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Rugby: Building up to Japan


ljkeane

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My picks for the quarterfinals.

England v Australia: Like ithanos says Australia actually do have a solid tight five now so England's traditional way of beating the Wallabies probably won't work. The issue is they don't really seem to have a clear idea what they're going to do with the platform the tight five give them. I think Cheika would like to play the old school incisive wide attacking game of Australia but they don't really have the players for it and chopping and changing your halfbacks certainly doesn't help.

The England team of the last couple of years are a pretty well balanced side capable of blowing teams away. The issue has been they don't tend to do it for 80 minutes so they've put a lot of teams to the sword at the start of games then let them back in later on. Overall though I don't think Australia are the kind of side who're going to outlast England so I'll go for England to win.

New Zealand v Ireland: The games in which New Zealand have struggled recently (other than the loss against Australia) have tended to be against sides with powerful forward packs and aggressive linespeed orientated defences who're able to slow the tempo of the game down and drag them into an arm wrestle. To win the World Cup they're probably going to have to beat 3 teams capable of playing that way. I think concern about that is why they've switched Barrett to fullback to give them an extra decision making option to pull the ball back to and picked Sonny Bill Williams despite him not being in great form prior to the World Cup. The big test for how well it works will be Saturday though.

Ireland are certainly capable of beating the All Blacks as they showed last year and Schmidt's a very smart coach who will no doubt have a good plan to do it. On the downside they've had a pretty terrible year since that win and all the injuries they've had in the back row won't help their ability to slow down New Zealand ball. The fact that they weren't able to impose themselves on Japan is a bad sign for me. Given that I'm going to go for a New Zealand win.

Wales v France: I feel like I'm fairly consistently underestimating Wales. Gatland has designed a gameplan for the team which is tailored to their limitations and they very rarely do anything particularly exciting. What they do is defend ferociously, give the opposition no easy opportunities and usually take their chances. They also win a lot.

France are kind of the opposite. They're very talented, Dupont, Penaud etc are great to watch and they usually give the opposition lots of chances. If it all clicks for France they might win but overall I don't think they're particularly well coached and I'm dubious that's a great foundation for beating Wales. So I'm going for a Wales win.

Japan v South Africa: Japan have been great and I'd love to say I could see them going further but unfortunately I can't. They beat South Africa last time but this Springbok team are a lot better than the 2015 vintage. Fundamentally the up tempo game Japan want to play is very hard to do if you're losing collisions on the gainline pretty consistently which is what I think it going to happen against this South African pack. So, yeah, I'm going for a South Africa win.

That was a pretty long winded way of saying I think all the favourites are going to win their quarterfinals.

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I like the look of these quarters. All of them have favourites, but there's just enough credibility for an upset in each one, although maybe that's stretching things a little for Australia's sake.

I think I'm looking forward to the Wales/France (because of unpredictability) and Japan/South Africa (Japan's style vs South Africa) matches the most.

 

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Incredibly difficult quarters to call. All teams could beat the others. 

In some ways South Africa is toughest call for japan. Physically the biggest, will the style Japan used v Ireland and Scotland tire out boks or just break on them like a rock? Think SA

England look too strong for Australia but are vulnerable when believing their own press. Cheiks needs a win and will have them fired up to beat the poms. Think England 

ireland v NZ. I think Ireland based on what I said above.

Wales v france, wales drilled well, in form, but  I think france to rip up form book with they’re mercurial World Cup form.  Great cup team. 

So, SA, France, Ireland, England semis? 

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Oh FFS

England:
15-Elliot Daly
14-Anthony Watson
13-Henry Slade
12-Manu Tuilagi
11-Jonny May
10-Owen Farrell (captain)
9-Ben Youngs

8-Billy Vunipola
7-Sam Underhill
6-Tom Curry
5-Courtney Lawes
4-Maro Itoje
3-Kyle Sinckler
2-Jamie George
1-Mako Vunipola

16-Luke Cowan-Dickie, 17-Joe Marler, 18-Dan Cole, 19-George Kruis, 20-Lewis Ludlam
21-Willi Heinz, 22-George Ford, 23-Jonathan Joseph

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On 10/15/2019 at 11:18 PM, BigFatCoward said:

This tournament has been going on way way too long to only now have arrived at some meaningful matches.  I don't know how to solve that, smaller nations absolutely need to be involved, but the number of absolute hidings they have taken can't be helpful.

But here's the thing... even ignoring Japan's rampage, the days of 100-point World Cup hidings are over (sure Namibia lost 71-9 to the All Blacks. That's less than the half-time score in All Blacks v. Japan in 1995). This is probably the most competitive Rugby World Cup in its three decade existence.

There have also been some very meaningful matches. New Zealand/South Africa, Wales/Australia, and Japan/Ireland have pretty much dictated everyone's road to the Final, while the Scotland/Ireland/Japan Pool struggle was fascinating.

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1 hour ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

But here's the thing... even ignoring Japan's rampage, the days of 100-point World Cup hidings are over (sure Namibia lost 71-9 to the All Blacks. That's less than the half-time score in All Blacks v. Japan in 1995). This is probably the most competitive Rugby World Cup in its three decade existence.

There have also been some very meaningful matches. New Zealand/South Africa, Wales/Australia, and Japan/Ireland have pretty much dictated everyone's road to the Final, while the Scotland/Ireland/Japan Pool struggle was fascinating.

Most competitive and competitive are not the same thing for me.  Also, other than Japan (and lets be honest, its not a huge shock other than the Ireland result, for the home team to do well) they could have just drawn straws and ended up with the same situation. 

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3 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

Most competitive and competitive are not the same thing for me.  Also, other than Japan (and lets be honest, its not a huge shock other than the Ireland result, for the home team to do well) they could have just drawn straws and ended up with the same situation. 

But it's supposed to be the World Cup, not a mash-up of the Rugby Championship and the Six Nations. I mean, if all that mattered was competition, have an annual three test series between the RC winner and the SN winner - and there is a case for that as the decider of global supremacy. To some extent, a World Cup of rugby union (far more than its association football equivalent) necessitates fluff matches on order to actually be a World Cup, and insofar as there is fluff, at least it's been entertaining fluff. 

On the bright side, at least this isn't the four-yearly farce that is the Rugby League World Cup.

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5 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

But here's the thing... even ignoring Japan's rampage, the days of 100-point World Cup hidings are over (sure Namibia lost 71-9 to the All Blacks. That's less than the half-time score in All Blacks v. Japan in 1995). This is probably the most competitive Rugby World Cup in its three decade existence.

There have also been some very meaningful matches. New Zealand/South Africa, Wales/Australia, and Japan/Ireland have pretty much dictated everyone's road to the Final, while the Scotland/Ireland/Japan Pool struggle was fascinating.

That’s right, I certainly thought it has felt more competitive than last few. The usual minnows are closing the gap, pity Romania, Spain etc couldn’t get through 

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11 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Oh FFS
 

It's not a huge surprise that's Jones' first choice midfield, it's what he was going with in the Six Nations and Slade hasn't really been fit enough for his non selection up to this point to necessarily mean he'd fallen out of favour. Ford's obviously been in better form than Farrell but Farrell's the captain and Jones is clearly a big fan, if it came down to a choice between the two of them it was always going to be Farrell. :dunno:

Other than that I'm a little surprised Wilson's fallen all the way out of the squad, I'd probably have him starting to be honest. Not going with Kruis is a bit of a gamble too, the Australian lineout's been quite good and with Vunipola and Underhill in the back row there's going to be a lot of pressure on the second rows to win lineout ball.

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Whew, that was a bit more nerve wracking around half time than I'd have liked it to be. Since the Australian try England have taken control though.

The Australian tactics with their kick off were pretty smart actually. England really don't like to play in their own half so Australia knew they were going to kick it back, by putting their kickoffs central they made it a hard kick for Youngs and ensured they'd get a lot of attacking ball. They struggled to turn that ball into enough to win the match though, I feel like the lack of a settled halfback partnership didn't help with that.

From an England point of view they finished well and scored a couple of good tries but they didn't exert enough control of the game for the first 50 minutes or so. If they end up playing New Zealand in the semifinal and give them this much attacking ball they'll lose.

Almost a good try for the Wallabies to finish their World Cup with. They could have done with getting the ball to Koroibete in space some more,

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Good half from New Zealand, they've taken their chances well and pretty much had the game won after about 30 minutes.

On the other hand it's been an absolutely terrible performance from Ireland continuing their 2019 form. They've shown they can beat the All Blacks but to do they need to keep their error count low and squeeze them out of the game. They've done pretty much the opposite of that and the number of soft errors they're making is making it fairly easy for New Zealand.

I think Ireland's performances at the World Cup are going to end up being a bit of a black mark on Schmidt's tenure as coach.

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When the AB's have had some underwhelming performances in the last wee while there were whispers that was because Steve Hansen and the lads weren't letting it all go ... they were keeping their powder dry for when it really mattered.

Starting to get real easy to believe that was the case all along.

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Yes, these first two quarterfinals (especially Ireland vs ABs) have not been as close as I'd hoped.

Wales/France could be a rout as well, although if France's best side turns up then they could make it a barnstorming match.

South Africa should take care of Japan.

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Poor by Ireland, continuing a full year of poor form.  This is what the whole country feared all through the underwhelming Six Nations campaign: they peaked a year too early in this WC cycle.  There’s no particular reason for their decline, although opponents did get used to their tactics, but it was clear that it had slipped away and they could not recapture it. 

And so far the QFs haven’t really been competitive.  England fans might have been slightly nervy — the curse of favorites — but they handled the Wallabies pretty easily overall. 

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I'm worried that despite promising so much, the QF matchups might end up in four one-sided matches.

Wales may well take France quite easily, and South Africa should head off Japan. So I think I'm going for the underdogs in both of those matches, we need to have at least one classic quarterfinal match.

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