Yeah, I don’t mind that he had to penalise Fiji because they were infringing a lot; but for mine its not a very proactive refereeing style. I know some people hate referees “coaching” the players, but because there’s so many possible things happening at once I think its a rational response which keeps the game flowing and rugby being played rather than referee forceback.

The ruck calls etc were mostly right but if he’d communicated the Fijians would have stopped what they were doing & he wouldn’t have had to whistle. There were other calls I thought were a bit questionable - the obstruction below and blowing so many scrum penalties when the ball was already won.

I really hate knock-on scrums turning into scrum penalties, i’d favour free-kicks unless the feeding team is attacking in the opposition 22m or something. A scrum happens to re-start the game after a mistake, so in effect at the moment we end up penalising knock-ons and forward passes which just feels a bit overly harsh.

I watched the 2nd half of the Munster vs AB XV and it was a cracker. I’d have watched the whole thing but I got times wrong and didn’t realise it was clashing with the Fiji vs Scotland game I was also trying to watch.

There’s lots of interesting stuff in your reply, and I don’t have a lot to add, but I thought maybe context around my interest in coastal shipping.

I’d never really given it much thought at all, but coincidentally in 2 months i’d been to the maritime museum in Auckland which has models of all sorts of coastal ships that used to ply their trade around New Zealand which made me interested in the subject.

Then I read a post somewhere talking about how changes had been made around the late 80s early 90s designed to crush NZs maritime union power that would supposedly have replaced our coastal shipping effort with international carriers bringing their large container ships down here and then doing pickups & dropoffs as they bounced around the various ports. Apparently that never really happened, or at least didn’t take off much so the net result was that we killed most of our coastal shipping and were left with road and rail.

In & of itself, road and rail probably seem like a good option because we had ferries linking both networks and around the time those changes had been made was a lot closer to the heydey of NZ Rail. Of course in hindsight we can see that the neo-liberal reforms that sold off the railways led to massive under-investment in the rail network, lines closing, being unmaintained, worsening rolling stock and in the end we went from 3 modes of freight transport to 1.

But what really made me think again about coastal shipping was the impacts of Cyclone Gabrielle and the likelihood that they will happen again, sooner than we thought 20-30 years ago, and more often thereafter. Gabrielle (briefly) entirely cut off the northern half of Hawke’s Bay over land in all directions, North, West & South. Even when things were opened it was initially via a single road route to the south and took a long time to open the crucial Napier-Taupo link and even longer the Napier-Gisborne.

Smaller settlements around Tairāwhiti were cut off even worse as their roads & bridges between each other meant towns were isolated from each other as well. In the end because the road between Napier & Wairoa was so damaged a temporary shipping link was made from Gisborne port to Napier port.

So long as port facilities survive then the most resilient transport for freight & aid for coastal provinces after a cyclone will be coastal shipping. If we have a thriving network then its possible we don’t notice the impact anywhere near as much as we might.

There’d be a lot more opportunity for everyone to play each other a lot more if 3 match series were the norm rather than the big three countries insisting on 5 between each other!

Here’s to the Black Caps!

Wayne Barnes penned an opinion piece about the (let’s just call it orange ffs) new card protocol, well worth a review:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2024/10/31/wayne-barnes-20-minute-red-cards-referees-how-work/

Personally i’d go back to the future a bit and look at reverting the 2014 changes to reduce weight and thus damage. I would also start providing a similar amount of subsidy to coastal shipping as road freight gets and build the coastal network back up. I’m a huge fan of rail freight, and would like to see it used more as well but most of the existing infrastructure around that is ok for now.

With a strong coastal and rail freight networks we can then start putting restrictions on road freight distances again - with a carve out for time critical / refrigerated going to either domestic market or air freight routes.

If we can reduce the speed & weight of trucks, plus the amount of them and the distance travelled then in theory (to a pleb) our roads aren’t as expensive to build, and don’t suffer as much pot-hole damage so the maintenance costs are reduced. For mine, the National Party’s all in on road just sets us up for huge ongoing cost maintaining ever bigger and more expensive roads, with a huge emissions cost compounding the whole problem.

Have to say, with Codie Taylor possibly/probably injured Scott Robertson’s team’s Hooker selection strategy is looking very grim.

In the ABs he picked Taylor, Aumua & Bell. The latter looked ok when Taylor was rested in the first half of Super Rugby, but is very much a prospect, not anything like a guaranteed international player. And all 3 of them have had line out throwing troubles, particularly Aumua who has had issues for years.

Then in the AB XV he selected Brodie McAlister, Bradley Slater & Kurt Ekland. None of these 3 are starting Super Rugby hookers, Brodie McAlister was behind Taylor & Bell, Slater was behind Taukieaho, and Ekland was behind the Blues starting hooker Riccitelli.

Now, unless the latter has told NZR that he’s intending to go overseas and try to qualify for Italy or something, not rating the championship winning hooker in the top 6 in New Zealand is just bizarre. He’s not and especially flashy player, but has a high work rate and crucially does the key roles, particularly line out throwing, better than most other hookers in NZ.

And that “obstruction” call near the end of the first half was pretty whack. Almost 0 impact on the tacklers ability to effect anything on Lemani who had released the box kick before he got there anyway (ie, at worst he blocked a late tackle).

Never seen the ref in this Scotland vs Fiji game, but I can understand how Fiji are struggling with him given his 0 comms style. Most of the Fiji players will be used to SH form of refereeing where there’s information flowing from the referee confirming when ruck has formed, when hands should be off etc.

Instead this bloke just pings them over & over, its not cheating or anything but really Fiji are playing against 16 Scotland just get to piggy back down the field by kicking penalties rather than having to play much rugby to get territory. Very ugly sort of game to watch.

Well, given the road freight companies pay a fraction of the true cost of the wear and tear they cause on the roads, and the elevated cost of building roads that can safely cope with how large National let trucks get in 2014, they do get benefits that other forms of transport don’t. But yeah if the point is to unlock regional economic gains then it should be paid for as a public service.

And in the comments section this popped out from someone - which with the benefit of hindsight we can see was not true in the long-term.

3. The supposed costs of “upgrading” Picton were massively over stated and were in fact only actually 50% of the supposed cast in stone costs given by some consultancy company in 2012, so Picton is actually the cheaper option.

This is a really good write up of the last time the Clifford Bay plan was canned; includes a map of the route and a summary of the economies of it all.

https://www.greaterauckland.org.nz/2013/11/15/clifford-bay-decision-raises-more-questions-than-answers/

Oh I don’t disagree at all, but the problem is the National Party scupper any public investment in these services, eg:

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/interisland-ferries-to-stick-with-picton/POXPKGCRWSTJ6HAOXGNQKJG3YI/

There’s been so many proposals to do that, and they’ve never managed to get into proper planning phases before getting canned for one reason or another.

It seems like BS eh. Other folks I’ve seen are suggesting its just because they want to ditch easy anti-cheat to go with EA anti-cheat which (apparently) is windows only with no plans to develop for linux.

There’s a chance I’ll catch some of Scotland v Fiji but the England v NZ game is basically the most unfriendly time possible for kiwis and I don’t even care enough to watch it on replay fast forwarding all the mucking around.

It’s just a first class equivalent cap I think, not a full All Blacks cap - when the ABs XV replaced the Junior All Blacks as our second team there was much consternation that it might count against eligibility, but (at least back in 2020) it didn’t. Given the cynics though Hoskins Sotutu was withdrawing to protect his coming eligibility for other nations maybe that changed - or maybe they just don’t know what they’re talking about.

Of the uncapped players, the ones to watch are the two starting locks, especially Fabian Holland, Kirifi & Flanders (Haig is a bit more of a journeyman but is still a prospect). AJ Lam was a revelation for the Blues moving into the midfield (he wasn’t pushing Telea or Clarke off their wings) and on the bench, Numia was very close to an ABs call-up and Ah Kuoi is almost the perfect bench lock/6 who’s had a great NPC.

No lie, I had barely any interest in these upcoming games, and then I saw the team list for the All Blacks XV vs Munster and Devan Flanders picked at 8 (after missing out on the squad and only getting called up because Lio-Willie has been called into the ABs proper.

Then I was reading reddit /r/rugbyunion (stopped posting, but occasionally check it out to see what the mouth breathers are banging on about ;) ) and someone asking where Brayden Iose was and that the ABs XV didn’t have a proper 8.

Which is a bit silly given Flanders is an 8 for Hawkes Bay, swapped with Iose a couple of times for the Hurricanes, and really only plays blindside because he’s good enough to be in the team so they fit him in somewhere. I rate him hugely - massive human, always thought he was talented as a player but then watched him warming up at a Magpies game at McLean Park and this giant lad was covering so much ground with pace and power.

He’s got the size and physical attributes to be a great international 6/8, just needs time free from injury playing to build form at Super rugby level. You can’t teach size and pace.

All Blacks XV v Munster, 2 November 5.30PM (GMT) / 3 November 6.30AM (NZDT), Thomond Park, Limerick, Ireland

All Blacks XV match-day 23:

• George Bower* (Crusaders / Otago)
• Brodie McAlister (Crusaders / Canterbury)
• George Dyer (Chiefs / Waikato)
• Isaia Walker-Leawere (Hurricanes / Hawke’s Bay)
• Fabian Holland (Highlanders / Otago)
• Oliver Haig (Highlanders / Otago)
• Du’Plessis Kirifi - Captain (Hurricanes / Wellington)
• Devan Flanders (Hurricanes / Hawke’s Bay)
• Finlay Christie* (Blues / Tasman)
• Harry Plummer - Vice-Captain* (Blues / Auckland)
• Kini Naholo (Hurricanes / Taranaki)
• Quinn Tupaea* (Chiefs / Waikato)
• AJ Lam (Blues / Auckland)
• Chay Fihaki (Crusaders / Canterbury)
• Shaun Stevenson* (Chiefs / North Harbour) ⁠
• Bradley Slater (Chiefs / Taranaki)
• Xavier Numia (Hurricanes / Wellington)
• Marcel Renata (Blues / Auckland)
• Naitoa Ah Kuoi (Chiefs / Bay of Plenty)
• Corey Kellow (Crusaders / Canterbury)
• Noah Hotham* (Crusaders / Tasman)
• Josh Jacomb (Chiefs / Taranaki)
• Ruben Love* (Hurricanes / Wellington)

*denotes capped All Blacks player

Yeah I think the comparison between Jericho & Hogan/X-Pac isn’t quite right. As you note, rather than being an old passed it being pushed as the main event, he’s an old passed it being pushed as a feature mid-carder. He’s definitely not my cup of tea and he’s on TV more than I would care for but it could be a lot worse.

Your last sentence made me wonder, is there any example of the private sector wholly planning, building, and running a road in New Zealand ever? Or is it just one of those things that’s so obvious that without the coercive power of legislation for road building, and massive subsidies from the state that roads are not in any way an economic proposition?

When I look at PPPs such as Transmission Gully it really seems more like a broken outsourcing model where the Government took on all the risk, paid for the whole thing and then was going to let the private company toll it to extract rent from it until that became unpalatable so instead they’re just paying directly for the management of it.

Just the first steps of a private company to try to find a “profitable” route, and then buy or lease a right-of-way through undeveloped land seem entirely ludicrous. I suspect that the boondoggle of more and ever bigger roads in the late 20th, early 21st century may well be come to seem in a couple hundred years to be as daft as tulip mania.