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What a fightback by Australia! I hope they can continue to play like this when I see them in a few weeks. Scooped up a last minute spare ticket from a friend.
Also going to the boks game but I'm trying to put that out my mind after seeing the terrifying team sheet!
Busy bit of travel for you then! And I'm late to the match here, but had 2 folk saying I have to tune in now.
You and me called tonight by five, but different ways! Gonna be a great match
Its been mostly quite trash so far - the wet ball isn't helping anybody!
Ireland by 5
England by 3 (lol)
Argentina by 5 <- my game of the weekend to watch
France by 30
Fiji by 15 (epic lols)
South Africa by 10 (tears in the rain)
Card count: 8
My Ireland pick is down to Razor's Crusaders bias picking 2 of his boys at hooker this year which has left the ABs with a known weak lineout thrower in Aumua and an understudy who was just as flakey at Super Rugby this year. All while leaving a Super Rugby winning hooker and one of our most reliable throwers at home.
The bias got even worse with Taylor out injured this week they called Brodie McAlister into the squad ahead of Eklund - so there's 3 Crusaders Hookers out of 4 in the ABs squad this week, its actually stupid given the two not named Taylor haven't looked even close to pushing him out of his spot.
Missed the XV match, Georgia won't be up to much. I'll say NZ by 23
It was definitely more of a grind than a romp. Is that the normal rugby pitch in Montpellier - it was very cutup & muddy even before they started the game!
No, quite surprised at that. Did they use a football pitch, or was it the rugby stadium?
Had to google bc outside of the 5 big international stadiums I have no idea where any of these grounds are. Its apparently GGL Stadium which is the ground for Montpellier Hérault who are a top 14 side so i'd assume are the Montpellier.
Its quite a nice looking stadium (apart from the state of the pitch), but another opportunity to be shocked that a metropolitan population of 800k or so has their rugby team in a 16k capacity ground - that's not much bigger than McLean Park which services maybe around 160-180k :)
A reminder that even though there's loads of money in Rugby in France and it is big, its not football big!
Quite a lot of the AB XV best players got called into the ABs squad as injury cover so I'm not as bullish.
Discovering I want Italy to win this really badly. I think they might be my 2nd test team. Not sure where I get these masochistic impulses from lol.
Me too. Seeing them lose like this is hard. They have had 15 years more tier1 and done little with it in reality. But the rise of los Pumas is also fantastic to see in contrast
Performances like that is why it should have stayed 5 nations and just had promotion - relegation with a tier below. Wales & Italy being guaranteed spots in the Test Championship series for so long is a real shame for any of the other 3rd tier teams vying for their spots.
;)
One thing im finding interesting about the international Rugby at the moment is I think you could say the top tier is probably Ireland, SA, NZ, France and maybe England. Then 2nd tier is very compressed, probably only Argentina, Scotland & Australia before there's a noticeable drop down to Italy, Fiji, Wales, and then an even more noticeable dip to Georgia, Samoa, Japan. After that you're getting into the Portgual, Tonga, Uruguay.
Outside of the top 8 where you could see Argentina, Scotland and (maybe) Australia pulling off wins against the top 5, it seems to me that each chunk of teams you drop down really do seem completely unlikely of upsetting even the tier immediately above at the moment. I haven't quite put my finger on why that might be but im wondering if it comes down to the advantage modern defences have, much better strength & condition plus the best teams having benches where there's just no dip in quality.
No way are England top tier right now. But I do agree there is a top 4 then a drop off. Scotland has an inability to crack them and that's the debate about Townsend. As to the why, it's the depth imo that allows them to defend with such ferocity AND attack. Frequently we see one or the other in players, but the top 4 nations have a player pool where the world class do both. They also have player pathways that are world class that develops these individuals, which pays dividends in the long term
I figured with the 3 very close losses two NZ that if I didn't say England were in the top tier then there's a strong argument that NZ aren't either. And given their placings in the World Cup just a year ago I think its fair even if Borthwick's record is only 50/50 over a lot of tests now.
ABs putting Ireland to the sword there. Ireland only really looking dangerous when NZ were down to 14. AB defense shut down any platform from Ireland and they couldn't figure out how to unlock, despite a massive amount of ball. James lowe though, he's so good
I think that's similar to the England game - their only try came from an opportunist intercept they weren't able to break down the ABs defence. Same story today, Ireland's only try comes with the ABs down to 14 and space out wide, and its wasn't particularly creative, just folding right into space until the try came.
Lowe was great, but Hansen & Keenan were basically anonymous. Ringrose really didn't do much either - I guess it comes down a bit to the ABs chocking Ireland of possession too but of the Irish back three the workmate was well down in comparison to the ABs.
Got up and watching the last quarter of Scotland vs SA. How the f$%k is getting the ball from your own 10m to inside the opposition's 22m not an advantage? Particularly when its not an advantage for foul play, or any particularly egregious cheating but a scrum collapsing when the ball was available to use.
Rugby really does get in its own way sometimes.
Yes that advantage was far too long. Scrum was a shitshow all game sadly, Scotland looked well out our depth
I know the redditors get up in arms when anybody suggests tampering with this beautiful facet of Rugby that everybody comes to the stadium to see; but honestly scrum penalties are just whack these days. A knock-on just shouldn't need to lead to a >40m advantage being given to one team by the referee, especially when if the team had kicked it even 10m it would have been advantage over!
I would much prefer scrum infringements to be free-kicks only unless its a defensive scrum penalty on your 5m line where you might be cheating to stop a potential try scoring drive (although they are exceedingly rare these days). In pretty much every other facet of play the team feeding the scrum is getting the advantage at a restart of having the ball after they previously did not - that's the advantage already!
Some folks like to moan about the haka, but this new trend of having dignitaries come and greet everyone before a match is both kinda cool and an incredibly boring use of time.
When Moana Pasifika played in Tonga for the first time they had the players go up and meet the Tongan royals in attendance, in Japan the Princess came out to shake the players hands and now Michael Higgins the Irish President getting his time. He's a rad dude and all but do we really want to have this much fussing about for meaningless one off games?
We love it in the NH. The King's sister usually does a 6n dignitary bit at the 6n too. Actually not sure France or Italy do, but seems like something Macron would do!
Bit of controversy in the anthems with the Irish band forgetting that the Aotearoa-New Zealand anthem has two verses and its quite important that we do them both giving equal standing to both treaty partners that establish the country.
Someone always fucks up a visiting anthem. Ireland getting two and denying yous two verses is a joke though!
Musically I get it because its decking boring; but culturally its really important for us to recognise both partners to Te Tiriti.
IRE v NZ Halftime thoughts:
Fulltime thoughts:
One for the purists tonight with a bar of soap for a ball. And I think he'll be off with a red for the contact. Our first 20 minute in the NH potentially. And they 100% play a lot in the wet in the URC and 6n, so they are very used to floor work. Nic I think should be less lenient of Irish shithousery at the ruck imo, but Ireland are very good at this area
One of the first angles shown it looked like the initial contact was shoulder to shoulder which rode up to shoulder-head, and given the impact wasn't strong he had gone down just could have gone down more, plus the Irish player dipped a little I'm hopeful that commonsense will prevail and it will remain yellow. After all previous Ireland-New Zealand test matches have shown you can make a completely upright tackle, concuss & break the check of the opposition player and it is a confirmed yellow only.
He's come back out to sit on the naughty chair after the break so I guess that's still yellow then.
Ireland have always been on the edge of legality in terms of holding on too long after a tackle and interfering at the breakdown. They have been doing it for years but referees have only just started pinging them for it. Berry was all over it last night and it prevented them gaining any momentum.
I think if anything he was still pretty lenient towards them, and only when they most blatantly rolled into the path of the cleanout or halfback were they pinged. I've noticed in a few of these NH internationals now the counter-ruckers swimming around the side of the ruck and not driving tryline to tryline by more corner to corner which for mine is probably something worth more attention than the current focus on escorts for contestables.
England sounded genuinely better this week. Keeping Smith on the field was crucial, and putting that score for your side is fantastic, no matter the opponent. But damn are they weak in D. And the 6n is all about defense.
Well I picked England putting points on the board against Australia who've really struggled in defence this year, I just did not have Australia busting through England's D on the cards at all. Full credit to them, Sua'ali'i looked deserving of his selection which is remarkable given its basically his first game of Union since high school; helped a lot by Ikitau who's been having a great year. Schmidt seems to have really found a good balance with the loosies now, if they can just tidy up on D they'll be back to being a real threat.
What a match to catch on the radio it was. So good to hear the commentators shout nooo :) Defense was obviously optional yesterday, here's hoping Scotland go like that today too! (Wales v Fiji likely to be a high scorer too)
Wonder if Wales will join in campaigning against the new red card sanction after they somehow managed to fail to beat a Fijian team down to 13 at one point.
Wales are traditionalists at the top, part of the reason they are struggling. Personally I'm for it, even if Scotland’s looked very soft in the stadium.
Outcome wise its a bit hard to see it being worse than a Yellow, but given what happened to Tupaea's knee and he's only just getting back to near that top flight level now its probably fair to be punishing based on the potential outcome.
Its early days for the north to get used to it yet, but the true beauty of the 20 minute card now we've had it in place for a while is how much less whinging about stuff there is. Fans, players, coaches, they all just cop it & move on because whether its perception or reality it just doesn't feel like the card is a game killer.
Those sorts of "trying to do something you would normally try in rugby but screwing it up and doing a foul play" cards often have so much grey area; but the sanction that punishes the player more than the team really does seem to work here. Especially when we've had straight reds for punches, head-butts which are just so much more obviously deliberate & thus worse.
Could Wales and Fiji please stop with the cards? There's a game of rugby to be played!