Anyway, I’m going to get drunk with my wife. Fucking fuckety fuck fuck fuck.
Thanks for your company, safe journey home. You massive fucking fluffybunnies
Anyway, I’m going to get drunk with my wife. Fucking fuckety fuck fuck fuck.
Thanks for your company, safe journey home. You massive fucking fluffybunnies
I mean, no one has said it that I’ve seen, but the Boks are fucking roided up to the nuts, their coaches cheat with HIAs, their coaches attack referees, their players are mostly fluffybunnies, there isn’t a single neutral fan who wants them to win.
Phew. That was closer than I thought…
Cheer up you mother fuckers
I’ve spent 20 years on this site hoping for people to beat the Kiwis, but I’d support a fucking Nazi XV over this bunch of Saffa fluffybunnies
I started to think about this earlier, I didn’t even get to the last three questions. As I was thinking through the year I realised that all of my favourite moments were friends and family ones, moments with my parents, moments with my children and moments with my wife. Its been an amazing exercise in realising how lucky I am. A few for my benefit more than yours:
I know I cheated but fuck me that list could have been longer. Wow
You can’t bounce up out of a tackle with the ball still in your hands and go for the line. Second movement, playing the ball on the floor, not releasing, whatever the fuck you want to call it
Really hope the ABs spend the week scrummaging and box kicking the leather off the ball. Play in the right areas of the field and you win this game. Despite my Hitler and Stalin jibe, I can’t stand the thought of Rassie winning another. Ideally I’d love to see him so upset he makes another video
So much better than I expected us to be, they gave me hope and it hurts now but I’m proud of how they muscled up and turned up. Right now feel hard done by but we had plenty of opportunities not to shoot ourselves in the foot.
Congrats to SA, they find a way. They’ll be hard to beat but they didn’t look the monster pack they have done and I think NZ have at least a 50:50 chance
Just read pretty much the whole thread, its interesting to watch a couple of things happen throughout:
Over the last 3 years, as the number of cases increased, and people protested, the governing bodies of most sports have acknowledged that fairness is important and sought ways to restrict the women’s categories.
Long way to go, plenty of decisions to be made and those already made to be implemented, but i believe we’re heading in the right direction. There is still misinformation about when people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson state that Semenya is female etc but we’re getting there.
Gradually males are being rightly excluded from women’s sport, importantly, not from sport as a whole, just from a protected class of sport that they don’t qualify for.
The science is pretty much conclusive, retained advantage comes from way more than just higher testosterone levels. The likes of Hilton and Tucker are winning that debate.
The increasing outcome appears to be men’s, womens, and non binary / other categories. At first, this seems reasonable, but what it really means is that there are two men’s categories, so 2 thirds of prize money goes to men. This would reverse almost instantly if we split the prize money 50% women, 50% to be split between male and NB. I think that would be an interesting experiment.
Professional sport therefore is heading in the right direction. The amateur ranks though, there is still a long way to go. The likes of Park Run are increasingly seeing women’s records being taken by NB or trans identifying males.
We need to keep the pressure up, we need to keep arguing for fairness. IMO the genie is out of the bottle, scrutiny and light are the long term solutions but we need to move quickly to ensure a generation of girls and women don’t give up in the face of this onslaught on their sport.
Amazing. What a game, well deserved. Feel for Ireland but congrats to NZ. Smarter, worked their bollocks off, played knock out rugby.
Wanted Ireland to win but watching Sexton Chuck his dummy hours after watching Bigger do the same was not a chore
There should be a big conversation about head shots among other things. The reffing of head shots has been inconsistent all tournament and world rugby got the perfect storm in the final, two head shots reffed differently resulting in losing a player for 60 odd minutes and one for 10.
Before the tournament both would have been red, in the first week, both would have been red, then the interpretation became more desperate to keep players on the field. As far as the latter stages go, I wasn’t surprised by either decision. It’s a really horrible problem to solve, as they have to stop head shots, but unless they fundamentally change the tackle height law these things are going to happen.
On the style of the game itself, someone mentioned in the game thread that we will be turning new spectators off, well, my dad who’s watched rugby for 80 odd years and played a high standard can’t really be fucked with it anymore. So many technical interpretations, so much reward for up and unders, and so much risk in holding onto the ball and being tackled behind the gain line, so many opportunities for teams to maintain a defensive intensity through slowing the game down and swapping out players around the ruck. Need to have a look at the sub laws, there are too many and too much gaming of them. Bongi did not go off for a tactical sub, how on earth could that decision be allowed. Also, too much reward for having a better scrum, you don’t get a penalty awarded against you anywhere else for not being as good at a technical skill, trouble is, if you remove the jeopardy then you encourage an extra three loose forwards on the pitch further reducing the space for attacking play. Again, reducing subs feels like a better option than solely changing the punishment.
The TMO is a weird problem, once you involve tech, then accepting bad decisions becomes harder and harder, as a result you have TMOs going back to intervene in phases leading up to tries etc - if you don’t though, you have huge complaints afterwards that the wrong decision was made in the build up.
I don’t know how to solve most of these, but rugby is risking eating itself and losing fans left right and centre.
I haven’t been on this site for a while until the last week or so, I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve found the wrong Silver Fern. NZ will batter Italy, it will not be close.
@Nepia said in RWC SF: All Blacks v Argentina:
@Machpants said in RWC SF: All Blacks v Argentina:
If not ABs, then England. I know they are a completely boring team with a right bunch of tossers who go on all the time. But if SA win, then they are the undisputed greatest rwc team ever. More wins than us, done the double, and in a few less games. And I'll take boring both over Rassie the cheating twat anyday
I don't care about any of that shit, we have the winning record over them, they're better at lottery comps. I'd rather you piss on my leg than England win.
I'm happy to help you kill two birds with one stone, i'll buy you a pint and try and convince you not all England fans are dicks, then i'll piss on your leg.
As for this weekend, you're going to walk it.
@sparky said in RWC SF: All Blacks v Argentina:
All Blacks World Cup Semi Final day. That will always make me think of this.
“Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.”
Rest well, Jonah, and thank you.
One of the most humbling days as an England rugby fan. We actually played quite well, but he destroyed us, it’s a weird feeling watching your team get taken apart and falling in love with one of the opposition players at the same time. Comfortably my favourite ever rugby player, from any nation.
Well fuck you lot, I put £20 on NZ after the France game because you were all so bloody miserable. Now I don’t even know if I can bring myself to watch the final between Hitler and Stalin
@MiketheSnow said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@canefan said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@Frank said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
@voodoo said in Israel, Iran, Syria, and the rest of the ... Middle East:
Qatar generally gets a pretty free ride internationally when you consider all the support it provides to Hamas and others
Well, you have to take into account that they put on a great soccer World Cup!!!
And as Westerners, we will overlook all evil for the sake of a good game!!
And aren't Saudi Arabia the #1 state sponsor of Islamic terrorism? And yet they are very much in bed with America, an interesting juxtaposition. I was not aware of the USA giving a shit ton of cash to Iran. Funny how the world works at the international political level
If the US stopped fucking meddling in other people's business, things would be a lot simpler
Simpler in that Ukraine would now be part of Russia? China would invade Taiwan? Israel would be wiped from the map?
The US are no angels but don’t kid yourself they’re worse than the despotic regimes around the world
@Bones said in RWC QF: Wales v Argentina:
@Damo said in RWC QF: Wales v Argentina:
I'm OK with that. It looked bad at first but the player dipped suddenly. Not consistently refereed like that.
That's a sloppy as fuck clean out, reckless and dangerous
I’ve literally no idea what the ref is going to give anymore. That could have been red, in the end not even a penalty. Weird
Saw two or three beautiful stats about the latest England team vs India:
Anderson is a freak.
@Catogrande said in RWC Final: All Blacks v Springboks:
I think you’ve nailed it pretty much. You always expect NZ to play the most intelligent rugby, but the Saffers played smarter on the day imo. Odd, because you clearly have some intelligent players. What’s the issue? Leadership? Coaching?
I think the point everyone is missing is that South Africa were the clearest about what they were trying to do and played knock out rugby - ie they did what they needed to do to win. Take the last 10 minutes. They played as deep in NZ half as possible and hit every tackle, ruck and breakdown like their life depended on it, because thats what they needed to do.
New Zealand couldn’t do it because they haven’t spent 4 years doing it, they, like most teams, haven’t spent 4 years practicing winning the tiny moments. Ireland did, but their game is more technical, more things have to work and they didn’t get to practice the intensity of South Africa then NZ two weeks in a row very often - they tried but they were fucked at the end of the NZ game.
However many decisions went each way - and don’t kid yourself that Barnes and team only went one way, South Africa consistently reacted better. I hate that it’s true.
@Winger said in Coronavirus - UK:
@Victor-Meldrew said in Coronavirus - UK:
The vaccines showed real-life effectiveness pretty much in line with the clinical trials. A sample group/study of 15 million people over 2 years showed 77.6% and 93.2% effectiveness against hospitalisation and death respectively. link .
In some ways I wish I still had as much faith in these Govt reports produced by their hired (or employed) experts. Experts who are almost obligated to produce the 'right' figures especially if they ever want future work. Or promotion or a future high paying job with a big pharma company.
But these vaccines were initially sold as if you take one of these (so-called) vaccine then you will be protected. Then when this proved to be bullshit it was changed to 'but you would have been worse without the vaccine'.
And If it was this effective why effectively force people who don't want to be injected with a 'no liability' new experimental drug to have it.
"Serious side effects (mainly inflammation of the heart muscles) are/were very, very rare. My neighbour - a Cardiology Professor - tells me the figures are tiny at about 15 in a million doses with only 1 in a million needing medical intervention."
Yet I know three people (and I rarely discuss this with friends or especially workmates) who were ill enough to require hospital attention after having the 2nd vaccine or booster. And are still suffering from the side effects.
And I've heard second hand that doctors just refuse to accept its a vaccine injury. Maybe this factor plus some creative research and analysis results in these low figures.
it really is very hard to argue with someone who refutes all peer reviewed science because it 'comes from the man' and then bases an argument on a three people he knows as though its somehow more reliable. I'm just glad that the people running this country take no advice or notice of people such as yourself.