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Rugby IV - Striking Hookers Are Back In Fashion


Which Tyler

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Wales just got killed out there by the Aussies. Completely dominant and it could have been more.

Aussie locks were very good. Ver incisive attacking play from the Aussies. The Welsh were simply nowhere to be seen.

I suppose in their defense you could say the absence of Jones, Warburton and Faletau was keenly felt, as those are 3 surefire starters. Still, impressive stuff from Australia.

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I didn't see the Wales-Australia game because I was playing but Ireland are 25-8 up against the All Blacks in Chicago. Definitely getting interesting now. New Zealand are noticeably missing Whitelock and Retallick in the tight.

ETA: Well fuck me, Ireland have beaten New Zealand for the first time in their history. I certainly didn't see that coming but it was well deserved. Chicago seems to be the place to overturn periods of sporting failure stretching over 100 years at the moment.

The game in Dublin should be interesting.

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Ugh. Ugh, Ugh. 111 years down the drain.

I'm off to get some comfort food - preferably steering clear of anything green. :(

Seriously, congrats Ireland. It was thoroughly deserved. I would have backed us to win at only 33-29 down with ten minutes left, but we simply made too many mistakes.

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Much deserved win by Ireland. Stupid effing Moody getting yellow carded (lucky not to be a red) gifted Ireland with an opportunity and they took it and never looked back. Complacency by the ABs perhaps contributed to this loss, so I think this loss will be a sharp lesson to them and will hopefully steel their resolve and tighten up their game.

I wonder how many Chicagoans (Chicagoites?) realise how massively historic that win was? Solider Field is now almost a place of pilgrimage for Irish rugby fans.

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16 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Stupid effing Moody getting yellow carded (lucky not to be a red) gifted Ireland with an opportunity and they took it and never looked back.

I do feel a bit for Moody on that one. He does take the guy he tackled over the horizontal so it's a clear yellow under the current interpretations but it's not a proper old school tip someone up and drive them into the ground type of tackle, the margin between that being a yellow or a great physical tackle isn't huge.

I caught up with the Wales-Australia game. Wales were very poor but credit to Australia as well they were very good. I'm still not a massive fan of them playing 2 opensides but having a proper number 8 in Timani and two more physical locks in Arnold and Coleman gives them a lot more front foot ball and they definitely look miles better than they did earlier in their season.

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1 hour ago, ljkeane said:

I do feel a bit for Moody on that one. He does take the guy he tackled over the horizontal so it's a clear yellow under the current interpretations but it's not a proper old school tip someone up and drive them into the ground type of tackle, the margin between that being a yellow or a great physical tackle isn't huge.

 

For me Moody was stupid because it wasn't one of those hard hitting tackles (like the infamous Warburton incident), the two were almost stationary and there were several ways Moody could have tackled the guy but he chose to grab the upper legs and lift. It's fair that the severity of the lift and the way the ball carrier hits the ground is taken into account between a yellow and a red so a yellow for Moody was fine, but in order for people not to play around at the margins of lifting I think you have to yellow card any time the lift goes above the horizontal.

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My sister was in town with her boyfriend and a dozen of their friends for the Ireland v All Blacks game at the weekend.  I didn't go with because that many drunk Irish is hard for me to take these days.  They had a fantastic time, and only a couple were so drunk that couldn't even stand or sit up by kick-off.  They pinned their hotel address in big font to the front of their jackets and headed off to celebrate in the big city, trusting to the kindness of strangers and taxi drivers. 

We met the ambulatory elite of their group for brunch on Sunday while the others set up their field hospital for life threatening hangovers at an Irish bar serving full Irish breakfast all day.  They tried to explain to anyone who didn't run away fast enough that this victory eclipsed the Cubs.  I think the combination of accent and slurring was a barrier to transatlantic communication.  Some Canadians really took the hump for some reason -- they're usually so nice. 

Somehow I got stuck explaining the rules rugby to a group of Americans as they watched replay highlights.  The Irish guys just sniggered at all the questions.  And then I had to explain American football to the hung over Irish.  Truly I am a nomad lost between two cultures. 

 

Edit: no-one in Chicago outside of the Irish and small rugby-affiliated ethnic clusters have any idea there was a rugby game here at the weekend.  The whole city was still celebrating the Cubs. 

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LoL, that was a great story :)

I do hope the game did something to increase popularity of Rugby in the US. I'd love it if rugby took over from AF, and yes I realize that is not likely to happen anytime soon.

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The teams for the England-South Africa game.

Fingers crossed England can get the win, it's been a while, although I'm a little less confident than I would be without all the injuries. On the plus side South Africa really haven't been in great form and they continue to rather bizarrely decline to pick Janse Van Rensburg, who's an absolute monster. They have picked a massive pack though so it's not going to be easy.

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Beyond the injuries - the major talking points are how Brown is still at FB? (no viable alternatives ATM); Daly > JJ (who may be recovered from injury, but Daly's trained there for the last couple of weeks) and Yarde > Roko (WTF? just have to trust in Eddie's man-managament). Everyone else is basically 1st choice, or the last man left standing.

Still think Hughes should be playing for Fiji today though.

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I just got to watch the entirety of the Ireland vs All Blacks game on the NBCSN app.  They should really advertise better.  It seems they offer a lot of Big 12 rugby matches on the app even if they never broadcast on the TV. 

Only problem is that NBCSN is not working on my roku so I had to watch on a small iPad screen.  

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Scotland v Australia was an entertaining game, even if it ended up being another 1-point loss (although at least this time it wasn't due to a refereeing mistake). In the past Scotland have tended to start series slowly but they hit the ground running in this game. The scrum is a concern, and could be a problem against Argentina next week, but other than that the team played well. Huw Jones definitely made an impression on his first start, Scotland do seem to have a lot of good centres at the moment, someone like Mark Bennett or Matt Scott who would have been an automatic selection five years ago now can't get into the team.

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I thought both games were very good.

Thoroughly deserved win by England. They were under pressure the first 25 minutes but after that converted their chances and held the Saffers down quite handily. The Saffers somewhat handicapped because Etzebeth went out but that surely did not explain the difference in points we ended up with. Launchbury and Lawes held up very well, Robshaw, Brown, Farrell and Youngs all stood out to me but to be fair all the England players had a good game.

Scotland vs Australia wasn't as rich in scoring but it was very tight. You did sort of sense that the Aussies were going to make that try eventually, even though you never know for sure. There was so much pressure the last 20 minutes and Scotland kept on defending very well but was always on the back foot. The teams were very evenly matched, which is quite the morale boost for Scotland. Of course that already applied during the WC as well.

Did not see Walves' very close win against Argentina, but the return of Jones and Warburton looks likely to have to do with it.

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On 12/11/2016 at 8:51 PM, williamjm said:

Scotland v Australia was an entertaining game, even if it ended up being another 1-point loss (although at least this time it wasn't due to a refereeing mistake). In the past Scotland have tended to start series slowly but they hit the ground running in this game. The scrum is a concern, and could be a problem against Argentina next week, but other than that the team played well. Huw Jones definitely made an impression on his first start, Scotland do seem to have a lot of good centres at the moment, someone like Mark Bennett or Matt Scott who would have been an automatic selection five years ago now can't get into the team.

WP Nel was out injured. It would have been a different story in the scrum had he been available.

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