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Rugby IV - Striking Hookers Are Back In Fashion


Which Tyler

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There is surely a case for the Gray brothers. Especially Johnny who has been in ridiculously good form. 

How the Scots players can be written off because of one game but the Welsh players can be forgiven because of terrible form in the whole Six Nations is embarrassing. Blatant favouritism from Gatland. 

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Looking at the Lions selections I realise I don't actually care. I expect them to get smashed :)
However I do applaud the tour approach of playing 6 lead-up matches against intentionally tough teams. 

The first fixture may be the easiest, a gentle encounter against a barbarian selection to open the tour. The following fixtures get increasing tougher. Speaking as a New Zealander, all of our Super Rugby franchises, and the NZ Maori, will be out for a Lions scalp, so all have intention of chalking up a win. If the Lions can wrestle a victory or three, build match fitness, and gel as a squad during this time then they'll be well tempered for that first test match on the 24th June, and I'm hoping that will be a cracker game. 

Regarding Piers Francis' call up to England, I'm sure the call up to represent one's country is a great honour, but I can't help feeling cynical about the timing. Francis would have been in line to start for the Blues against the Lions, and his unavailability will probably mean some game time for, third in line 1st five, Bryn Gatland (son of Warren). In any case I'm happy for Francis, but disappointed I wont get to watch him try, once more, to unlock that elusive Blues potential.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If you care about concussion in rugby, don't watch the westcountry derby from today. Worse than the GNorth incident from December.

 

Clash of heads leaves Glos hooker Matu'u clearly unconscious, med staff don't care and leave him on. At the next breakdown they've seen the video and take him off.. only to return him again 6 minutes later!

 

By definition they saw the video, and by definition the HIA is failed before it's even begun.

 

Throw the book at them, dock them points, fine them £££, prosecute the club for disrepute, and the med staff for negligence!

Rugby needs to get this house in order before someone dies, and in case anyone feels that's hyperbolic, have a quick look at: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-impact_syndrome

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Ben Youngs has withdrawn from the Lions tour after Tom Youngs' wife was informed her cancer was terminal. Sad news for the Youngs family.

On the domestic rugby front Wasps finished top of the table but the degree of difficulty they had beating a largely reserve Saracens side at home probably doesn't augur well for their chances of winning the playoffs. They'll probably have to hope an Exeter side in red hot form can pull off a win in the semifinal.

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2 hours ago, Hereward said:

England getting the toughest World Cup group was, of course, inevitable.

:lol: Yeah I just came to post that. England do all the work of getting themselves ranked 2nd in the world in time for the World Cup draw this time round and they still get the group of death. Great.

Also World Rugby has voted to raise the time needed to qualify on residency from 3 to 5 years as expected. It starts from 2020 apparently. Also as a part of that teams can't lock players in based on playing for their under 20 sides anymore. I don't think many people will disagree with the changes.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.physiospot.com/2017/05/24/novel-way-to-reduce-youth-rugby-concussion-injury/

I knew the new warm-up routine was coming in (I think we talked about it here), but hadn't realised that it was supposed to combat concussion as well as more musculoskeletal injuries. It's not the sort of thing that's going to matter at the top level where they already warm up properly and know how to tackle correctly (even if they often fail anyway) and combat fatigue - which seems to be the key.
I would be amazed and delighted if something so simple as warming up properly could combat the concussion epidemic at the amateur level.

Novel Way to Reduce Youth Rugby Concussion & Injury

The severity and lifelong implications of rugby related injuries has been central to press coverage this season, particularly regarding youth players and head injuries. The same can be said for other contact sports such as American Football which has also come under fire for allowing players to continue to play with head injuries and not providing enough support post-concussion.

Thankfully, the amount of injuries in youth players nationwide should reduce over the next season thanks to a research team in Bath (UK). A new pioneering exercise programme for Rugby players has been devised and has achieved staggering results including a 72% & 59% reduction in concussion and injury rates respectively.

The study took place over three years and included 2,500 14-18 year olds. The programme focuses on a series of balance, strength and dynamic controlled movements which are performed before a match and takes around 20 minutes.  The plan comprises of 4 stages which are made up of:

    A running warm-up with change of direction activities (2 minutes)
    Lower-limb balance training (4 minutes)
    Targeted resistance exercises (8 minutes)
    Jumping, side-stepping and landing exercises (6 minutes).

These exercises are then adapted over the season, reflecting progress made in strength and conditioning.

With regard to concussion, it is thought that the exercises improve alignment and the shock absorbing ability of the neck. The programme will be rolled out in full, nationwide, in preparation for the new rugby season.
https://youtu.be/O8jjPVqp4hU
The article is open access and available for you to view now.

Read the Study

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On 25/05/2017 at 8:28 AM, Which Tyler said:

http://www.physiospot.com/2017/05/24/novel-way-to-reduce-youth-rugby-concussion-injury/

I knew the new warm-up routine was coming in (I think we talked about it here), but hadn't realised that it was supposed to combat concussion as well as more musculoskeletal injuries. It's not the sort of thing that's going to matter at the top level where they already warm up properly and know how to tackle correctly (even if they often fail anyway) and combat fatigue - which seems to be the key.
I would be amazed and delighted if something so simple as warming up properly could combat the concussion epidemic at the amateur level.

An additional suggestion might be stringent drugs testing at all levels. Just a thought.

P.S. well done London Irish, hopefully we'll see you in a year and a bit.

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13 hours ago, Slick Mongoose said:

An additional suggestion might be stringent drugs testing at all levels. Just a thought.

P.S. well done London Irish, hopefully we'll see you in a year and a bit.

Especially age-grade.

Drug testing of the senior project.s is fine (IMO), but they're rampant in the academies. Basically the approach seems to be to dope up to bulk up, but to keep the bulk naturally. Testing of kids on the other hand is frought with difficulties anyway, and basically too many of them to pay for the testing regime without a serious increase.

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A couple of entertaining finals today.

The Premiership final was a really good tight game. Exeter were deserved winners, and it's good to see a club like them win it, but Wasps really made them work for it.

The Pro 12 final wasn't a good game but it featured a fantastic performance from the Scarlets. Good to see a really entertaining side win it again. I've got no idea how James Davies doesn't make the Welsh squad with four Welsh backrows going on the Lions tour. Also I wasn't the biggest fan of Jonathan Davies making the Lions tour but, in fairness, with two ball players in Patchell and Williams playing in side him he's been excellent for the Scarlets in the last few games.

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For anyone in the UK who's interested ITV have got the rights to the U20 World Championship but they aren't showing any of the group games so they're on the World Rugby website. Link. It's better than doing any work anyway.

England are currently mullering Samoa but New Zealand-Scotland appears to be a surprisingly tight game.

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The Lions Tour starts tomorrow with what should, hopefully, be a relatively straight forward game against a Provincial XV. You probably can't read too much into selections for the first game but here are the teams.

I'm looking forward to the series. New Zealand have to be favourites but hopefully the Lions can make it competitive. Losing Billy Vunipola is a very big blow on that front unfortunately but still the Lions do have a reasonably strong squad. We had Shaun Edwards giving the after dinner speech at the club dinner at my rugby club one of the things he pointed out was that he thought a lot of players had been picked with an eye to impact off the bench and you can see that. It'll be interesting to see how it goes.

In other news it looks like the Cheetahs might be joining the Pro 12. I think that might be a good idea actually, they're a good side to watch and the travel's not too bad if you consider there's not a big challenge with crossing timezones.

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So, er, that wasn't good. The Provincial Barbarians are more than likely going to be comfortably the worst team the Lions will face on this tour and they scraped a win.

There are a couple of players who may well have actively hurt their chances of a test start with those performances. Hogg had a really bad game for me, he didn't do well dealing with the opposition's kicking and bombed a couple of try scoring opportunities. Sexton and Joseph also didn't look great. Sexton looked laboured and it was noticeable that Farrell looked a lot sharper as soon as he came on. Joseph to a degree was a victim of Sexton not having a great game inside him in attack but given his late selection he's probably not at the forefront of Gatland's thoughts and he missed a few tackles. In the forwards Alun-Wyn Jones and Henderson weren't terrible but I thought it was notable the Lions didn't get anywhere near the Barbarians lineout until Kruis came on.

On the plus side Te'o was good and I thought Sinckler was excellent. It's no surprise that he was very good in the loose but he was solid in the scrum as well. Faletau was, unsurprisingly, probably the Lions' best player.

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This really isn't looking good. The Blues are the weakest are the Kiwi Super Rugby sides and if the Lions can't beat them it's not a great sign for the rest of the tour. They had a bit of bad luck with the bounce off the post at the end of the first half but it really shouldn't have mattered.

The pack were reasonable, the tight five were good and backrow weren't brilliant but they were ok. Rory Best probably shot himself in the foot missing that key lineout at the end though. The backs on the other hand were pretty dire. Given that much front foot ball they needed to show more than that and Sexton when he came on was useless, it's hard to see how he makes the test side now.

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Heh, this thread seems to be my Lions tour blog at the moment.

A lot, lot better from the Lions today. They controlled the game against the best of the New Zealand Super Rugby sides in the Crusaders and inflicted their first defeat of the season. The tour really needed that.

Quite a few positives for the Lions. Notably the game management from the Murray and Farrell, the defence, most of the work of the pack; the lineout was especially encouraging. Sexton for the first time looked good when he came on off the bench as well, which'll be a bit of a relief for the manegement I'm sure. They also did quite well at opening up the Crusaders defence and creating opportunities.

On the downside they again weren't very clinical about taking the opportunities, you can't see them not being punished for that if it continues into the tests. The scrum was a bit of a concern as well. The Crusaders gave away quite a few penalties/free kicks in their eagerness to get into the Lions scrum but when a scrum actually took place Moody really caused Furlong, who will almost certainly be the starting test tighthead, a number of problems.

Overall pretty encouraging although the starting side was probably pretty close to what the test side will be so if we're going to have to put that side out to win the non test games it's definitely going to be a long tour.

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I don't quite know why, but I still haven't gotten into this lions tour - for the first time I can remember.

I can only think it's the uninspiring head coach, with his uninspiring coaching crew, and largely uninspiring squad selection, and then being on Sky, with hideous commentators, and necessitating a dodgy stream and no beers.

I've watched most of each match, and I'm still not pumped.

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:lol: Incredible game between England and Argentina. With all the players missing I thought England were going to struggle against a pretty much full strength Pumas side but despite some understandable scrappy play at time they were very good. Wilson and Curry on the flanks were great for their first caps and Denny Solomona showed why Eddie Jones wanted him involved with the finish for the winning try. Of course he was dire up till that point with his missed tackles leading to two of the Argentina tries.

 

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