The Rugby Union Thread

scrumhalf

I access Prime through my non-BT ISP and the picture was fine, no buffering or pixelation. 

koneguitarist

I wish there was pixelation or buffering in Welsh match, but that only seemed to be players. 

exocet

sev112 said:

I was starting to throw things at the telly during the prime coverage grrrrrrr. We have pretty good internet here, and have no problem streaming anything else, 
but every 3 to 5 minutes it would buffer, and then come back 3 minutes later missing some really key action.

I seem to recall there were lots of complaints when Prime were doing international football ?  

If this is their offering for live sport, they have to get this sorted - destroys the whole impact of live sport

There is a difference between live streaming and "on demand" streaming. Technically, live streams are multicast and on demand is Unicast.  I can recall issues that I had a few years ago when I had issues with muticast live streaming but on demand (iPlayer) was rock solid. I think i had to change a setting in the broadband router when I moved away from the BT Home Hub because of shit WiFi performance. 

https://community.bt.com/t5/Archive-Staging/Using-a-3rd-party-router-for-Multicast/td-p/1048582

If I recall correctly, some  Powerline Extenders can have issues in handling IGMP Multicasting.

koneguitarist

A little worried Wales have made so many changes at once. To be honest we are not playing well enough to dismiss opponents, however down the pecking order they are. 

We did it under Garland against Samoa and lost I think, it’s like giving Georgia extra motivation for attitude. Looking forward to seeing some of the  young lads play, but of things start to go wrong, where is the old experienced players to help them?

crunchman

koneguitarist said:

A little worried Wales have made so many changes at once. To be honest we are not playing well enough to dismiss opponents, however down the pecking order they are. 

We did it under Garland against Samoa and lost I think, it’s like giving Georgia extra motivation for attitude. Looking forward to seeing some of the  young lads play, but of things start to go wrong, where is the old experienced players to help them?

Surely a Botham should be playing for England.  Don't think he would get in the team at the moment though.

exocet

Yep, not a great idea. We're going to get mangled at scrum time. Just as well we've got Leon Brown on the bench....  At best, we'll sneak a win in the last 10 minutes.

koneguitarist

Wales really need someone like Noriega to sort our scrum out and train the youngsters coming through. 

sev112

Wow, very disappointing from the Blue Dragons - 18 against Georgia. Broken a losing run, but very disappointing.
 My fave Welsh player Wainwright got MoM, but he didn’t do much for it.  

Some effervescence and occasional bits of good play, but tha5 does not bode well for the future, no matter how many new players get blooded

exocet

Up front, Wales did better than I expected them to. However, didn't appear to be capable of doing much when we had the ball. Far too much kicking possssion away - poor kicks at that. Thought Hardy and Sheedy were ok, Webb was painfully slow when he came on.

koneguitarist

Webb kills any momentum, not sure why he does it? 

Seb Davies seemed to be a passenger, we need an aggressive 2nd row on with Ball who works hard. Seb Davies ain’t it. 

Thought LRZ did well, looks the part, would keep him, Liam and Josh Adams as back three. Halfpenny is an option to cover wing and fullback for bench. 

Not knowing much about the dark arts up front, was surprised at how well scrum did, but feel we miss Moriarty and Navidi for a more powerful back row. 

hywelg

Wales  were painfull to watch. Yes I know we were blooding s lot of youngsters but fuck me, we had no idea on how to break down and open up a defence. 

Hope Tipuric is OK 

koneguitarist

Well squads are out, surprised Ireland have fielded a full strength side to face Georgia who will probably ship a shedload of points. Would be nice for them to get on the board this time though. 

Wales V England, not entirely sure what Pivacs thinking is here. He has picked arguably our best scrum half for speed of  distribution, yet kept Biggar as flyhalf. To me it would have made sense to pair Williams with Sheedy and have Biggar with Webb. 

I am worried if England get up a head of steam Wales will ship so many penalties and yellow cards we could get an absolute tanking. 

My only crumb of comfort is when England are heavy favourites they seem to have off days. Hopefully this will be one of them. 

sev112

Sheedy looked a good one.  Could t kick for toffee though,  anyone who hooks his kicks like that is going to suffer under pressure, and that was evident on Saturday

im pleased though to see Wales trying new guys.  Not all at the same time , and as you know I have a grudging appreciation of Biggar

sev112

And please no more Blue shirts - Red or Green  - you lose so much passion without having any crowds, but to take away the colour of the shirts removes the last sense of occasion

MagicPigDetective

I’ve never felt such little confidence and  enthusiasm for a match against England. It will be painful to watch, we’re going to get tonked. 

exocet

MagicPigDetective said:

I’ve never felt such little confidence and  enthusiasm for a match against England. It will be painful to watch, we’re going to get tonked. 

2013 was the last time I felt confident about Wales winning v England. So confident that I went down to my local Rugby club in Kent to cheer them on loudly. I wasn't very popular that day.

scrumhalf

Never underestimate England's ability to arse things up by having to play to Eddie Jones' masterplan. At least we've got Ford back at 10, but with Youngs at 9 Wales will have about half an hour to get their defenmce sorted out between phases.

crunchman

scrumhalf said:

Never underestimate England's ability to arse things up by having to play to Eddie Jones' masterplan. At least we've got Ford back at 10, but with Youngs at 9 Wales will have about half an hour to get their defenmce sorted out between phases.

It's a bit of a statement about the quality of scrum halves we have had in recent years that Youngs has got to 100 caps.

MagicPigDetective

exocet said:

MagicPigDetective said:

I’ve never felt such little confidence and  enthusiasm for a match against England. It will be painful to watch, we’re going to get tonked. 

2013 was the last time I felt confident about Wales winning v England. So confident that I went down to my local Rugby club in Kent to cheer them on loudly. I wasn't very popular that day.

The Scott Williams try? That was epic. I was out in Caernarfon, it went wild. 

VimFuego

there are some pretty useful young 9's coming up through the ranks; Maunder at Exeter, Harry Randall looks really exciting but to give him his due, Youngs is executing the EJ plan really well. I suspect (well, hope mostly) that he is not a long term solution, I mean if you look at the backrow from EJ's 1st year compared to now, it's much more exciting and dynamic, but he introduces things at a gentle pace.
EDIT: as for Saturday, I'm looking forwards to a nice bit of televised training for our boys. Should be good for them to do a bit of opposed training and put a couple of cricket scores in against the hired in sparring partners.