Rugby 2023-24 World Cup Year!

Excellent rugby fare from the 3rd and 4th best teams in the entire world. I’m not bitter, honest.

I’ve been musing again this week how white rhinos naming has nothing to do with colour – they were named in Afrikaans for their wider mouths – wijd rhino.

Excellent rugby fare from the 3rd and 4th best teams in the entire world. I’m not bitter, honest.

And they say sarcasm doesn’t work online… :-p

Commentary has got no better then utter word salad with a dressing of Heinz bulls*it

God this is dire.  The gulf between the top 4 and everyone else is plain to see.  
Tuilagi off, Arundell not used and we bring on Ford when we have Lawrence on the bench and need strike running to get a score.  Weird.

God this is dire

Argentina have played some good stuff in between the errors…England havent done a lot but are winning!!

The irony of Farrell recieving and complaining about a high forearm….

England havent done a lot

I cant work out if they cant be arsed or spent all last night on the razz…

Ref has shit out of penalising the England scrum in the last 10. 

Thought Argentina had another score in them. Well done to England for keeping them out. Not a classic game but had it’s moments

Watching this in Portugal. Can’t understand the commentary but they were definitely siding with Argentina by the volume and excitement whenever there was an Argentine attack.
I don’t think they thought the last scrum was reffed right either!

My god that was a poor advert for Rugby. A failed experiment by England. Dominated by Argentina for the last 50 minutes. 

Far too much complaining to the ref by both teams.

I don’t think they thought the last scrum was reffed right either!

The last three by my count.

Well that was shit.  Dreadful advert for the game.  Makes Warrenball look exciting such was the lack of ambition from England.  Argentina did at least try to play a bit of rugby and scored a cracker of a try.  Ref did well in a difficult game overall.

Hope the final is better.

The gulf between the top 4 and everyone else is plain to see.

I missed the memo, I didn’t realise rugby had gone the way of dressage or figure skating. I thought you won by scoring more points than your opponents rather than for artistic merit.

Lost one game by one point, and that was to a dodgy scrum call in the last 2 minutes against the best team in the tournament. From where they were in summer, do they not deserve a teeny bit of credit.

Better than going out in the group stage .

The last three by my count.

I didn’t count but from the one where England just disintegrated.

Also how the **** was Theo Dan MOM? Carreras was awesome.

OK so I’m an ex Rugby League player so don’t get scrums….

But Argentina did seem to be pushing early. Young prop also was scrummaging at a weird angle. 

I won’t blame the ref. Some decisions went Argentina way in my view. England were very poor with ball in hand. Slipped of loads of tackles. Shite to watch. The future looks bleak for England, third place hides how bad things are.

I decided to watch something else instead, sounds like I made the right choice.

3rd best team in the world it’s official! Let’s wait another four years to see where you the rest of you home nation wannabes are. I mean have you even been in a final???

😉🤣

I havent seen the game so fair play to both England and Argentina for their efforts in getting to this stage of the competition They can only play the teams in front of them.
World rugby on the other hand have made a monumental arse of things by buggering up the draw Is there anyone who beleives that Ireland/France would not have beaten both England and Argentina

.

Tell you what I would laugh my arse off if World Rugby decided to do the next world cup seedings off this world cup!!!

On the basis that Ireland always seem to choke on the big occasions and have never got past the quarters, whereas England have a habit of being just good enough…. it’s by no means the foregone conclusion that some seem to make out.

There’s a saying in cricket, it’s not how, it’s how many. IDK what the rugby equivalent is but there’s not a lot of medals handed out for being pretty losers. So unless they’re scrapping the text based results format and going to publish the final standings via interpretative dance or something, I suspect it’ll say England – Bronze medal long after we remember how fancy the other teams were.

Also how the **** was Theo Dan MOM? Carreras was awesome.

I at least take some heart from the fact that the Falcons donated no England players to that mess but did have a couple of Argentina players there, including (Mateo) Carreras, who had a great game.

I probably would have picked Underhill for MOtM myself. I think it’s policy now to pick from the winning side? At least it’s not a public vote like in 2019!

long after we remember how fancy the other teams were.

It’s almost like you want to come right out and say you think England are a good rugby team but even you can’t bring yourself to utter the words.

Third in the top world and the only home nation to reach the semifinals. Well done England.

It’s almost like you want to come right out and say you think England are a good rugby team but even you can’t bring yourself to utter the words.

By the definition of ‘finding ways to win games when it matters’ they are. There, I said it. Maybe not by other definitions of how they play, but the prizes go to those with most points, not those that looked nicest.

Better than 17 other teams by the only measure that matters. 3rd in the tournament. Bronze medallists.

The wailing of the ABE just makes it even better.

Tell you what I would laugh my arse off

Hope you’ve got an arse transplant organised AA… This is World Rugby you are talking about 😉

finding ways to win games when it matters’ they are.

With the exception of the SA game, I don’t believe that sentence applies to this England team no matter how many times they say it.  It feels much more like just about getting the win accidentally to me.

what it “feels like” has bollocks-all relevance. Look at the scoreboard? At the final standings? What does that say? 

It’s says we didn’t play any other top tier team except SA – to whom we lost.   Im sorry but you can’t claim to be a good or great team until you’ve played and beaten the best.

I understand your point, we are where we are – 3rd – in the competition but unfortunately that by no means makes England the 3rd best team in the world.  At best they are 5th behind NZ, SA, Ireland and France, but likely also 7th behind Wales and Scotland, and on a bad day could even rank below Aus, Argentina and Fiji.

Its not a compelling look.

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That was always going to be a tough game for England. It’s been spoken about a lot in the press but after a physically and mentally bruising game like the one they had against SA, teams find it hard to bounce back and play well against a team they “should” beat. 

I think England did ok, they won. It wasn’t pretty and it could very easily have been different in the last 20 minutes but they hung on. 

Personally I think they need a rethink now the WC is over, some fresh talent and a change of strategy. The biggest issue for me is they can’t seem to work out how to score tries. In a nutshell, I think Farrell needs to go or at least not be captain. 

It’s says we didn’t play any other top tier team except SA – to whom we lost.   Im sorry but you can’t claim to be a good or great team until you’ve played and beaten the best.

Like Ireland and France did when it actually mattered?

I agree that the seedings were rubbish and why the draw need to be done years ago is beyond comprehension.  However England had nothing to do with the the draw.  This time the luck was on their side and they have found a way to ‘just’ win on a regular basis.  And the one match they did lose, it was very close.  They could have been playing the final.

Bigger questions about Wales.  How come they lost to Argentina who England beat twice?  And if Ireland are the best team in the world, then they ran out of steam in the quarters.  Their famed development process is not providing the depth.  But the biggest disappointment is the French.

They could have been playing the final.

Which would have been a total mockery to the actual world order.  

That’s an important point. Rugby by its nature is a debilitating attritional game. And to win a WC (or come third even) you need to play 7 games in 7 weeks of which the last three are knockout games against the best sides. 6 nations is 5 games in 6 weeks with whole weeks off for recovery, etc. It’s not just about being great in a single game, it’s being able to sustain it, and that’s something England seem to do time and again in tournaments.

Look, I’m not trolling as such, although I must admit I’m enjoying rugby’s legendary gentle fan banter. England aren’t attractive in the way some other sides are, in fact they’re often dour and ugly but the result is in letters and numbers, not pictures and on that score then we’ve bettered you all. Again.

See you in four years when maybe you can come up with a system for tournament rugby that that doesn’t involve being also rans after the groups.

World cups are about squad depth, that’s why NZ and SA are in the final. They have 2 squads with no drop off in talent.

England don’t have that, but I think they probably have more depth than Ireland, Scotland and especially Wales. Ireland seemingly played pretty much  their 1st team in every game, that must have hurt them in the quarters.  France should have done better, they should be in the Final, but I cant knock SA for getting their instead.

Issues with Arundell again, of whom you’d have to admit wasn’t good at all last night.

Which would have been a total mockery to the actual world order.  

Yes, yes. This actual world order that’s decided by how pretty sides are in one off games that don’t count for much. 

What colour medals did Scotland, Wales, France and Ireland get from that world order, remind me again.