The Rugby Union Thread

Schnozz

HUZZAH!! 

MagicPigDetective

Schnozz said:

HUZZAH!! 

What’s your beef with Wales Schnozz? 

tbm

Absolutely bananas last 15 mins. Unreal game. 

koneguitarist

No complaints here, what a match. 

Best team won. 2nd is fine by me. 

sev112

Wow !

MagicPigDetective

Fantastic performance by Wales. So close, bur as a nation, we can be so proud of the team. 

exocet

The result was as I predicted but not the match that created it. Wales were more competitive up front than I expected. France were more tenacious for 80 minutes than I expected. 

We threw it away at the end by trying to run down the clock. 

Well played France.

tbm

I thought it was in the bag for Wales. Lucky only getting two yellows in the end. 

koneguitarist

Great game for the neutral, shattered after that. 

exocet

tbm said:

I thought it was in the bag for Wales. Lucky only getting two yellows in the end. 

10 mins to go, I was thinking the same. 

Faletau off was really bad for us. We'd have been better off conceding the try / penalty try and then restart again with 15 players. 

Would've been great for AWJ to finish with a G.S. I'm not sure where Wales go from here, there's some big holes about to appear over next 2 years as players retire without obvious replacements.

thermionic

That last ten minutes was the longest five hours of my life.

MagicPigDetective

exocet said:

tbm said:

I thought it was in the bag for Wales. Lucky only getting two yellows in the end. 

10 mins to go, I was thinking the same. 

Faletau off was really bad for us. We'd have been better off conceding the try / penalty try and then restart again with 15 players. 

Would've been great for AWJ to finish with a G.S. I'm not sure where Wales go from here, there's some big holes about to appear over next 2 years as players retire without obvious replacements.

  That’s been said for years, when Martin Williams retired, when Jamie Roberts retired, when Shane Williams retired etc.... but new players stepped up, and here we are within a minute of another grand slam. Pivac brought through new players over the last year... there are great players like Ellis Jenkins and Jamie Davies on the fringes.... with the way Pivac has got the team playing, I feel pretty positive moving forwards

MagicPigDetective

thermionic said:

That last ten minutes was the longest five hours of my life.

Totally

exocet

MagicPigDetective said:

exocet said:

tbm said:

I thought it was in the bag for Wales. Lucky only getting two yellows in the end. 

10 mins to go, I was thinking the same. 

Faletau off was really bad for us. We'd have been better off conceding the try / penalty try and then restart again with 15 players. 

Would've been great for AWJ to finish with a G.S. I'm not sure where Wales go from here, there's some big holes about to appear over next 2 years as players retire without obvious replacements.

  That’s been said for years, when Martin Williams retired, when Jamie Roberts retired, when Shane Williams retired etc.... but new players stepped up, and here we are within a minute of another grand slam. Pivac brought through new players over the last year... there are great players like Ellis Jenkins and Jamie Davies on the fringes.... with the way Pivac has got the team playing, I feel pretty positive moving forwards

You may well be right. Right now we know that AWJ & Ken won't be at next W.C. 

Jake Ball, probably our most physical 2nd rower is leaving.

It's quite likely that JD2 won't make it nor Biggar or Halfpenny.

Faletau is no spring chicken, neither is Navidi or Tips

To me it looks like there's a raft of significant  players who won't make next WC and yet not much time for replacements to develop to required level? 

thermionic

Wales running out of rugby players? Never gonna happen lads.

p90fool

thermionic said:

Wales running out of rugby players? Never gonna happen lads.

I'm not so sure, given that crowd attendance pre-covid was at an all time low and that you can't even watch club rugby for free on TV in Wales any more. 

The Six Nations/Millennium Stadium circus is a part of our national consciousness, but rugby hasn't been our national sport for years. Football is way bigger. 

koneguitarist

Interesting comments, Wales punching above their weight with limited resources and may still win championship, however 2nd to this French team is not a bad place to be going forward. 

England are punching below their weight, yet have all the resources to be regular world beaters. 

Wales will make best of what we have, if AWJ now becomes a bench player, same with Tipuric, Faletau etc, that will be a strong bench for next couple of years whilst new crop come through.
I think England have wrong coach though, who seems to be able to pick players but not a team. 

Jalapeno

England were very poor, shame they couldn't keep the France form - what is going on ?

Sorry for Wales, but may still win Championship - France have to get a bonus point, and win by over 20 next week. They can do it, but it's a tough ask if Scotland turn up.

mattdavis

Struggling to understand what’s happened to England. Clearly good players, clearly a good coach - you don’t get to a World Cup final by being crap. But the energy and passion has gone. Half of them just don’t look like they want to be there. I hate pinning it all on a coach but maybe they just need some fresh new inspiration. Enough to make you look through the classifieds for something to make it all alright again. 
Felt so sorry for AWJ - but what a game.

sev112

You may not know this, but I always support Wales after living in Wales in the 90s,  although I’m mainly an English supporter.  

I would LOVE Wales to be dominant in a World Cup, but they have to learn some lessons.
Wales should not be proud of this year’s 6N - they should be proud of individual and team commitment and the things that went very well.  But being very proud is dangerous.  They should have lost to Scotland and Ireland, the England game well who knows if the ref had got those big decisions right, and  against a COVID affected France team (12 players in the squad including Olivon and DuPont) Wales lost.   (Everyone forgets that England beat France when a week and half before France were dealing with it !).   Yes, the results book shows Wales won those games, and good luck, but they are not good omens for bigger and better things.  

Wales need to work out how to step up at the big one, the World Cup.  Hopefully Pivac has the ability to help do that.  But a brilliant performance against SA in the semi final does not ignore that Wales were on the way out in the QF, until the French punch.

but still, if you are improving and winning games, that’s a great place to be, no matter how they come about.

for me the successes of this 6N were 
L Williams - prob the Lions starting full back now.  Hogg regressed as 6N went on and makes mistakes.
Josh Adams - starting Lions wing, continued his high performance and sniffing out and finishing tries from the previous few years.
North , starting Lions Centre now, excellent performance in that position, helped by weakness in other teams in this position
LRZ - I’d take him on the lions plane, but he has youthful defence wobbles occasionally.  Who knows, might be the next North, hope so.

Biggar - starting Lions 10,  but in competition with Sexton, as both kick extremely well under pressure
Davies - starting scrum half
Wyn Jones - starting Prop
Ken Owens - starting hooker
i think AWJones gets a plane ticket for his second half of the 6N season which I think was immense.
Tipuric - starting lions flanker, totally impressive in everything he does, and the stuff you don’t see,
Navidi - on the plane
Faletau, not quite there yet, but on the plane, but might start because of limited choices at No8.  But I’d play Stander there in the starting team, if picking on from and performance in 6N

So I’d have 8 Welsh starters in the first test. 

(for discussion the others in my starting 15 would be May, Henshaw, ANO prop, Henderson, Itoje, Beirne, Stander
id really like to put a Scot or 3 in there but Hogg has been pipped by williams, Russell doesn’t kick and has been variable whereas Biggar/ Sexton have stepped up in the big games, poss Sutherland in front row but regressed during the 6N, Watson at flanker but he can’t pip Tipuric.  There might be a space if you put Beirne as lock.

probably all nonsense