The Bazeley post match interview pretty much summed up the general feeling.
Despite excitable Paladin's efforts ('I really enjoyed the game'), straight bat Baze was fairly apathetic, thoughts already elsewhere.
His comments along the lines of -
"Did what we had to do. Didn't learn much of use apart from how we need to be better against weaker teams when we have all the ball, faster movement etc. They parked the bus, their keeper made some good saves. We quickly move to focussing on March. We won't judge the players much on these games, we will more be carefully watching now how they go at their clubs"
Crowd 5,327
Despite excitable Paladin's efforts ('I really enjoyed the game'), straight bat Baze was fairly apathetic, thoughts already elsewhere.
His comments along the lines of -
"Did what we had to do. Didn't learn much of use apart from how we need to be better against weaker teams when we have all the ball, faster movement etc. They parked the bus, their keeper made some good saves. We quickly move to focussing on March. We won't judge the players much on these games, we will more be carefully watching now how they go at their clubs"
Crowd 5,327
To give European/US based players enough time to arrive in NZ, and enough time to return to their clubs for games this weekend - the AWs matches have to be Friday & Monday nights.
Playing the Monday night anywhere but Auckland would add an additional layer of complexity re flights out of NZ tomorrow (or tonight) for the players. There would be few places on earth a greater flying time from Minnesota, London, Lisbon, Copenhagen, Vienna, Amsterdam, Oslo, Rome and Athens - than Aotearoa.
Anyway would you really get more than 5K on Monday night against such a minnow as Samoa, elsewhere in NZ?