Rugby World Cup general discussion
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Well this is a perfect fucking summary of what happened in this tournament. Flats is a top journalist / pundit. I hated thinking he was right the first time I saw this, I wanted France or Ireland to go all the way (I never thought we had a chance), but fuck me the simplicity of this message is perfect
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@Dodge i don't know who that guy is but he's alright
Some fucking genius in the "Who Will Win the World Cup" thread said the following
"I've said South Africa all along, because the style they play is perfect for tournament rugby. They are so very comfortable in the pressure and grind of knockout rugby, but they actually have the outside backs to take advantage of the few opportunities that come your way."
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@mariner4life said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
@Dodge i don't know who that guy is but he's alright
Some fucking genius in the "Who Will Win the World Cup" thread said the following
"I've said South Africa all along, because the style they play is perfect for tournament rugby. They are so very comfortable in the pressure and grind of knockout rugby, but they actually have the outside backs to take advantage of the few opportunities that come your way."
Flats is an ex Bath, briefly ex England prop, he’s a brilliant pundit / presenter on English rugby. No idea who you are in real life but it seems you might also be brilliant.
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@Dodge said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
it seems you might also be brilliant
my superpower is sounding like i know what i am talking about even though it is 100% bluff
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@mariner4life fake it till you make it.
Yeah SA game is designed to win knock out footy, it might not win too many fans, but it is effective to win at rugby.
I think there is a happy medium somewhere for playing the grinding rugby SA* play and the more open game we and others invariably want to play, which is attractive to current fans and new fans, how we get there from where we are right now however, I'm not sure.
*given they have some mighty talented backs who given the chance, can play, it is odd they will more often revert to the grind style.
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when it came to the crunch we played pretty narrow as well. See the previous chats about our midfielders playing straight and close, and then wingers making most of their runs around the fringes.
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Entirely dependant on stats, and which stats you choose to compare but
https://www.bbc.com/sport/rugby-union/67263233?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=KARANGA
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BB has made every team of the tournament I have seen but never found universal favour on this forum.
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@Billy-Tell said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
BB has made every team of the tournament I have seen but never found universal favour on this forum.
Overseas judges are weirdly enthralled with him based on his breakout season in 2016, which even carried him to a second world player of the year award that really was undeserved. He wasn't the best 15 in the RWC.
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People ignore the minnows a bit but from memory the Georgian 15 was pretty good or was it Portugal? Ramos and Keenan are very good. Keenan’s kicking would have been mighty handy at times.
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@mariner4life yeah I do think for whatever reason, Fozzie had a plan, and it was centered on the RWC, but wonder if some of the changes were made too late for them to bed in as instinct when under pressure.
Too often under Fozzies reign we have panicked when the heat came on, and this happened on the weekend.
This year has been a mixed bag of performances from us, and there have been subtle improvements, but not enough time for whatbthey were trying to achieve to bed in.
But then you wonder how much impact Schmidt and Ryan have had on things too.
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@Billy-Tell said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
BB has made every team of the tournament I have seen but never found universal favour on this forum.
He's better than he's been rated on here. I think it's mix of comparing him to his previous highs, him being blamed for obvious team tactics and a few posters seem to really dislike him
Like RM he had too many error's offsetting the good stuff in the final. Thought he played well in QF & SF.
Somewhere between OK and goodish for the tournament. Not worthy of the negativity or a place in the team of the tournament -
@taniwharugby said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
@mariner4life yeah I do think for whatever reason, Fozzie had a plan, and it was centered on the RWC, but wonder if some of the changes were made too late for them to bed in as instinct when under pressure.
Too often under Fozzies reign we have panicked when the heat came on, and this happened on the weekend.
This year has been a mixed bag of performances from us, and there have been subtle improvements, but not enough time for whatbthey were trying to achieve to bed in.
But then you wonder how much impact Schmidt and Ryan have had on things too.
We never really settled on a consistent playing style. I don't know why that is but as HC Foster should have set that
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@Dodge said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
Well this is a perfect fucking summary of what happened in this tournament. Flats is a top journalist / pundit. I hated thinking he was right the first time I saw this, I wanted France or Ireland to go all the way (I never thought we had a chance), but fuck me the simplicity of this message is perfect
It’s funny though eh?
I also picked SA to win the whole thing a couple of months ago. For all the same reasons, knockout rugby, kick goals from 60m, solid defense blah blah blah
And yet, we were a solitary point off them in a game where absolutely nothing went right for us. We dropped ball stone cold (Jordan, ALB, Richie), threw a bunch of sloppy passes, inexplicably stopped contesting line outs, had a try disallowed, got the short-end of the stick from the officials (most believe) but either way had to play with 14 for 60mins, and we missed 2 kicks to give us a lead that we could potentially have defended
It kind of raises 2 questions/observations.
- Were SA actually as good as we are all making out?
And
- Ireland must have watched that performance from both SA and NZ thought “what if”
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@Dodge said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
Well this is a perfect fucking summary of what happened in this tournament. Flats is a top journalist / pundit. I hated thinking he was right the first time I saw this, I wanted France or Ireland to go all the way (I never thought we had a chance), but fuck me the simplicity of this message is perfect
Maybe, but I loved the twitter replies
1 guy who has never been afraid to speak against the noise. He openly said in January already that Sputh Africa has such a dangerously good talent pipeline, if we retain Rassie then we will dominate for years.
Only IRB changing rules to rugby league will stop our dominance -
Um if SA coaches were so brilliant tactically, shouldn't they have picked Pollard at the start? (Yeah, yeah, Rassie points to trophies on the wall as answer)...
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@voodoo we're better than some want to admit
Ireland have no idea what the pressure of a RWC final does. They had their shot and we beat them
The final rammed home that there is absolutely nothing between the top 4 sides,
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@mariner4life said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
@voodoo we're better than some want to admit
Ireland have no idea what the pressure of a RWC final does. They had their shot and we beat them
The final rammed home that there is absolutely nothing between the top 4 sides,
I'm increasingly convinced that our tactics on the day were a significant contributor to us not winning. If Razor can fix that, we will be dangerous
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@Dodge said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
Well this is a perfect fucking summary of what happened in this tournament. Flats is a top journalist / pundit. I hated thinking he was right the first time I saw this, I wanted France or Ireland to go all the way (I never thought we had a chance), but fuck me the simplicity of this message is perfect
Hopefully by the next RWC cycle Pougach will be fucking put out to pasture and Flats will be running the show
He's brilliant
And funny as fuck too
If you have a chance to see him live, do it
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@nostrildamus said in Rugby World Cup general discussion:
Um if SA coaches were so brilliant tactically, shouldn't they have picked Pollard at the start? (Yeah, yeah, Rassie points to trophies on the wall as answer)...
Pollard wasn't originally picked in the squad because at the time of selection he was out injured and had been for some time. And the Boks have a policy* of not picking injured players
Same went for Am and Lood de Jager.
They were though all placed on the standby list.You could argue Kolisi was the exception. But by some miracle, he came back from knee surgery and was able to play a bit just before squad selection.
*Note: the actual policy I know of is that if you are not fit enough to train on the Monday, you don't get picked for the weekend.
Cases in point would be Vincent Koch not making it to this final, and in the 2019 edition, Cheslin Kolbe not playing in the Semi-final.
