to know that Matt Toomua is also there and as he is another kid with talent. The Brumbies also have the South African U21 flyhalf sitting in the academy dying to play in the Super 14.

Unfortunately at the moment they’ve got a backline filled with a huge amount of individual talent, but they need to start gelling or they’ll wind up outside the playoffs again.

As for Gregan’s apparently poor delivery – Stephen Larkham never complained.

phibbs and holmes can`t pass? gregan captained Australia with with the worst delivery of all time. mortlock is the only survivor of the “we know better than the coach clique” so should be put out to pasture with fragile larkham and one more for the money gregan.bring giturd back and bye bye friend,

Papadoc – the big guy was Sitaleki Timani. He is 202cm & 119Kg = man you do not want to play against. I’m really looking forwards to seeing him smackdown a few guys this season.

I thought the Brumbies did OK, they played out of their half quite a lot, especially the last 10-15 minutes, but the Crusaders defence was rock solid. The dodgy call late in the Game against Boner, could have seen us with a 5 m lineout, and a subsequent try. If we can scrape through every game this season with a win (including the final), I’ll be happy.

Lealiifano’s only real issue is the calibre of the guys outside him. He’s only a young kid and to be in charge of directing guys like Mortlock, Gerrard, Coops and Rathbone around it must be pretty daunting. Not to mention the horrible ball Phibbs was feeding him, although when Holmes came on, he wasn’t much better.

I think the issue with those two guys is that they’re so obviously in competition with each other that when one is on the field, he’s constantly trying to outplay the other bloke instead of playing the game.

Hopefully Lealiifano will stick around next year because a bit of understudy work with Giteau will do him a world of good. The Brumbies aren’t looking great, but they’re not looking too bad, plus hey, we knocked the Crusaders off, who cares how pretty it was!

What about the big unit that came on for Chisholm near the end with the dreadlocks. That guy is massive, buff and scary. He should be on the evolutionary chart!

ramblingted said :

The problem is that after that performance its hard to see the guy having the nerve to pull a jumper on next week, so what do the Brumbies do to solve their No 10 problems in the short term?

Probably by giving the guy a break. One bad performance and you’re writing off his career.

You mean that you will not call Mortlock a choker ever again… until the next time he chokes?