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Rugby: A New Dawn


ljkeane
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Fuck

 

For me, France lost that more than NZ winning it (despite just about everything commentary were saying)

Too many kicks out on the full, box kicks, clearance kicks, and a goal-line drop-out; and was it 3 shots at goal missed, the last of which would have been a sitter with 10 minutes on the clock.

Beyond that, France just over-excited, especially in that 25-30 minute period where NZ had all the momentum. I know I've banged on about it, but either 1 of Sansus / Trémoulière into that French team, and it's a different match, and France would have been in charge - put them both in, and they're comfortable.

 

 

None of which takes anything away from NZ who have improved match on match, and huge credit has to go to Wayne Smith for turning them around from this time last year. NZ played really well; they just didn't have the game to take a disciplined France - but did have the game to spool France into indiscipline.
Discipline both in terms of penalties, and decision making / execution under pressure.

 

On to the final - where I'm not going to make any predictions. England ought to have enough, but will NZ put us off our stride? Will the pressure? We'll be angry with ourselves after Canada, but how will we lash back?
Will NZ be emotionally exhausted after that SF? Will they be driven on to further heights? They've improved week on week, and now have another week in which to improve.

 

 

 

In the Bronze, France are better than Canada, but they're bound to be emotionally shot. 9th time out of 10 WRWCs that France have been in the 3rd place play-off (well, there wasn't one in 91, but France still shared 3rd place); and they've only lost 1, but I can't believe they've ever been this upset to be there.


Incidentally, I've had a look at the 2025 WRWC in England - they have already committed to a 16-team tournament, which is exactly what it needs to be.

Edited by Which Tyler
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Black Ferns improve ball security and it's a different game. I don't really get why players hold on to prevent the turnover in the tackle when they are in the opposition half. You give up possession the other team still has to work their way upfield, or they kick possession back to you, you give up a penalty and the other team gets to gain free metres and a 70-80% chance of holding possession. I get slowing the ball down inside your half, better to give away 3 points than 7.

Cocksedge took too many tap penalties trying to catch France off guard, she's a bit too impulsive there. When you're ahead you want to get deep in the opposition half and keep them there. Tap kicks don't do that.

Hard for NZ to win another game the form book says they should lose. England have to be pretty firm favourites going in. I'm not sure anger after a closer win than should be expected will be all that great, so I don't see the drive being lashing back. I think England were given a bit of a scare and the drive will be determination and firm resolve. Probably worse for NZ, lashing our with anger makes it easier to knock someone off their game. Determination and resolve, not so much.

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So not to be too negative but France, and Drouin in particular, have absolutely fucked that for me. There's the kick at the end obviously but more than that France's real strength is their defence, just play into that. The New Zealand kicking game isn't great and every time they were attacking a set French defence they were struggling and often turning the ball over. If France just kick the corners effectively and organise their kick chase I think they win that comfortably. 

Also that second yellow was an absolute nailed on red. She's absolutely smashed a relatively upright ball carrier straight in the face with her shoulder. What exactly is the mitigation there? The first yellow was probably a red too. Come on officials.

Not a great performance from England in the first game. I think that might be the worst game I've ever seen Scarratt have. The Canadian pack really got on top in that second half, their 7-1 split on the bench was a fairly big gamble but it did pay off. Good effort from Canada but I don't think England will be happy with that, they really shouldn't be ending up on the back foot like that against an amateur side. Also it looked like Helena Rowland, probably England's best player up to that point, had a very bad injury considering the tv director cut away from showing and then she was stretchered off.

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So that's one full round of the Autumn internationals done.

Very poor performance from England. I've pretty much given up trying to make sense of Eddie Jones' selections but it was probably the slowest England starting XV I've seen. I don't have any problem with picking some big ball carriers but maybe mix it up a bit? Argentina are arguably the best tackling side in international rugby, running straight at them isn't going to cut it.

On the other hand very good game in Paris last night. Good performance from the Wallabies and the Foketi try I think we've probably already seen the try of the Autumn but this French side have so much talent. Even when they're not playing well you still expect someone to do something great to bail them out. Often it's Dupont, yesterday t was Penaud.

The Ireland Springboks game was interesting. The Springboks did a pretty good job of disrupting the Irish phase play game but they weren't able to do much in attack themselves. Looking at Hendrikse 9, Willemse 10 and Kolbe 15 they're good rugby players but I'm not sure who's really directing the team around the park there. They looked a lot better when Le Roux came on. From an Irish perspective they weren't quite able to click into top gear but they still were able to do enough to win. That seems to be becoming a bit of a habit for them.

I only watched the highlights of the game in Cardiff but disappointing effort from Wales. Okay it wasn't the full strength Wales side but I don't think you can just shrug your shoulders and say it's the All Blacks when shipping 50 points plus anymore. This is the weakest New Zealand side for at least 20 years, maybe Wales still shouldn't be expecting to beat them but they shouldn't be accepting getting pumped at home.

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Well that was irritating. I’ve got no problem with the red card decision but it is a little annoying in light of the fact they’ve ignored a bunch of red card worthy offences throughout the World Cup. It was probably the key moment of the game.

England’s tactics were pretty clearly to do what France should have done last week and pin New Zealand into the corners and force them to play out. It did sort of work but England weren’t playing brilliantly. They probably needed to be a bit more aggressive getting off the line in the Kiwi half and not securing the kick offs gave New Zealand a way back into the game. Once they lost a player they really lost a grip of the game defensively.

From a New Zealand perspective they did well to keep themselves in the game and they were pretty clinical when given a chance. They need to sort their kicking game out though. As teams get more professional they’re going to start to get punished if they can’t exit their half.

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Absolutely gutted; but so, so proud of the girls.
It was so close, there are any number of "if only"s that would turn the game today, but it was a fantastic match, and there's no point in dwelling.
Ultimately, we had the match in our own hands, twice, and we cocked up.
New Zealand deserved winners, England only have themselves to blame, but pride is absolutely undimmed.

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At about the 55 minute mark I said to my family who was watching with me if NZ loses it will be because of their mistakes. And they very nearly made enough mistakes to lose. As much as one can say anything with certainty about a scenario that never happened, I am 99.9% sure England wins if they have 15 for the full 80 minutes. And even so, NZ was very fortunate to be called on holding the jumper at the penultimate lineout rather than collapsing the mall. A mall collapse would have meant a penalty try and that would have been all she wrote.

Interesting that in the NZ-France semi-final there were two yellow cards for the same offense on each side. And in this final there was a red and a yellow for the same offense on each side. I couldn't see much difference between the head knocks tonight, but I guess the refs know the technical ins and outs much better than me, and the replays I saw were not very good.

My sister went to the game. She paid for a lounge ticket the same price as the shittiest ticket to the final for the men's RWC in 2011. Superstition and all that, but my sister has a homeside mojo when attending games.

Two pieces of advice I gave to the telly. I told the telly England should be going for short kickoffs to contest the ball and potentially get possession off the kick off, and I also told the telly NZ needed to contest England's lineout inside the NZ 22, because there was no stopping England when they got handed a free mall from the lineout.

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57 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

England losing in the semi final of the rugby league World Cup to the team they absolutely spanked by 54 points a month ago seems a missed opportunity  

I only saw the last five minutes because I was playing earlier but they absolutely fucked those last five minutes. Chance to win it in regular time messed up then they handed Samoa two easy opportunities to get the golden point drop goal. Massive chance to promote rugby league wasted.

Not a good day on the rugby front for me. England losing this morning, some dickhead trying to break my leg in the game I played this afternoon, followed up with England shooting themselves in the foot in the rugby league.

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Scotland probably feeling today that they aren't going to get many better opportunities for a first win over the All Blacks after being 9 points up with half an hour to go. Despite the loss it was still a better performance than so far this Autumn, hopefully Russell and Townsend will be able to get on for a while now that he's been restored to the squad. It's also a bit of a blast from the past to have Richie Gray back starting for Scotland again.

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So England were awful for 70 minutes then realised 'shit we need to start playing here' and were actually quite good for 10 minutes at the end. Why do they need to be three scores down to actually play some decent rugby though? That doesn't say particularly good things about the coaching for me. Combine that with all the terrible errors, general lack of cohesion and, for that matter, clearly preset rubbish move which lead directly to the first All Black try and it's not a great look for Eddie Jones. Honestly I think the RFU should be sacking him after three years of this shite but they probably can't afford to.

Not a great performance from New Zealand either. They were also making a lot of errors in the first 70 minutes, it was just that England were making more, then the wheels came off a bit once England actually put some decent attacking play together. Their third try was nice though.

Overall both sides really aren't looking in great shape heading into the World Cup.

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Ireland are a real contrast to England and New Zealand earlier. They didn't play well, probably not helped by losing Sexton late, and the Wallabies played quite well but they don't ever make it easy for their opposition. I'd probably lean towards saying Australia deserved to win the game but all that time Ireland spent on the back foot and it still took Australia about 60 minutes to score a point and ultimately Ireland still had enough to get the points they needed to win. Just about.

I'm really not sure White should have been coming back on though. 

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4 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Not a great performance from New Zealand either. They were also making a lot of errors in the first 70 minutes, it was just that England were making more, then the wheels came off a bit once England actually put some decent attacking play together. Their third try was nice though.

That's twice in two weeks that New Zealand have had a big lead then let the other team catch up, even if last week they did eventually wake up again after Scotland had taken the lead.

The Scotland/Argentina match earlier was chaotic with lots of cards being shown and it degenerating into a mass brawl at one stage. Argentina somehow managed to score a try with 12 players on the field against 15 but eventually Scotland managed to take advantage of the numerical advantage provided by the red card to score 8 tries. I do wonder about Gregor Townsend's thoughts when he sees the player he originally left out of the autumn squad being seemingly at the centre of every Scottish attack.

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31 minutes ago, Consigliere said:

Biggest upset for a while was Georgia beating Wales. Georgia look to have improved significantly ‐ narrowly lost to Samoa and beat Italy previously. The Six Nations should introduce relegation.

2 divisions of 4 and 6 teams, 4 nations would play home and away, lower league of 6 would do what they do now, with promotion and relegation for top and bottom makes total sense.  

right now division 1 would be 

Ireland, France, England, Wales

Division 2 would be 

Scotland, Italy, Georgia, Spain, Portugal, Romania

there's no reason you couldn't have a 3rd division with promotion/relegation into the 2nd one. 

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They definitely won't introduce relegation. The Six Nations by far the biggest event of Northern Hemisphere rugby and they can't afford to lose the big legacy fixtures if any of the old Five Nations teams got relegated. Even replacing Italy with Georgia would probably be a big commercial loss for the tournament.

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24 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

They definitely won't introduce relegation. The Six Nations by far the biggest event of Northern Hemisphere rugby and they can't afford to lose the big legacy fixtures if any of the old Five Nations teams got relegated. Even replacing Italy with Georgia would probably be a big commercial loss for the tournament.

you would get more 'big' matches this way though, 12, as opposed to the 10 you currently get. 

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