Tony Johnson

set in concrete going into the last weekend of the round robin you you want the potential there for a bit of movement who's going to be playing who who's going to be traveling as i say all we know uh one and two are going to be at home but we still got the rest of it to decide and it's just going to be fascinating watch it all unfold the funny thing is that for me even if the crusaders are sixth they still said it's probably the team outside of the top two that's most likely to win

Who wants to play the Crusaders anywhere?

Their, your place, their place?

Nothing wrong with taking the three if you can secure the ball from the restart, have a good exit, take the play back into the opposition half.

But somehow in these big games, that becomes quite a difficult thing to do sometimes.

And I recall the moment you were talking about.

I think they sensed they had a bit of an overlap of three-two.

But the percentage play absolutely would have been to hoof the ball downfield, get it out of the red zone, and make them come back.

Back your defense.

But as soon as you give them a set piece inside your danger zone, well, you're asking for trouble.

That's... I love that variation they pulled off too, where the try that Quintu Paira scored.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Because, I mean, yeah, it's an art form, the line-out drive, but I just love the way that teams have grown their ability to tack.

Yes, you use the line-out as the basis, but it's not necessarily, you know, tuck it under the hooker's wing and let's see if we can bulldoze our way over.

Teams have gotten better and better at defending it, and so the attacking team now...

the onus is on them to come up with variations.

And we've seen some beauties, and that was one of them.

I mean, gosh, I don't know whether he even got a hand laid on him.

Spoken like a true back, eh?

Anytime I can go through untouched, yeah.