The Super Duper Rugby Union Thread

[mikey]

We've been long overdue a poor performance. The penalty count was way too high and that tells you how England are playing.

[mikey]

The Italians did brilliantly on Saturday, and while Bergamasco is still no Diego Dominguez with the boot, at least he's now kicking better than Mike Catt did in his short tenure as England's place kicker.

 

Nick Mallett deserves that victory and the whole team do. Italy are the best team in this tournament and they have the hardest working coach. Mallett had no goalkicker so he's worked with Bergamasco to be a goalkicker. And the Italian fans. God, they must be the most loyal bunch in rugby because that stadium is full for every home game. There'll come a time where the Italians crack this thing and they regularly be competing at the top level in this game. Then days like Saturday will be expected and they'll become as jaded and spoiled as the English and French or as cocky and superior as the Welsh or Kiwis. Until that point, let's cherish the Italians and their fans.

 

Oh and isn't there an irony in a Frenchman talking about the cowardice of others.

[PowerButchi]

I've always felt the IRB have never done enough for the likes of Italy, the Argies, Romania and the like. If the suits did the right thing by Romania in the 80's they'd be a fucking well decent team by now. I'm always really happy to see the Italians get a win (when it's not against us), and hopefully they'll be able to build on this like they had the opportunity to after beating both us and the Scots in '07.

[matbro1984]

The whinging Irish are such a bunch of chippy, hypocritical cunts. When the ref's decisions favour them, it's all cheeky smiles and "luck of the Irish" rhetoric; when the ref is against them, suddenly they're terribly hard done by. I lost count of the number of things Kaplan missed that benefitted Ireland - 2 obvious knock ons for starters,

 

Much as I can't stand the crowing English when they win, I can't bring myself to support Ireland after this. I hope England stuff them.

 

It's ridiculous that they've demanded (and are going to get!) an IRB apology. Perhaps the IRB should also apologise for:

 

This... not one but TWO perfectly legal tries denied and the Irish win the game

 

And O'Driscoll getting that try against France in 2001 which he did not ground?

 

And Bowe's non-try v Italy in 2006?

 

And Horgan's try against England in 2006 (at the 5:28 mark)?

 

See what I mean? They need to man the fuck up. More often than not, the referees decisions favour them, and that's not even counting the times they cheat and get away with it. Fuck them.

 

 

 

 

(Please don't bomb my house.)

[Yoghurt]

Should probably change to to "when decisions don't go in their favour", the implication is that refs have bias, which they don't.

[MinceMcMahon]

It was a dodgy decision but Ireland are blowing things out of proportion. That try wasn't the sole reason they lost the game, Ireland were pretty shit and Wales just about deserved the win.

 

But still, I had a good time drinking with the Irish fans in Cardiff and really want them to beat England

[mikey]

I've always felt the IRB have never done enough for the likes of Italy, the Argies, Romania and the like. If the suits did the right thing by Romania in the 80's they'd be a fucking well decent team by now. I'm always really happy to see the Italians get a win (when it's not against us), and hopefully they'll be able to build on this like they had the opportunity to after beating both us and the Scots in '07.

 

I agree with the sentiment, the IRB's always been more about good intentions than cast-iron support. However, each nation has their own difficulties to overcome. The Italians can't consistently produce the players to move up a level, the Argies continually shoot themselves in the foot with an amateur union and a lack of domestic professionalism, Romanian rugby was linked to and funded by the Ceauşescu regime and was hit by the fall of communism.

 

The problem is professionalism. England and France, and to a lesser extent Italy and the Celtic nations, support the development of professional rugby players across the globe. Super Rugby is far too insular and does very little to help the Pacific Islanders. I think more Samoans play in Wales than play in Australia for instance. There's literally nowhere else that can support professional rugby and nowhere ever will, unless the IRB take a leading role. It has been said for years that Argentina, with almost their entire team based in Europe and still nowhere near meeting the criteria of joining SANZAR competitions, would be better off playing in the Six Nations but seven into six does not go. I recall Spain were interested in helping Los Pumas find a venue in one of their few rugby heartlands, be it Valladolid, San Sebastian or Sant Boi de Llobregat near Barcelona.

 

Whilst I love the Six Nations, for the good of the development of the game, they need to work out a way to make it more accessible to lower-level nations. Romania and Georgia have been the teams to beat in the European Nations Cup since it was created in 2000. Argentina are never going to work in the Tri-Nations. If we create some gradual trapdoor (worst team over five years gets replaced?), I'd love to see them work a 10-team tournament for European rugby.

[mikey]

The whinging Irish are such a bunch of chippy, hypocritical cunts. When the ref's decisions favour them, it's all cheeky smiles and "luck of the Irish" rhetoric; when the ref is against them, suddenly they're terribly hard done by. I lost count of the number of things Kaplan missed that benefitted Ireland - 2 obvious knock ons for starters,

 

Much as I can't stand the crowing English when they win, I can't bring myself to support Ireland after this. I hope England stuff them.

 

I agree with you. The Irish are utter hypocrites. They cheat, they give away silly penalties, they get more than their fair share of luck and refs go their way at home, especially in the Croker years. For a long time, they were the kings of boring in, engaging at a slight angle and the refs just didn't notice. The Irish are as bad as pretty much anybody and, you're right, they've benefited from bad refereeing.

 

Also, to be fair, we don't like you either and when it comes to crowing about winning, the Welsh kind of take the biscuit.

[PowerButchi]

Yeah. The English were positively humble after their World Cup victory, all through the Bumface years, and headlines of "WHERE'S YOUR SEXY RUGBY NOW?" in 2006.

[mikey]

We had something to crow about though. Three Grand Slams in the early 90s, World Cup runners-up. Under Woodward, we had three 6N wins, one Grand Slam and then won the World Cup. The 2006 thing was schadenfreude, of course, but a reaction to the vitriol of the previous year, which was a Grand Slam built on a close win over an error-ridden England.

[PowerButchi]

How strong was the Five Nations in the early 90's though? The Welsh were absolutely gutted by players leaving up north as soon as they reached a decent level, the Irish were poor as well. The Scots weren't bad, France were decent. But it's not as if winning Grand Slams in the early 90's was like winning in South Africa for the Lions.

 

Crowing is crowing, warranted or not, and the English and their Media is the worst proponent of it in Rugby Union where a struggling victory over someone like the Argies is seen as a new dawn of the boring dull days of Bumface. With England's large population, large number of registered players, and decent levels of funding you haven't really achieved half as much as you should have, so I don't see any real reason to brag about the place.

[matbro1984]

Crowing is crowing, warranted or not, and the English and their Media is the worst proponent of it in Rugby Union where a struggling victory over someone like the Argies is seen as a new dawn of the boring dull days of Bumface. With England's large population, large number of registered players, and decent levels of funding you haven't really achieved half as much as you should have, so I don't see any real reason to brag about the place.

 

I'd argue that Wales should crow when big wins come along. Goodness know you'll barely hear about their wins in the horrendously Anglocentric media, and, let's be fair, they're few and far between.

 

England can't have it both ways. You can't be "the team to beat" and have a sense of entitlement without nations like Wales taking great delight in beating you when such events come along. It's all relative to how a team presents itself. Is beating France a big deal? Not especially, but the Italians reacted like they'd won the World Cup. Is Wales winning a grand slam a big deal? To us, yes, because until 2005 it hadn't happened since the 70s. You see what I mean?

 

Compare these statistics.

 

England. 2549196 registered players;

Wales. 50557 registered players;

 

Roughly speaking, overall England has 50x the talent pool to choose from. This is misleading though. If you examine the breakdown of pre-teen/teen/adult players, England has 10x the pool of current players to choose from.

 

Check out the next generations - England have approx 100x the number of registered teenage players that Wales has, and 30x that New Zealand has. In the next decade, England should have no excuse for not being the best side in the world.

 

I say all this not in criticism of the English system which is clearly getting kids interested in rugby and this talent is being nurtured. It's a shame Wales can't do the same. However, as the largest rugby union in the world by a HUGE margin, that is why we and other teams crow when we beat you. You are the biggest, the richest, and have a large number of people to pick from. You should never be losing to the likes of Wales and Ireland, but you do, relatively regularly. In fact, the stats for the tri-nations respective rugby unions make for interesting comparisons but I'll leave that to someone with a vested interest to examine.

[mikey]

Hang on, we're the team that's running the ball, trying to play and passing out of the contact and yet it's back to the glory days under Geoff Cooke? The Five Nations went through peaks and troughs. France and Scotland were decent teams in the dying days of shamateurism. The English press crowed about winning because, well, they won. When they could get their act together, even Wales were OK.

 

The RFU is the most dysfunctional organisation in professional sport. If we ever get our shit together, we'll dominate world rugby. According to a young rugby-playing colleague, that will come sooner than many would think.

[Yoghurt]

I love the Anglocentric media, I also love the also rans thinking they have a place at the big boys table.

[matbro1984]

The RFU is the most dysfunctional organisation in professional sport. If we ever get our shit together, we'll dominate world rugby. According to a young rugby-playing colleague, that will come sooner than many would think.

 

Can't disagree with that one bit.