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Rugby: A New Dawn


ljkeane
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On the rugby league front an absolutely fantastic win for St Helens this morning to win the World Club Challenge against Penrith.

British rugby league fans tend to get irritated with Australian pundits being dismissive of Super League but it's hard to blame them for having Penrith as strong favourites. This St Helens team are obviously excellent with four straight Super League wins under their belts but the Panthers aren't just run of the mill NRL champions, they're pretty clearly one of the great sides of the NRL era. Even the more balanced views tended to be that Saints were a good side who wouldn't make it easy but ultimately Penrith would come away with the win.

It was just a brilliant performance from St Helens though and they were well deserved winners. Welsby, Roby and Walmsley in particular were excellent. As an England fan it's hard not to think what might have been had Wane convinced Roby to have one more go at the World Cup. Other than that I'm a little surprised one of the NRL teams hasn't already thrown some money at Welsby, it seems like a bit of a no brainer for any team looking for a fullback or stand off, but you'd think one of them definitely will be for next season.

From the Penrith perspective obviously they didn't play very well, a lot of which had to do with how well St Helens played, but one area I thought they'd have a real advantage was down their left edge with Hurrell, for all his other attributes, not being the best defender. It really didn't turn out that way and you do wonder how much the absence of Kikau attracting all that attention will affect them this season.

Edited by ljkeane
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I explored a bit and found that there is a professional US rugby union league (Major League Rugby — they just cannot shake off the naming conventions), and the nearest club is located 30 miles from me.  I’m planning to go to a live match or two to see if it’s any good.  I’m not expecting Leinster, just a good live match.

They are playing at home for both of the next two Sundays as the league opens but I have commitments with my son as he plays in his high school musical.  I should be able to get to another match within a few weeks.  Tickets seem plentiful and inexpensive.

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On 2/20/2023 at 4:10 PM, Iskaral Pust said:

I explored a bit and found that there is a professional US rugby union league (Major League Rugby — they just cannot shake off the naming conventions), and the nearest club is located 30 miles from me.  I’m planning to go to a live match or two to see if it’s any good.  I’m not expecting Leinster, just a good live match.

Assuming you mean the New York team they did have Ben Foden playing for them but looking it up it appears he retired last year. I played against him when he was about 18. I'm getting old. :frown5:

I haven't seen much MLR but the impression I get is with there being a mix of younger American players and older overseas players defences aren't quite as ferocious as other professional rugby leagues are these days so there's a bit more space for attacking rugby. What I have seen does tend to be quite fun.

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From what I've heard, it seems the level of MLR is approximately the same as the English Championhsip.

It has a lot more room for growth though; and is already an attractive enough proposition for the off retiring star from elsewhere who don't want to learn Japanese.

Edited by Which Tyler
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Good game in Rome today. Italy really do play some cracking rugby at times and the margin in the end doesn't really reflect how close the game actually was. They just need to find a way to spend more of the game in opposition territory though. It's good to watch but I don't think you can play the amount of rugby in your own half that Italy do against modern defences and expect to come away with a win.

Ireland pretty much just did their thing. Missing a few players the important thing was to come away with a win and they did. They also scored a few nice tries in the process (and bombed a couple more for that matter).

On the other hand it was a rubbish game in Cardiff. The two sides with a recent coaching change facing off and they both looked like it with how disjointed they were. England did have a few decent moments, the first try in particular, and did mostly control the game. The defence has improved from the first game too. They really don't look like they're thinking clearly at all in attack though. Against most teams you'd think how profligate they were would end up costing them.

Wales I suppose had the extra excuse of the potential strike hanging over their preparation but in a game were England were pretty poor they were very comfortably second best. Their only real good moment was handed to them by Malins. England at least were sort of creating some space before messing it up, it's very hard to see what Wales were actually trying to do. Gatland's got a lot of work to do.

 

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Italy were good.  Ireland were brought back to earth after their last match.  With a bit of luck, they could have cruised to victory.  They gave away a soft try at the end of the first half, which let Italy back into the game.  But then, Italy could have leveled the score with a little bit more composure in the second half, so it works in both directions.  A 14 point win in the end seems quite generous to Ireland. 

We are scoring a lot of tries but it also feels like we should be scoring much more.  We get very close a lot.

Hopefully a few players will be back for the next match, as things are going to get really tricky now.

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Italy got a lucky breakaway try after the 40:00 and Ireland had two tries chalked off for knock-ons as they grounded.  That’s a 21 point swing on the scoreboard that kept the Italians much closer than general play deserved.  But, yes, the Italians did well and their performance was much more like against France than against England (is home a big factor for them?).  They especially got strong performances from 8, 12 and 15.

Aside from the knock-ons I mentioned, Ireland failed to convert some other good attacks.  I thought there were a couple of dubious refereeing calls that helped save the Italian defense but overall the Irish forwards weren’t clinical enough within 5-10m, and Casey not always crisp enough or accurate enough as he recycled from the ruck.  Similar to the game against Wales, Ireland scored early and often with some explosive ball-handling skill but then got mired from 40-65 minutes in a stalemate without conceding much defensively, before they got serious again and dispatched the opponent.  But Ireland should pay attention to missed tackles in the open field before they meet Van Der Merwe next.

This was a much changed Irish side.  It’s good to see the second and third choice players still perform as a unit.

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Well that was fun.

I thought Scotland were going to get absolutely blown away after the red card and the two early French tries. I thought Scotland were going to get blown away again after the fairly poor Finn Russell loose pass for the intercept try but after that they were great and with a little more luck going their way they could have come away with a win. They got a little help in the middle of all that with Haouas rather stupidly getting himself sent off.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ireland’s U20 team has been very good this year, and they just battered Scotland by an enormous margin.  They’re on course for their own grand slam.  Good to see the pipeline of developing talent.

FWIW, Italy U20 are ahead of Scotland and Wales in the standings. 

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5 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Ireland’s U20 team has been very good this year, and they just battered Scotland by an enormous margin.  They’re on course for their own grand slam.  Good to see the pipeline of developing talent.

FWIW, Italy U20 are ahead of Scotland and Wales in the standings. 

I like the under 20s tournaments. They tend to try and play rugby and defences aren’t quite as good. 

I quite like the look of England’s team this year but it fell apart a bit against the French last night apparently. Still, the last game between Ireland and England should be good.

 I’m going to the England France game today so it’s good to see Borthwick’s dropped the out of form Farrell and gone with Smith at 10. It should make it an entertaining game at least.

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10 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

That didn’t go as well as could have been hoped.

That might be the most one-sided defeat I've ever seen for England. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong and towards the end France seemed to be playing a different game to them. It's not going to get any easier facing the world's number one team next week, either. France have maybe under-performed a bit in the tournament until today, but if they can carry this form through to the World Cup they will be formidable.

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Unfortunately the U20s aren’t broadcast over here so I only get highlights on YouTube.

That was a stonking loss for England today.  I’ll watch the game Monday or Tuesday; priority has to go to the Irish match tomorrow. ☘️ 

After many predictions of a wooden spoon, Wales beat Italy pretty comfortably, even though Italy had the home advantage that seemed to lift them against France and Ireland.

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Good first half at Murrayfield then Ireland played well to pull away in the second half. Given England’s performance yesterday you’d think it’d be an absolute disaster for them to not win the Six Nations from here.

 I have to say though as a second row and frequent lineout caller Scotland’s lineout defence in that second half was abominably bad. With Ireland having to call on emergency thrower in Van der Flier it’s pretty much lineout 101 you have to be all over that front ball until he shows he can hit anything further back. That it took Scotland until about 75 minutes (after they’d already lost) to work that out is pretty embarrassing.

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So many injuries for Ireland.  I don’t follow the other squads closely so I don’t have a good benchmark but it feels like we’ve been coping with a lot of absences every match, especially in some of the key pairings.  As soon as one or two return then others get knocked out.  I think only our back three have been consistently available.

This team is very resilient and just adapts to win each time.  I hope they can finish off a grand slam against an under-performing England.  But that’s a wounded bear of an opponent with a desperate need to salvage some pride. 

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Every team has a run of injuries at times and it seems to have befallen Ireland this time.  The situation yesterday was crazy.  I was thinking that if they lose this time (and things looked ropey at around 50 minutes), at least we can point of the freaky loss of both hookers and a rake of other early injuries.  But they managed to pull it out of the bag again.  2 great second half tries and we should have gotten a bonus point in the end.

Hopefully one of the hookers will be back for Saturday.  And at least people like Furlong, Gibson Park and Henshaw got game time, so that will help.  Given Doris was having such a great tournament, it would be sad if he misses out on the Grand Slam game though.  But so far, our depth has done well.

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A tense game towards the end between Scotland and Italy. The Italians were threatening a victory with a couple of minutes to go but a small knock-on just short of the Scottish tryline quickly turned into Kinghorm scoring at the other end.

At half-time in the middle match Wales made a bright start but France have moved into the lead and look dangerous whenever they attack.

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