Rugby: Building up to Japan

[ljkeane]

9 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Oh dear.

As soon as he's forgiven his previous, and allowed another shot; Mr "not socialised as a puppy" does it again!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-45201916

England rugby international Danny Cipriani has been charged with common assault after an incident at a Jersey nightclub.

Yeah, I was just about to post that. Idiot, and if they're keeping him in custody presumably it's being taken fairly seriously too.

[Which Tyler]

4 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

Yeah, I was just about to post that. Idiot, and if they're keeping him in custody presumably it's being taken fairly seriously too.

They tend to take things seriously when the charges include resisting arrest and assaulting a policemanofficer

[ljkeane]

So with South Africa losing to Argentina any real prospect of anyone other than New Zealand winning the Rugby Championship is over for another year. Although given how vulnerable the Springbok defence looks out wide whenever their opposition gets any quick ball and their propensity for digging themselves a big hole to get out of I'm not sure I'd have held out much hope of them even winning a home game against the All Blacks anyway.

I realised something as I was fastforwarding through large portions of the New Zealand Australia game yesterday; I really don't enjoy watching many All Blacks games anymore. It's a shame because they pretty consistently play very good to excellent rugby but part of the fun of watching sport is some uncertainty about the result and I'm very rarely in much doubt at all that New Zealand are going to win comfortably. International rugby could really do with a few teams really stepping their game up to make it more competitive.

 

[The Anti-Targ]

15 hours ago, ljkeane said:

So with South Africa losing to Argentina any real prospect of anyone other than New Zealand winning the Rugby Championship is over for another year. Although given how vulnerable the Springbok defence looks out wide whenever their opposition gets any quick ball and their propensity for digging themselves a big hole to get out of I'm not sure I'd have held out much hope of them even winning a home game against the All Blacks anyway.

I realised something as I was fastforwarding through large portions of the New Zealand Australia game yesterday; I really don't enjoy watching many All Blacks games anymore. It's a shame because they pretty consistently play very good to excellent rugby but part of the fun of watching sport is some uncertainty about the result and I'm very rarely in much doubt at all that New Zealand are going to win comfortably. International rugby could really do with a few teams really stepping their game up to make it more competitive.

 

While the All Blacks probably would have still won, there was some key brain explosions which prevented the Wallabies from making use of their attacking opportunities. I'm thinking particularly of the 2 occasions where the Ws were on attack, and had the ABs back-peddling somewhat, and then an Aussie player takes out an AB away from the ruck, which Barnes correctly penalises. They were such dumb penalities, which if they had not been committed it would have been possible for Aussie to go into half time with a lead.

One thing I think might need some close refereeing attention is the dirty play in the ruck vs Pocock. That neck rolling shit needs to be stamped out, and I think the TMO needs to be given licence to look at and inform the ref when it's picked up, and it needs to be considered for yellow-carding like head high tackles. If the only way to get Pocock off the ball is to commit a penalty that endangers him, then I think the punishment needs to be harsh.

I wonder if some penalties should involve gaining field advantage (10 metres perhaps?), as a step between normal penalty and sin binning.

I must say, I'm quite liking the skill level I'm seeing in the women's game. Though admittedly I'm only getting to see highlight packages of the women's tests at the moment. Still think this is showing that with more time and resources put into the development of the women's game it can be every bit the entertainment spectral of skill, power and pace as the men's game.

[ljkeane]

On 8/27/2018 at 3:02 AM, The Anti-Targ said:

 I'm thinking particularly of the 2 occasions where the Ws were on attack, and had the ABs back-peddling somewhat, and then an Aussie player takes out an AB away from the ruck, which Barnes correctly penalises. They were such dumb penalities, which if they had not been committed it would have been possible for Aussie to go into half time with a lead.

Yeah, I suppose. They're dumb penalties if the officials spot it and smart play if they don't, which is fairly often. It's the kind of thing you need to read/know you're officials with I think. 

Anyway, Matt O'Connor lasts 1 game of the new season as Leicester coach. That's worked out well then.

[ljkeane]

I can't say I saw the All Blacks losing at home this year coming, especially off the back of the Springboks losing away to both Argentina and Australia. Great performance from South Africa though, I didn't think they were going to hold out a man down and only one score ahead, we've seen New Zealand pull out the win so often in situations like that, but they managed it.

[The Anti-Targ]

ABs have to lose sometimes. Some dumb shit from the ABs though, like that huge quick throw in from Barrett right on the AB 22 that gave South Africa their second try and the lead. Unnecessary.

[The Anti-Targ]

Well shit! The Boks outplayed the ABs for 77 minutes of the game, and the ABs won because of a very lucky bounce of the ball. The ABs still had to do the work to score a try of course, but man that bounce sure as hell made it a lot easier to do.

I say 77 minutes, not just because of the final minute try, but because all of the ABs points were pretty much scored within a collective 3 minutes of the game, which was also the only time in the game the ABs looked halfway good. The rest of the game the ABs did not look great. The ABs scored pretty much every time they got inside the Boks 22, but they did not play well enough to get in there most of the time.

It was a good scare for the ABs in the year before the world cup, beaten by South Africa, and then almost beaten by South Africa.

[ljkeane]

Good game. 

The All Blacks were a bit lucky, both in that South Africa probably deserved to be significantly better off that 6 all at half time and one of their tries came off a pretty blatant forward pass that was missed, but showing the composure and class to win it at the when they were given a sniff was still great. I think Erasmus might be regretting making a few of the substitutions he did in the last 10 minutes, I think they thought they had it won.

 It’s good to see New Zealand getting really challenged though. Hopefully SouthAfrica can keep it up and a few other teams can do the same. It wouldn’t be good for rugby to have another procession at the next World Cup.

In rugby league news Toronto almost made it into the Super League for next season but missed out by losing the home play off 4-2, all kicks.

[ljkeane]

Christian Wade has left Wasps to try and get into the NFL. Slightly odd timing given we're halfway through both the rugby and the American Football seasons.

It'll be interesting to see how he does, he's always been phenomenal at beating defenders one on one but didn't quite have the rounded skill set to make it at international level. On the one hand you'd think that might translate better to the more specialised roles a lot of NFL positions have but on the other hand you're basically talking 2 positions, running back and kick returner, that he could conceivably play and there's a lot of competition.

[ljkeane]

Good weekend for England in both the union and the league games then.

At Twickenham Englang rode their luck more than a little bit but at least they came away with a win. South Africa will be kicking themselves they didn't come away with a bigger lead from the dominance they had in the first half though and the last tackle from Farrell was very borderline with being a kickable penalty. It's not high and he does make a bit of an effort to wrap his arm but it's definitely an afterthought, a lot of refs would have given it as a penalty.

Really good game at Anfield in the rugby league for England to take the win and the series. England the Kiwis are pretty closely matched sides and this game pretty much followed the same pattern as the previous one; New Zealand dominate early with their big ball carriers but they run out of steam as the halves go on and England pegged them back.

ETA: The game at Anfield did feature a pretty blatant eye gouge from one of the Burgess brothers too. Which is a bit of a shame in what was an otherwise decent advert for the game.

 

[Consigliere]

Tough luck for England. They played a great game and should have won. The disallowed try for offside against Lawes was bloody tight and could have gone in England's favour on another day. It's good to see the ABs being given a proper test recently by the Boks and England (I'm sure Ireland will do so as well) but credit must go to the ABs as well for the incredible self belief within the side and ability to eek out a win even when not at their best.  

[ljkeane]

Yeah, England unlucky with a pretty marginal decision, it’s not the kind of thing you should really be going back a reviewing for me, but they were fairly lucky last week so that’s how it goes. Honestly they lost the game because their line out and tactical kicking went to shit in the second half.

[polishgenius]

England unlucky with the decision, but also even I could tell that the moment at the end where they tried to go wide instead of continuing to looking for space for the drop-goal with seconds left was naive. But if that happening now results in that not happening in Japan...

[The Anti-Targ]

I don't know that I would say unlucky. Unlucky suggests there was something wrong with the call or the decision to review. I admit I only watched the review of the play once, but it looked definitively offside to me, which means it was the right call to review the try and the right decision by the ref.

I think it's more a case of teams being lucky (or unlucky when you are the losing side because of the try) when a try is not reviewed, and post match it is shown that there was clearly an infringement within the window of time / number of phases that a ref is allowed to consider when reviewing a try.

Personally I think there are some tries that should always be reviewed before being awarded, charge downs and runs ons from offensive kicks being two such situation. Because a lot of the time there are off sides in these situations, or at least often enough that there should always be a review, unless the ref specifically tells the TMO that (s)he was happy with the positioning of the key players involved and a review isn't needed.

[Which Tyler]

The only ref call that actually annoyed me beyond the moment was taking out Shields' arm at a lineout, where a penalty for England turned into a scrum for New Zealand. The tackle on Care at the scrum was laughably blatant, but immaterial.

More annoying though were Farrell's restart going out on the full; Farrell's decision to go for the corner when easy points were on offer (twice); Farrell sitting back for the drop goal, but not telling anyone; George's lineout throwing (Itoje seemed to be in the right place, and nice and high, collecting the ball at his waist - where Retallick was waiting for it; a foot higher, and it would have still been an easy catch for Itoje, but beyond Retallick's grasp).

Those were all far more pivotal moments than Lawes being correctly called offside - even if those decisions are habitually let go. If only... Underhill had been tackled just shy of the line; with Care arriving, picking up and scoring - would have been a different phase, and TMO wouldn't look at Lawes. As it was, it was the right decision, and looked it from the very first replay. Lawes starts off onside, then the ruck falls over towards the England line, putting him offside just before the ball is picked up.

[ljkeane]

4 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

 Lawes starts off onside, then the ruck falls over towards the England line, putting him offside just before the ball is picked up.

The offside line isn't the front foot of the New Zealand players stepping over the ball, it's the back of the England player who made the tackle.

I've seen a few stills were about half Lawes' foot is offside but the ball's out by that point. Basically I think Lawes crosses the offside line between frames so he's either fractionally offside or fractionally onside. It's the kind of thing I'd have no problem with sticking with the call if the ref, who was in the perfect position to see it, had said he was offside but I don't think they should be going back and overturning; if he'd been miles offside and that's why he got the charge down fine but it made no real difference, just get on with the game rather than going over everything ad infinitum.

I liked Ben O'Keefe in the Wales-Australia game just making the call when Kerevi ran into Halfpenny. It's good to see a ref having the confidence in his decisions.

Having said all that, again, I'm not really up in arms about the disallowed try in the England game. If England's lineout hadn't gone to pieces in the second half they would almost certainly have won the game, they didn't really deserve to win.

[Which Tyler]

Not even slightly embarrassing then...

Surely no-one actually believed that Japan were going to be a bunch of mugs?

 

The forwards have either simply not bothered, or hit the panic button, which makes it tough to judge any of the backs.
But I'm going to judge Care anyway - worst player on the pitch

Interesting stat - England are the only Home Nations team who haven't given an English-born back his international debut this AI period.

[ljkeane]

Really good win for Ireland in Dublin. I didn’t think they’d be able to squeeze New Zealand in defence the way they did, to keep them try less was a cracking effort. 

From the New Zealand perspective there’s a few concerns going into the World Cup. They’re still the best side but they don’t look different class the way they have for a while, it’s been noticeable against the Springboks, England and now Ireland that they haven’t been able to turn it up a gear and just blow sides away. It makes it more fun to watch as a neutral though.

Good game at Murrayfield too. There were some great tries.

[Which Tyler]

How long does it take for an entire nation to sober up?
I guess we'll find out in a week or two!