The Rugby Union Thread

exocet

I fear it'll resemble the late 80s tour when only Jonathan Davies came away with any dignity. He crossed over to league shortly after...

lloyd

Well no one is going to League these days, England and France yes but that's a different story.

No Chatteris means no lineout maul-defence or attack.

So:

No scrum
No lineout maul
Few ball carriers in the pack
No attack

Good defence (sometimes)
One or two decent broken field runners
Erm, that's it

Roll on the Euro's!

lloyd

9 weeks for the gouge, should have been longer IMO.

When are rugby going to start banning people for matches rather than periods of time? He'll miss virtually no game time...it's daft.

koneguitarist

Worried for Wales tomorrow, not even gonna watch it as I would have to pay for Sky. 

England I feel are gonna win, looking at Aussie side, apart from a couple of players, I feel England have the edge over most of the team and some of the reserves.

Ireland could fare just as badly as Wales, due to injuries, but it's a pretty new SA side, so could be closer. 

Hope someone from NH wins a game! 

lloyd

I can see England pinching a game, maybe not tomorrow, this series could be where we see the real England and how far they've come under Jones.

In fairness they whitewashed a pretty average group of nations in the 6N this year and beat us fairly easily this summer.

I'm watching it tomorrow but not expecting anything, wales best results in NZ have been 19 point losses (3 times) if we come away with less than a 60-nil aggregate I'll be happy, I can see the second and third tests 40+ margins though.

scrumhalf

Decent first half performance by the Saxons aganist Boks A.

Cracking try by Dan Robson.

Not that I'm biased in any way towards the Wasps no 9.

koneguitarist

Nice to hear local boy Ollie Devoto score for England Saxons in their Win. Sherborne RFC proud as hell.

scrumhalf

Devoto and Tompkins in the centre looked good. England lost consistency when all of the subs came on - how often that seems to happen these days.

One of the Bok props was so huge I would imagine he'd need planning permission to change ends at half time.

eSully

Game No 1 of Saturdays line up on the way. Good luck to the Welsh, if you want a pre-kick off chuckle then you could do worse than reading WalesOnlines Wales Vs All Blacks player ratings

lloyd

eSully;1105651" said:

Game No 1 of Saturdays line up on the way. Good luck to the Welsh, if you want a pre-kick off chuckle then you could do worse than reading WalesOnlines Wales Vs All Blacks player ratings

That paper is an embarrassment, the standard is sub Daily Star....

I think the Telegraph got it right with what Welsh players would get in this All Black team-North, Roberts, Warburton and AWJ, although they admit (rightly) that injuries mean we sneak a couple of them in.

I would only have Roberts and Warburton given full squad availability.

koneguitarist

well 3:0 that's as close as we were likely to get, down hill from here.

lloyd

Fucking great try.

koneguitarist

Am I in a parallel universe?

lloyd

Blow the whistle now!

koneguitarist

Yep declare war or something and stop it, put NZ out of their misery

lloyd

2 mistakes in 5 minutes from the ABs unlike them.

lloyd

Need to punish every mistake they make.

lloyd

Crossing from us deep in their half-can't afford to give them platform like that.

lloyd

Wow they are dangerous, they punish you for your mistakes.

They look so much more dangerous with ball in hand too, offloads and everything done at pace.

koneguitarist

I think we made them angry by scoring!