The Silver Fern

Wales have 143 points in total in this RWC...All Blacks have 210...All Blacks get third place....now both teams can go home to get over not winning the 2019 RWC 🙂

@Stargazer said in Can Japan and Sun Wolves survive without home support?: An odd number of nations complicates scheduling etc.

An odd number of teams in TRC could actually work out well to stagger the byes so there is rugby each weekend.

I'd work backwards from the fixtures I want to see. For example, having renamed mysef Brent Impey, my goal for the next 3 years is:

play 2 x RSA, 2 x AUS, 1 x ARG, 1 x other (JPN) per year instead of 2 x RSA, 2 x AUS, 2 x ARG as now.

Take one Aus game and one Bok game out of TRC but still played as Bledisloe and Freedom Cup matches.

TRC is then a round-robin like the 6N (or, with 5 teams, like the old 5 Nations)

Or, if you wanted to drop the Bledisloe to 2 games - or even one - for a particular year, then there is an opportunity for an inbound or outbound test tour with the Boks, Pumas, Fiji, or whoever.

Most of the incidents were already reviewed. This idea sounds ace. Double thumbs up.

@junior said in Red cards:

@Bones said in Red cards:

@junior said in Red cards:

@Bones said in Red cards:

@junior OK sure, I'm the one being obtuse. It's just not fair eh.

So if your answer is "no of course not" then what is the answer? Why can't they pull down a maul?

I can’t believe I’m actually bothering to answer this, but... it’s because (a) there is an element of AVOIDABLE danger in collapsing a maul and (b) you can stop a maul by legally pushing it back, which is what makes the danger avoidable.

Compare and contrast that with the situation I’ve described above and you will see we’re not talking apples v apples here. In the tackle situation I’ve described above, the danger / illegality is completely UNAVOIDABLE given current directives around the tackle area. The only thing a tackler can realistically do in that situation is to not tackle.

Haha! Oh of course in the situation you don't like it's UNAVOIDABLE.

Why are you being so obtuse? I already said that the team hasn't been able to stop the maul legally. So they should be allowed to collapse it right? Because otherwise that's not fair!

If you can't see that's not the point me and many other posters are making, you are even harder of thinking that you look (I'm assuming you resemble the nutter in your avi.)

And, for the record, a maul can be stopped legally - it happens all the time and indeed several times in most matches. Again, your point about the mauls makes absolutely no sense.

Right, so go back and replace the word "maul" with the word "player" in your last paragraph.

@ACT-Crusader said in There should be two RWCs:

I was discussing this very thing a couple of days ago.

Something that football/soccer get right IMO is the qualification of the WC. It builds tremendous excitement and buy in from the fans. No team is ‘undeserving’ of being at the big show.

Football has much more depth and competitiveness across nations so it is easier to have pools within regions where you don't always know who will qualify. I remember when Aust and other tier 1 teams had to qualify for the 1999 RWC as there were only 4 automatic qualifiers from the 1995 RWC (1st, 2nd, 3rd and the 1999 hosts, Wales not England). They won that RWC, of course.

1999 Rugby World Cup – Oceania qualification - Wikipedia

Then the IRB changed it to the 8 QF teams from 1999 qualified for the 2003 RWC. The 2011 RWC was the first in which the top 3 teams from each pool qualified for the next RWC. Moving to 12 automatic qualifiers was probably just another example of the tier 1 nations looking after their own self-interests. At least with less automatic qualifiers we would see more tier 1 teams playing tier 2 teams on a home and away basis.