The Rugby Thread

[Big Boy]

I'm away at the moment. It obviously helps not having watched 1 minute of the action so far

Home tomorrow, so I'll probably take my usual position soon,

[pharvey]

Well, a great deal I'd love to share my thoughts on, but it's a little late in the day and so much to look forward to!! That said, Round 2 of matches is not going to the same excitement of Round 1 unfortunately - with the exception of the Marigolds vs the Islanders of course!! Certainly a game of interest for Wales as it could have a significant baring on our tournament prospects.....

I also have some catching up to do on the Prediction League - my "captaining skills" Once again below par Dai_L also missed out on R1, but ultimately that's also down to me - he'll also be making his picks for R2, so we should be a Full House so to speak.

[pharvey]

For those who ignored the France vs Uruguay match thinking it was going to be 80 min of the Uraguayans retrieving the ball from behind their try line, I'm extremely happy to tell you that you were (wonderfully) mistaken!

If you can watch a re-run/have the match recorded, WATCH IT!!

[dtaai-maai]

Thanks for the heads up on that, Pietro, I watched it over my toast and marmalade.

I thought the French were extremely lucky that their forward's yellow was not upgraded to red. I didn't see any mitigation, and certainly no change in height caused by the other tackler. Seems to me that the 'bunker' system is similar to VAR in that the more you look at slo-mo replays the more you start to see things that aren't there...

[pharvey]

I thought the French were extremely lucky that their forward's yellow was not upgraded to red. I didn't see any mitigation, and certainly no change in height caused by the other tackler. Seems to me that the 'bunker' system is similar to VAR in that the more you look at slo-mo replays the more you start to see things that aren't there...

Completely agree with you re: the Red Card Decision - which made a huge difference, what could have been with the French a man down, but more to the point very much on the back foot in the tight? This IMHO was a REAL game changer and could have (had) a significant impact on the tournament itself.

As for the Bunker System, the system itself is great IMHO and I don't believe has the same issues as VAR. As things were before it's implementation, the weak point in the decisions is simple inconsistency and what the individuals are seeing/how they are assessing that information? Like you for example, I saw no drop in height - where therefore are the "mitigating circumstances"?

I'll have to look into it, but it would be interesting to see how many are involved in the decision making and is it ultimately an individual or majority that decides Yellow or Red?

[dtaai-maai]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-66833895

Brilliant!

[buksida]

Still getting nowhere with any form of streaming or on-demand viewing of the RWC.

For those that don't mind downloading and watching games the following day, you can get them here: https://bt4gprx.com/search?q=rugby+world+cup+2023

[Big Boy]

I've not even tried with it being at silly o'clock. Bein are meant to be showing it, but I just can't be arsed to get up in the middle of the night - maybe when it gets to the later stages.

[buksida]

Here's another one, no England-Japan game available yet ... https://torrentgalaxy.to/profile/AllOutSports#torrents

[pharvey]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-wales-66833895

Brilliant!

Bloody Tonypandy yobs singing for Beer money again.......

[pharvey]

HHF/Superbru RWC standings after Round 4: -
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HHF-RWC-R4.JPG (72.31 KiB) Viewed 958 times

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NOTE: I dropped the proverbial ******* in accepting all-comers to the league, so will clean things up come the end of the tournament. As it stands, BB tops the HHF League (Dear God... ).

All "Home Nations" in action this Saturday with Ireland vs Scotland the pick of the bunch - though Sunday's match between Japan and Argentina could be interesting with the winner set to play Wales in the Quarter Finals - Argentina would normally be seen as firm favourites, but have not really fired on all cylinders so far and the "Brave Blossoms" doing better than expected coming into the tournament....

[pharvey]

Rugby Australia "Committed to Eddie Jones" - not a view shared by the Aus fans I'm sure. We'll see what happens when the squad returns down under I guess.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/66983049

[pharvey]

Well, definitely one I've never seen in many years of watching rugby!!

A rare own goal has been scored during a rugby match in the Scottish Borders.

A player was prematurely celebrating winning the match when he accidentally knocked the ball over the crossbar in the dying seconds of the game.

It meant Hawick Youth threw away their two point lead and the under-18s clash with Gala Wanderers ended in a draw."


Video @ link - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... d-66982218

[pharvey]

And to think I was going to give the England v Samoa game a miss!!

[dtaai-maai]

And to think I was going to give the England v Samoa game a miss!!

Yep, I thought you'd be in there pretty quick with your shovel!

It was an absolute shambles from start to ... almost ... finish. We didn't deserve to win. Do these guys realise they're playing in the World Cup? Nobody will fear the prospect of playing England in the knockout stages, not even Fiji (maybe that's the cunning plan?). Everything that could go wrong did go wrong; Farrell even managed to run down the kicking clock FFS, is that the first time it's ever happened?

Care has to start. He may be getting on a bit, but he's playing on a different level from Mitchell at the moment. It also has to be said that the arrival of Smith livened things up a bit. It's also pretty clear we should have brought a back-up specialist no.8. Not at all impressed with Borthwick. Will a coach ever stand up and admit to something being a complete f*ck-up?

Hoping for a good, competitive game between Scotland and Ireland.