There's a bit of historical revision going on in this thread, a sort of Bok to the Future.

@MajorRage said in 2024 Rugby Championship ... The Real Deal OR Not.:

Something occurred to me watching the EOYT games this weekend.

All 3 teams seemed to put into play their best squads and play to their strengths. The teams seemed quite settled & knew exactly what they were trying to do and on the whole, were pretty impressive.

Made me wonder, was TRC only there this year for teams to try things out?

Years gone by, you'd see best teams in TRC and then quite a few random selections for the EOYT. New players would be selected to tour & then tried out in these games. But it seems like it was the reverse this year. Which made me wonder just how much effort was put into winning TRC this year. There were some excellent games, and it's not lost on me that it was the first tournament in a WC cycle, but should it still not be that the best players/plays should be in TRC with the experiments left for the EOYT?

So, has the global axis shifted so much with rugby that the South think winning the EOYT match are far more important than TRC?

Or am I just massively over thinking it.

Maybe they are all using the EOYT as a dry run for bigger tournaments / tours coming post-2024?

Stacey Jones praises conduct of New Zealand newcomer after personal tragedy Stacey Jones praises conduct of New Zealand newcomer after personal tragedy

Kiwi coach Stacey Jones has praised a newcomer for performing in the midst of a difficult family situation.

Shout out to Phoenix Crossland playing after his grandmother passed away in the leadup to the game.

I'm mostly peripheral to this 🙂 The guy driving it is from one of the Colleges involved and really open to helping the schools work with Junior clubs and clubs like ours to help keep people in the game.

No surprise as he teaches at Redfield College, and played until recently for Redfield Old Boys, with whom Renegades enjoiy a fierce local rivalry...

Dane Johnston, the Feilding High School TH prop, and Bradley Tocker, Palmerston North Boys’ High School's NZ Schools lock-flanker have been signed by Taranaki in conjunction with the Chiefs. Johnston wasn't wanted by the Hurricanes.

The Post

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easy money.

@booboo said in Poll: AB wins on EOYT for a decent season:

@nostrildamus said in Poll: AB wins on EOYT for a decent season:

@booboo said in Poll: AB wins on EOYT for a decent season:

@nzzp said in Poll: AB wins on EOYT for a decent season:

Lucky win against England

Nah. We were better. Sliding doors.

Life is so unfair, a win solely due to our superior climate.
It's almost like NH scribes were destined to choke on a giant pie slice of karma.

Huh?

The English climate works against sliding doors...

A good weekend for South American teams - Brazil and Chile matching Argentina's win.

@No-Quarter said in Black Caps tour of India:

@dogmeat said in Black Caps tour of India:

I see Kohli has dropped to 14th in the test batting rankings one point ahead of Darryl Mitchell. Kane and Ravindra in Top 10.

Somehow Matt Henry is ranked the 10th best all-rounder and (less surprisingly) 10th rated bowler

Kohli has always been a very good, but not great, test batsmen. A tier below Kane, Root and Smith. In ODIs and T20s though he's probably unmatched by any player in history which keeps him in the "fab 4" bracket.

It’s been a leanish period for Kohli with only 2 hundreds in his last 60 innings.

But he went through an unbelievable purple patch from about 2016-2019. that had him above those other 3 IMO.

@mariner4life we were top tier on half way for the Bledisloe

Nov 4  /  01:30 Christchurch City Council on LinkedIn: It’s been another busy month of construction progress for One New Zealand… | 16 comments Christchurch City Council on LinkedIn: It’s been another busy month of construction progress for One New Zealand… | 16 comments

It’s been another busy month of construction progress for One New Zealand Stadium at Te Kaha. In a new video update released today, Christchurch City Council… | 16 comments on LinkedIn

Rieko

We were talking about this in the pub last night. It was 6 o'clock and we realised none of us knew the result.

Go back a few years and we had an office sweep, people stayed behind to watch it and I always had a punt. None of that now.

Consensus was on course is dying and dedicated punters use the app.

Then the bar owner turned up pissed as a lord and explained we were all wrong. He'd been out at Ellerslie and had a fantastic time. Said Ellerslie has reinvented itself as a drinking establishment and everyone was glued to their phones.

He asked Chat GPT for the winners based on their draw, weight and jockey and was a grand up as a result.

Consequently, he loved everyone - and the drinks were all on him. So, although I forgot about the race, I definitely came out a winner with four free beers on top of the four I'd already had

ABs v Ireland 1992

Although it is hard to judge match to match, against dif teams, at least we will get to see 6 days apart BB and DMac against top 5 teams. It will be also interesting if the game pan changes to be less kick and more chaos, and we see that Razor's big gameplan is 'just go play, boys, and fuck 'em up' - depends on who is ten

I’m far from a football fan, but after Aucklands start to the season, even I was interested in this result.

Hats off to the marketing team, they did a terrific job of building this game up…NZ Rugby open your fucking eyes.

We’ve all seen new teams look great at the start of the season, (The Dolpins come to mind as the most recent) the challenge for Auckland will be to still be at the top at the business end of the season.

@mariner4life said in Rough tips and other bets...:

it is open as shit this year

The only horse I can see winning paying under $10 is Onesmoothoperator. I reckon the winner will be a horse paying $20+.

Well he's pretty mcuh got the champs sewn up now, outside of a couple of real disasters - he just needs to stay in the top few and he wins

@dogmeat said in EPL 2024/2025:

I hear the new MK owners tried to reach out and clear the air but were rebuffed? They sort of miss the point if that's the case. Hating MK is your raison d'etre

they offered hospitality to our board which is the norm between clubs but their new manager and owners just dont get it. There was actually a resolution passed by our board just before we first played them that they wont accept anything like hospitality until they at least drop the "dons" (but probably never). the team do the bare minimum and take everything they need so as to not interact with MK unless needed

there is still this divide in the fan base whether we should be boycotting the game of we we should turn up in numbers to put them to shame, at very least those that go never buy anything in the ground, eat and drink before or after