Lions Watch 2017

[honestly united]

2 hours ago, PrestersKTID said:

Were they better at kicking though? 

On another note Laidlaw is arguably the most consistent kicker in the lions squad and yet has hardly been given a shot at goal in any of the midweek games.

A lot of them yes. But when you are picking a player just because he is the best goalkicker you have then you should know your team is in trouble. Yes you need to have a reliable kicker but IMO its quite a bit down the list of attributes you should be looking at in a player.

Take Laidlaw for instance, I would much rather have Price at scrum half rather than Laidlaw, as Price is a much better player, and we have options in Russell and Hogg who are both decent enough kickers. 

[PrestersKTID]

I agree price is a faster ball player which fits better with how Scotland want to play these days.
Would argue though that a lot of Patterson's alternatives were better kickers. Sure he kicked 36 in a row for Scotland. (World record at the time according to wiki)

[DeeTillEhDeh]

You're not in Kansas now Toto.

Big fingers, mobile keyboard and predictive text.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

A lot of them yes. But when you are picking a player just because he is the best goalkicker you have then you should know your team is in trouble. Yes you need to have a reliable kicker but IMO its quite a bit down the list of attributes you should be looking at in a player.
Take Laidlaw for instance, I would much rather have Price at scrum half rather than Laidlaw, as Price is a much better player, and we have options in Russell and Hogg who are both decent enough kickers. 

I think that is true - if you look at the top 25 international kickers of all time only Grant Fox (one try) was not a regular try scorer.

[John Lambies Doos]

A lot of them yes. But when you are picking a player just because he is the best goalkicker you have then you should know your team is in trouble. Yes you need to have a reliable kicker but IMO its quite a bit down the list of attributes you should be looking at in a player.
Take Laidlaw for instance, I would much rather have Price at scrum half rather than Laidlaw, as Price is a much better player, and we have options in Russell and Hogg who are both decent enough kickers. 

Possibly but Laidlaw does bring leadership qualities. Sorely missed by Scotland in recent years

[Dunning1874]

23 hours ago, Jaggy Snake said:

Beauden Barrett is one of the best players in the world and was never going to get dropped. He's always been capable of having bad kicking games, last week wasn't anything especially new.

I'm pleased to see Jordie Barrett come into the team as he's been excellent in the league. I would expect Beauden to start the game with kicking duties but if he misses a couple Jordie, who's probably a better kicker, could easily taker over.

Oh aye, no question that he's a brilliant player generally, but I thought his all-round game was poor last week as well as just the kicking. I suppose with a player of his quality you just have to give him the chance to bounce back, and with his brother coming in too there's the hope that they can work well together having played together with Hurricanes.

[Mark Connolly]

11 minutes ago, Dunning1874 said:

Oh aye, no question that he's a brilliant player generally, but I thought his all-round game was poor last week as well as just the kicking. I suppose with a player of his quality you just have to give him the chance to bounce back, and with his brother coming in too there's the hope that they can work well together having played together with Hurricanes.

He was poor last week, but he has set a very high bar. He still kicked 7 from 10, and he certainly wasn't the only AB to go missing. Kieran Read was very poor by his standards.

I still think the ABs got the gameplan wrong last week, and that contributed to the poor performances. The real test for the Lions will be making sure these guys have a 2nd poor game in a row, which is extremely rare.

[John Lambies Doos]

Anyone know expected weather?

[honestly united]

20 hours ago, PrestersKTID said:

I agree price is a faster ball player which fits better with how Scotland want to play these days.
Would argue though that a lot of Patterson's alternatives were better kickers. Sure he kicked 36 in a row for Scotland. (World record at the time according to wiki)

Not saying he wasn't a good kicker, but on that 36 in a row, he used to pass up anything long range ie more than 40m to (I think it was anyway) Dan Parks.

[honestly united]

14 hours ago, John Lambies Doos said:

 

 

Possibly but Laidlaw does bring leadership qualities. Sorely missed by Scotland in recent years

 

 

True, he has been a good captain, and we dont have too many other options apart from Barclay really, the likes of Ford, Grey, Pyrgos have all captained in the past but I dont think are quite good enough for international captain

[John Lambies Doos]

True, he has been a good captain, and we dont have too many other options apart from Barclay really, the likes of Ford, Grey, Pyrgos have all captained in the past but I dont think are quite good enough for international captain

Agree..
One thing Laidlaw certainly is... is international captain material. Real presence for a small guy.
I think that's widely accepted across the international rugby fraternity

[PrestersKTID]

Just now, honestly united said:

Not saying he wasn't a good kicker, but on that 36 in a row, he used to pass up anything long range ie more than 40m to (I think it was anyway) Dan Parks.

Your argument was that many of the players Paterson kept out the team were better Kickers. Who?   

Surely the majority of kickers that don't have big range let someone else with a big boot hit them. Hoggy hits instead of Laidlaw for example. I highly doubt Paterson would have passed up kicks that were makeable just to keep a record at the expense of the team.

[honestly united]

3 minutes ago, PrestersKTID said:

Your argument was that many of the players Paterson kept out the team were better Kickers. Who?   

Surely the majority of kickers that don't have big range let someone else with a big boot hit them. Hoggy hits instead of Laidlaw for example. I highly doubt Paterson would have passed up kicks that were makeable just to keep a record at the expense of the team.

That wasn't my point, when i said originally i could think of 5 or 6 players better in each position i meant of all time (ie Hogg, Hasting, Irvince, Dodd, Maitland, Metclafe etc were all much better full backs) not just when Paterson was playing. I fully accept that at the time Paterson was playing the majority of the time he fully deserved his place in the team. However he was part of an extremely poor generation of Scotland players, and only managed 14 games and 38 points in his time at Gloucester. Probably at the time he was playing you could have let Parks kick and it would have made no odds to the results of the majority of games.

But i think the point stands, you should not be picking a player just because they are a good goal kicker, you need to pick the best 15 players then pick the best goalkicker out of them.

[invergowrie arab]

21 hours ago, honestly united said:

A lot of them yes. But when you are picking a player just because he is the best goalkicker you have then you should know your team is in trouble.

This is nonsense. A solid goal kicker is an absolute priority in international rugby.

As for Chris Paterson he was a rare positive note for Scotland in our worst era for 70 odd years. As well as the kicking he made excellent line breaks and was a great finisher.

To compare him to Dan Parks is outrageous. Of Parks 60 odd caps he had about a dozen good games and dined out on it for years.

[honestly united]

31 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

This is nonsense. A solid goal kicker is an absolute priority in international rugby.

As for Chris Paterson he was a rare positive note for Scotland in our worst era for 70 odd years. As well as the kicking he made excellent line breaks and was a great finisher.

To compare him to Dan Parks is outrageous. Of Parks 60 odd caps he had about a dozen good games and dined out on it for years.

Im not disputing the fact that Paterson was a rare positive during an embarrassingly bad period.

But a rhetorical question, given todays back line of Laidlaw, Russell, Maitland, Dunbar, Jones, Seymor and Hogg, if Laidlaw got injured and we bring in Price, would you drop any of them for Paterson (at his prime obviously) and if not why not given he is a better goal kicker than any of them? or would you stick with the team and let Russell get on with the kicking, although nowhere near as good?

Again I wasn't comparing Parks to Paterson as a player, just saying if Paterson hadnt played and Parks had been the sole goal kicker do you really think it would have made much difference to the scoreline any many games? ie how many games did we win during that period would we have lost with Parks kicking?

[John Lambies Doos]

Im not disputing the fact that Paterson was a rare positive during an embarrassingly bad period.
But a rhetorical question, given todays back line of Laidlaw, Russell, Maitland, Dunbar, Jones, Seymor and Hogg, if Laidlaw got injured and we bring in Price, would you drop any of them for Paterson (at his prime obviously) and if not why not given he is a better goal kicker than any of them? or would you stick with the team and let Russell get on with the kicking, although nowhere near as good?
Again I wasn't comparing Parks to Paterson as a player, just saying if Paterson hadnt played and Parks had been the sole goal kicker do you really think it would have made much difference to the scoreline any many games? ie how many games did we win during that period would we have lost with Parks kicking?

Parks had his moments. Croke Park 2010 was particularly joyous

[Savage Henry]

Patterson would be back up full-back now, surely? I've never seen Maitland there, but he just looks like a wing.

[John Lambies Doos]

Patterson would be back up full-back now, surely? I've never seen Maitland there, but he just looks like a wing.

No way would paterson get near the current Scotland team.. imo

[dogmc]

Patterson would be back up full-back now, surely? I've never seen Maitland there, but he just looks like a wing.

He might be back up stand off but for 15 I'd have maitland tonks Kinghorn n Taylor as cover (not in any particular order). Paterson was a better player for us than he's given credit for (playing 15 for some of the poorest Scotland sides in recent memory was a poisoned chalice ) and was probably our only creative player in those days. He was also pretty quick. We have ludicrous strength in depth right along the back line these days. Someone like griggs would have 50 + caps back in the Paterson era.

[same_ol_g35]

I hate doing this(saying how players of different eras would for into the current lineup) as the difference in both the squads of these eras are so drastically different, especially in the backs. But if I had to guess I'd say he would most likely be on the bench in the peter Horne utility back place. You never know though, with better ayers surrounding him in this current team maybe he could've had less pressure on him to perform and carry the team and improve as a player? We'll just never know. He'll always be that goal kicking machine we shunted around the backs just to see if we could find any other player who wasn't a talentless fud in orange gloves(excluding Sean Lamont) .