B&I Lions 2017
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@Crucial said in B&I Lions 2017:
@taniwharugby said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Chris-B. yep, and after the game while the forwards are having a quiet beer reflecting on that ruck he didn't hit hard enough, or the tackle that was almost slipped, the backs are out there preening and congratulating one another in front of the women claiming the game was won by them!
Whether it was or wasn't the backs end up looking up the skirt of some hotty while the forwards look at the bottom of an empty glass.
I never saw the problem.And the truth was spoken. As the good book says - the meek shall inherit the earth.
And the totty, blondes, autographs, Stuart Barnes All-Time Favourite All-Blacks, comp tix, etc, etc
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@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
To change the subject slightly, has anyone who got their test tickets via the ballot received them yet? I know tickets for the non-test games have been sent but I wasn't sure about the test tickets. There is still a month to go though.
What tickets have gone out? I haven't gotten any yet.
Physical tickets to Maori and Barbarians have landed already.
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@Crucial said in B&I Lions 2017:
@taniwharugby said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Chris-B. yep, and after the game while the forwards are having a quiet beer reflecting on that ruck he didn't hit hard enough, or the tackle that was almost slipped, the backs are out there preening and congratulating one another in front of the women claiming the game was won by them!
Whether it was or wasn't the backs end up looking up the skirt of some hotty while the forwards look at the bottom of an empty glass.
I never saw the problem.just bided our time...waiting for the backs to, er, drop the ball so to speak.
Anywhoo, got my tickets for the opening game weeks ago, have heard lots of people yet to receive them.
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@nzzp said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
To change the subject slightly, has anyone who got their test tickets via the ballot received them yet? I know tickets for the non-test games have been sent but I wasn't sure about the test tickets. There is still a month to go though.
What tickets have gone out? I haven't gotten any yet.
Physical tickets to Maori and Barbarians have landed already.
We've got our tickets for both the Maori and Chiefs games.
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@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
@nzzp said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
To change the subject slightly, has anyone who got their test tickets via the ballot received them yet? I know tickets for the non-test games have been sent but I wasn't sure about the test tickets. There is still a month to go though.
What tickets have gone out? I haven't gotten any yet.
Physical tickets to Maori and Barbarians have landed already.
We've got our tickets for both the Maori and Chiefs games.
We haven't received the Chiefs tickets yet. Really annoying.
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@SimonAdd_2 there might be a few available after the 2nd test...
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@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
@nzzp said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
To change the subject slightly, has anyone who got their test tickets via the ballot received them yet? I know tickets for the non-test games have been sent but I wasn't sure about the test tickets. There is still a month to go though.
What tickets have gone out? I haven't gotten any yet.
Physical tickets to Maori and Barbarians have landed already.
We've got our tickets for both the Maori and Chiefs games.
We haven't received the Chiefs tickets yet. Really annoying.
Another thing where NZ is falling into the worldwide 'process'. Lots of tickets for gigs, games etc now aren't sent out until the week before in the UK.
I guess it is an attempt to cut reselling down as you are less likely to put another link in the chain of waiting for it and trusting it will arrive. The likes of Viagogo have had to start setting up collection booths for sellers to drop tickets off last minute for pickups. -
@gollum said in B&I Lions 2017:
12 & 13 are hugely different defensive positions in union. Does anyone play left & right? It seems like the sort of thing the Aussies might have tried at some stage
A left/right setup elsewhere in the team has often been favoured by the French with a pair of left/right flankers instead of open-/blindside.
But they also do that very French thing of having guys who play 9/10 (other than a few exceptions like Ruan Pienaar and the numerically-fluid Giteau).
Sometimes multi-position players are the definition of Jack-of-all-trades (for England: Austin Healey: 9/10/wing/fullback - though good enough to be twice a Lion)
and others are masters of more than one (for Ireland: Mike Gibson, 10/12/13, and occasional 14, and 5 Lions Tours). -
@Crucial said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
@nzzp said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Unco said in B&I Lions 2017:
@Bovidae said in B&I Lions 2017:
To change the subject slightly, has anyone who got their test tickets via the ballot received them yet? I know tickets for the non-test games have been sent but I wasn't sure about the test tickets. There is still a month to go though.
What tickets have gone out? I haven't gotten any yet.
Physical tickets to Maori and Barbarians have landed already.
We've got our tickets for both the Maori and Chiefs games.
We haven't received the Chiefs tickets yet. Really annoying.
Another thing where NZ is falling into the worldwide 'process'. Lots of tickets for gigs, games etc now aren't sent out until the week before in the UK.
I guess it is an attempt to cut reselling down as you are less likely to put another link in the chain of waiting for it and trusting it will arrive. The likes of Viagogo have had to start setting up collection booths for sellers to drop tickets off last minute for pickups.But if Bovidae's already received his tickets, I'm not sure that's the case here.
@Bovidae Cheers, I'll give it to Wednesday and if I still haven't received anything, I guess I'll call Ticketek.
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A land where rugby is all that matters
May 28 2017, 12:01am,
Don’t be fooled by the lack of noise at Tests — New Zealand is a country defined by success of All BlacksStephen Jones, Rugby Correspondent
New Zealand rugby crowds are a stolid bunch. They don’t make a vast noise, or exude grace. They could never match that explosion of hysteria at Sandy Park last week when Exeter scored the winning try; they’d never be as enraptured as, say, Thomond Park, Limerick, let alone the Principality stadium in Cardiff.
When I sat in Lancaster Park, Christchurch, for my first Lions tour match, back in 1983, I found it eerily quiet. I remember looking around, bemused. I was used to the walls of sound at Europe’s cathedrals of rugby.
The authorities for that Test grasped that the Kiwis lagged behind for noise and support. “So today,” the announcer declared, “we are going to have community singing, just like they do at Cardiff Arms Park and Wimbledon.” I think he may have meant Twickenham but he ploughed on, introducing the opening number. It was: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
You never forget your first, in any sphere of life. That 1983 tour, an Irish carve-up in terms of selection, was a blessed time of bouncing Fokker Friendship prop aircraft (at least they tended to land quite near the airport), pumpkin soup, motels with unheated bathrooms, Ford Anglias, shut-on-Sundays (plus not-open-that-much-on-other-days-either) shops.
I recall once being stuck in a desperate motel in Dunedin in a winter week of icy rains, weeping as dear adopted England came up on TV from sunny Wimbledon. But what a glorious privilege it all was. The Lions lost 4-0, which rather set a tone
That Lions tour was the first of eight I reported for this paper. The ninth lifts off tomorrow from Heathrow. Only my friend David Rogers, the photographer, will have followed more in their entirety than me — his first was 1980 in South Africa. No player or coach can match us, and if any fan has done more from start to finish, then good luck to you. No doubt you are 20 years younger than you look. Like David and I.
The place puts your affection for rugby under a baleful microscope. Everybody should go once just to sample it, to see if their own love of rugby really can last the force-feeding diet served up. By the third night on tour, you are already wishing that the waitress would just take the order without delivering the technical analysis of the Kiwi lineout.
Wales may be passionate about rugby but I would detest it if rugby was a blind obsession. In 2007 when New Zealand were ejected from the World Cup, I read a report that industrial productivity fell sharply there. For God’s sake, rugby is not an activity profound enough to define a country.
But New Zealand as New Zealand? Sheer, lung-filling beauty, wonderfully friendly people, blissful coasts and peaks and contrasts, a satisfying pace of life — all good as long as you don’t mention a certain sport, the dreadful haka or that Richie McCaw was always offside. What about their affection for the old country? They have just voted to keep the Union Flag on their own flag, so still the sun never sets on the, erm, empire.
Sadly for the players, touring any major rugby nation is now arid, the traditional mix of crusading, japes, cultural visits, and invitation all largely in abeyance. If the 2017 tour split as did the 1968 tour to South Africa into Kippers (went to bed) and Wreckers (dismantled the hotel, the train or wherever they were meant to sleep) it would be cancelled inside a week, instead of entering legend.
It is sad to think in a place such as New Zealand that the 41 Lions players could actually be anywhere for all the contact they will have with the host nation and its beauty. On the day after that 1983 Test, we drove over Arthur’s Pass through breathtaking scenery, waterfalls, z-bends, along roads which back then were unguarded at the edge of the precipice. Sheer beauty.
When we got to Greymouth, the next venue, we found a one-horse, one- hotel town, but such warmth. At that time, to touch the hem of a Lion was something that might happen to you once in your lifetime. Everybody gathered in one rugby gang after the match, the 12,000 miles shrunk to a few inches. When was the last time Barcelona went 12,000 miles and played in a tiny town?
Even by the 1993 tour to New Zealand, that crusading and wayfaring element had diminished. By 2005, relations between host and hosted were strained. There was even booing of the Lions.
This time? There will be a £100m-plus boost for the host economy. But let’s hope and pray that the tangibles and intangibles amount to way more than that.
By the way, I’m still waiting for any Kiwi to grasp irony. I am thinking of taking a red flashing light to wear on my head when being ironic, to help them.
But now, the emotion I feel about Lions tours is no longer that old joy and sense of wonder, no longer just the beautiful rhythm of a tour as it glides through South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. It is bitter frustration and blazing anger.
However good New Zealand teams have been (often, very good to superb) the chief opponents of the Lions have always been in British and Irish rugby. Gradually, inexorably and disgracefully, the rest of the sport — the national unions at home, the outdated administration and committee of the Lions in their Dublin headquarters, the organisers of every major club competition in Europe, especially the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 — are strangling our greatest team and concept.
The preparation time allotted for these Lions, or should I say the scandalous lack of it, the refusal of all the above bodies to give them two weeks’ rest and two weeks to prepare before leaving, not only cripples the team, but has become more dangerous, debilitating and threatening to careers.
Player welfare, you see, is always somebody else’s problem. We’ve knackered them, you save them. The Lions arrive on Wednesday, and play Saturday. Disgusting.
What we have is a heavyweight battle between two massive punchers — the champion is free to box as he wishes; the challenger is forced to fight with both arms tied behind his back. The Lion magic still exists, but almost as an abstract.
All aboard. To the tens of thousands planning to follow, have a magnificent tour. I still love the Lions more than World Cups, way more than the torrent of international matches. I am unstinting in my admiration of the likes of Sir Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland and Graham Henry, who have performed wonders despite those tied hands.
New Zealand is a lovely place to visit, but if you cannot prepare an elite team any better than the worst pub side, then it is no place to go.
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@jegga Usual Walrus MO. Takes a couple of valid and important points and makes a hatchet job of it.
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@Catogrande trying to pretend his lying and cheap shots is irony is just pathetic.
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Well that's good. Jones articles are still a waste of space, means I don't have to read any more.
Although from a read of that he's really lost his spark, that was trolling by numbers. Is he ill?
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@Pot-Hale said in B&I Lions 2017:
A land where rugby is all that matters
May 28 2017, 12:01am,
Don’t be fooled by the lack of noise at Tests — New Zealand is a country defined by success of All BlacksDon't think it is anymore. Yeah, sure we like our rugby team winning, but there is more to NZ than just rugby these days.
Stephen Jones, Rugby Correspondent
New Zealand rugby crowds are a stolid bunch. They don’t make a vast noise, or exude grace. They could never match that explosion of hysteria at Sandy Park last week when Exeter scored the winning try; they’d never be as enraptured as, say, Thomond Park, Limerick, let alone the Principality stadium in Cardiff.
This is true. Crowds tend to be fairly quiet in NZ. I'm not even going to try and refute this.
When I sat in Lancaster Park, Christchurch, for my first Lions tour match, back in 1983, I found it eerily quiet. I remember looking around, bemused. I was used to the walls of sound at Europe’s cathedrals of rugby.
The authorities for that Test grasped that the Kiwis lagged behind for noise and support. “So today,” the announcer declared, “we are going to have community singing, just like they do at Cardiff Arms Park and Wimbledon.” I think he may have meant Twickenham but he ploughed on, introducing the opening number. It was: “I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.”
You never forget your first, in any sphere of life. That 1983 tour, an Irish carve-up in terms of selection, was a blessed time of bouncing Fokker Friendship prop aircraft (at least they tended to land quite near the airport), pumpkin soup, motels with unheated bathrooms, Ford Anglias, shut-on-Sundays (plus not-open-that-much-on-other-days-either) shops.
I imagine this was true. I was too young in 1983, but it sounds about right.
I recall once being stuck in a desperate motel in Dunedin in a winter week of icy rains, weeping as dear adopted England came up on TV from sunny Wimbledon. But what a glorious privilege it all was. The Lions lost 4-0, which rather set a tone
I always wonder (any English fans care to comment please), do England see Jones as "dear adopted Welshman"? The Irish can't stand Jones, for much the same reasons as Kiwis (patronising, belittling, pompous etc).
That Lions tour was the first of eight I reported for this paper. The ninth lifts off tomorrow from Heathrow. Only my friend David Rogers, the photographer, will have followed more in their entirety than me — his first was 1980 in South Africa. No player or coach can match us, and if any fan has done more from start to finish, then good luck to you. No doubt you are 20 years younger than you look. Like David and I.
These 2 need to find a hotel room, such is the love-in.
The place puts your affection for rugby under a baleful microscope. Everybody should go once just to sample it, to see if their own love of rugby really can last the force-feeding diet served up. By the third night on tour, you are already wishing that the waitress would just take the order without delivering the technical analysis of the Kiwi lineout.
Cliché alert?
Wales may be passionate about rugby but I would detest it if rugby was a blind obsession. In 2007 when New Zealand were ejected from the World Cup, I read a report that industrial productivity fell sharply there. For God’s sake, rugby is not an activity profound enough to define a country.
Fact or fiction?
But New Zealand as New Zealand? Sheer, lung-filling beauty, wonderfully friendly people, blissful coasts and peaks and contrasts, a satisfying pace of life — all good as long as you don’t mention a certain sport, the dreadful haka or that Richie McCaw was always offside. What about their affection for the old country? They have just voted to keep the Union Flag on their own flag, so still the sun never sets on the, erm, empire.
Just needs a comment about PI poaching to complete the bingo...
Sadly for the players, touring any major rugby nation is now arid, the traditional mix of crusading, japes, cultural visits, and invitation all largely in abeyance. If the 2017 tour split as did the 1968 tour to South Africa into Kippers (went to bed) and Wreckers (dismantled the hotel, the train or wherever they were meant to sleep) it would be cancelled inside a week, instead of entering legend.
And Jones was the heart and soul of the party no doubt, a player's journalist...
It is sad to think in a place such as New Zealand that the 41 Lions players could actually be anywhere for all the contact they will have with the host nation and its beauty. On the day after that 1983 Test, we drove over Arthur’s Pass through breathtaking scenery, waterfalls, z-bends, along roads which back then were unguarded at the edge of the precipice. Sheer beauty.
When we got to Greymouth, the next venue, we found a one-horse, one- hotel town, but such warmth. At that time, to touch the hem of a Lion was something that might happen to you once in your lifetime. Everybody gathered in one rugby gang after the match, the 12,000 miles shrunk to a few inches. When was the last time Barcelona went 12,000 miles and played in a tiny town?
Even by the 1993 tour to New Zealand, that crusading and wayfaring element had diminished. By 2005, relations between host and hosted were strained. There was even booing of the Lions.
That was entirely the fault of Woodward and his PR "manager". Just mix with the locals, instead of all the ridiculous malarkey of 2005.
This time? There will be a £100m-plus boost for the host economy. But let’s hope and pray that the tangibles and intangibles amount to way more than that.
By the way, I’m still waiting for any Kiwi to grasp irony. I am thinking of taking a red flashing light to wear on my head when being ironic, to help them.
We get irony. But you don't do irony Stephen. You do attempted upper crust British look-down-at-the-colonials style pieces.
But now, the emotion I feel about Lions tours is no longer that old joy and sense of wonder, no longer just the beautiful rhythm of a tour as it glides through South Africa, Australia or New Zealand. It is bitter frustration and blazing anger.
However good New Zealand teams have been (often, very good to superb) the chief opponents of the Lions have always been in British and Irish rugby. Gradually, inexorably and disgracefully, the rest of the sport — the national unions at home, the outdated administration and committee of the Lions in their Dublin headquarters, the organisers of every major club competition in Europe, especially the Aviva Premiership and Guinness Pro12 — are strangling our greatest team and concept.
The preparation time allotted for these Lions, or should I say the scandalous lack of it, the refusal of all the above bodies to give them two weeks’ rest and two weeks to prepare before leaving, not only cripples the team, but has become more dangerous, debilitating and threatening to careers.
Player welfare, you see, is always somebody else’s problem. We’ve knackered them, you save them. The Lions arrive on Wednesday, and play Saturday. Disgusting.
What we have is a heavyweight battle between two massive punchers — the champion is free to box as he wishes; the challenger is forced to fight with both arms tied behind his back. The Lion magic still exists, but almost as an abstract.
All aboard. To the tens of thousands planning to follow, have a magnificent tour. I still love the Lions more than World Cups, way more than the torrent of international matches. I am unstinting in my admiration of the likes of Sir Ian McGeechan and Warren Gatland and Graham Henry, who have performed wonders despite those tied hands.
New Zealand is a lovely place to visit, but if you cannot prepare an elite team any better than the worst pub side, then it is no place to go.
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Seriously lads. It's Stephen Jones. You don't need to devote this much energy every time he pens an article mentioning New Zealand.
It's really not worth it.
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Watching him against Scarlets, he was nowhere near the bullocking form he had in Chicago.
Serious questions need to be asked about CJ Stander after very worrying sight
