The Rugby Union Thread

VimFuego

gah, how close was that. Tom Youngs had a howler. Mind you, you have hand it to the AB's, they are the masters of being a fag paper on the right side of the laws.

koneguitarist

Well an interesting weekend of Rugby, England close, but 3 tries to one tells its own story. Wales demolish Argentina, but pay the cost with injuries, both 2nd choice centers out. Bring back Gavin !

hywelg

koneguitarist said:

Well an interesting weekend of Rugby, England close, but 3 tries to one tells its own story. Wales demolish Argentina, but pay the cost with injuries, both 2nd choice centers out. Bring back Gavin !

Just Google 'Gavin Henson' Comment in right hand box

Gavin Lloyd Henson is an orange Welsh rugby union player, born in Pencoed, South Wales, who currently plays for Bath Rugby. He used to be good but now is a bit shit

Sums it up really.!

bertie

koneguitarist said:

Well an interesting weekend of Rugby, England close, but 3 tries to one tells its own story. 

 yep they did well,   most were expecting about 6 to none !!    

NZ by their own admission are at their peak,  England are still only 50% through the building cycle.   

koneguitarist

Agreed, a lot of positives for England, power of forwards, great full back good kicker, but like 2003 team still no flair, but that doesn't always win the games. If England sort their back line out, then we could all be in trouble. As for Gavin, was only joking, as he is still the best Welsh Center ever, but after this weekend, he could be called up, ain't many centers left, top four that we have are all injured. He would slot straight in, allways was the guy for the big games. Any injuries against Tonga, which is normally expected and we will be in serious trouble for Australia match.

VimFuego

it is interesting to speculate what a full strength England side would've made of that game, but with so many injuries forcing us to play out of position or out of form players, it was always going to be difficult. I was really impressed with 36, and as usual Brown played outstanding. You could see Foden was struggling at times, getting out of position at crucial moments, in times of stress muscle memory takes over and it's very difficult to fight against.

bertie

koneguitarist said:

.  as he is still the best Welsh Center ever, 

I assume you're joking again ?

John Taylor

John Dawes

Gibbsy

Bateman

even Arthur Gould   -  all "better" than Gavin "David Dickinson" Henson

tbm

Poor old Gavin gets a lot of stick, much of it deserved, but he was still a class player before it all went to pot. I wouldn't have him near that Welsh team though.

A sobering weekend for the Irish rugby fan. The fact that it was a brilliant Aussie performance, there best this year, is of little comfort. This was not the Wallabies the lions faced. Bested us everywhere around the park, most notably in the scrum. Biggest failing was the utter lack of aggression and urgency from Ireland save for 2/3 players. When Kuridrani spear tackled O' Mahony -  resulting in a red card -  no Irish player went near him.

Anyway, a tempering of expectations is probably no bad thing, we need to blood some new players and ditch some old ones and that will mean taking some losses. It was only Schmidts second game, and you can see they're trying new things that will bear fruit in time. I just wish to f#ck we didn't have BNZ next Sunday. If we keep it under 20 poitn gap it will be a massive achievement.

bertie

tbm said:

. This was not the Wallabies the lions faced. Bested us everywhere around the park, most notably in the scrum. 

and they trained hard for it to by the looks of it.................>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/24983640

VimFuego

to be fair bert, only half the wallaby team were pissed, so they still had twice the rugby players on the pitch that Ireland did.

Jalapeno

England made a good game of it - please sack Ashton & Youngs asap

Scotland - oh dear, bit harsh ("dull" rugby winning out) - though there was little that could have been done for the 2 runaway tries

tbm

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tbm

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tbm

bertie said:

tbm said:

. This was not the Wallabies the lions faced. Bested us everywhere around the park, most notably in the scrum. 

and they trained hard for it to by the looks of it.................>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/rugby-union/24983640

Yeah, pretty funny. When that came out this morning the rumour was that they were out the night before. Not the case apparently. Still the felt the need to keep it quiet before the Ireland game. No problem banning a load of them before taking on the Scots though...

VimFuego said:

to be fair bert, only half the wallaby team were pissed, so they still had twice the rugby players on the pitch that Ireland did.

That sir, is below the belt

tbm

tbm

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tbm

Can a mod delete some of these? my posts were not appearing as I assumed there was something wrong.

Fretwired

Jalapeno said:

England made a good game of it - please sack Ashton & Youngs asap

But it's only a modern version of the old forward battering ram that's been used by England since the dawn of time. If NZ stopped giving away penalties they'd have romped home. I can't remember a single quality back line move. The only England try gave from the brute force of the forwards.

digitalscream

Fretwired said:

But it's only a modern version of the old forward battering ram that's been used by England since the dawn of time. If NZ stopped giving away penalties they'd have romped home. I can't remember a single quality back line move. The only England try gave from the brute force of the forwards.

But...what's wrong with that? It's simply playing to your strengths, and against the strengths of the opposition. Nobody's ever going to beat the current NZ team with flashy moves from the backs, because they'll take you apart.

Fretwired

digitalscream said:

Fretwired said:

But it's only a modern version of the old forward battering ram that's been used by England since the dawn of time. If NZ stopped giving away penalties they'd have romped home. I can't remember a single quality back line move. The only England try gave from the brute force of the forwards.

But...what's wrong with that? It's simply playing to your strengths, and against the strengths of the opposition. Nobody's ever going to beat the current NZ team with flashy moves from the backs, because they'll take you apart.

What? They're just 15 guys on a pitch. There were several occasions when a ball to the wing would have opened the All Blacks up. It never came. It never does with England. If England play like that in the World Cup they'll be toast. NZ ill discipline gave away too many penalties - had they been disciplined and the penalties hadn't come then England would have been hammered.