Rugby – 6 nations.

The latest rankings are out and illustrate Scotland being closer to Namibia in 20th than to New Zealand.

Not sure about those player ratings either. An 8 for Barritt he is great in defence but has not offered much in attack and a 6 for Ashton he has done nothing at all?

Yeah exactly, I cant see how Ashton got a 6 and Roberts a 4, I thought Roberts had a reasonable game, he was strangled a bit by Manu but he put in a lot of work. Anyway I guess the guardian is appealing to a core of home fans and wants to ride the red rose optimism..

EDIT I think you were right about Phillips popularity, I have just checked with my uncle in law, retired Bishopston resident and a welsh version of Statler from the muppets, apparently Phillips is not well liked in Swansea..

I’m certain that all player rankings start at 5. Then for something done badly, they drop, something done well, they rise. That’ll then give you a 6 for a completly awol winger who appeared at the ruck a few times and didn’t actuallu cock up, and a 4 for a guy completly unsed to having someone bigger, stronger and as fast against him, but doing a reasonable job in the circumstances.

Does that mean

Ashton

That’ll then give you a 6 for a completly awol winger who appeared at the ruck a few times and didn’t actuallu cock up

and

Roberts

a 4 for a guy completly unsed to having someone bigger, stronger and as fast against him, but doing a reasonable job in the circumstances.

?

I can’t really take those ratings seriously. Lazy journalism. Nobody deserved a 4/10, and to give that rating twice to the winning team (away from home) is wrong. Still, it got us clicking to their website, so served its purpose.
duckman above mentioned Priestland. I agree he’ll certainly play better next time. A home game against Italy should restore all form and confidence ahead of France. He can’t be “blamed” (seems weird saying that about a winning player) for the slight breakdown of the Welsh attack. England saw were Wales had been so succesful in the first 2 games and set out to nullify it, and played to that plan really well. The whole Welsh team needs to develop a better plan B now, but they know that and I expect a bit more variety against Italy and France.
To go with my other (so far completey wrong ) predictions – Ireland to win away on Sunday to completely open up the tournament again. 🙂

edit: it can’t be the “start at 5 and go up or down rule”. In a team game, where the result is all important, then winning would be +1 and losing would be -1 for the whole squads, then a few extra adjustments on individual contribution.

As AA keeps telling me, I know nothing about rugby. Nevertheless I observed that pretty much every time Phillips picks up the ball from a scrum/breakdown whatever, he takes a few steps and can’t make his mind up. I think this is not what Wales want?

OK listen carefully. when Phillips picks up the ball and takes several steps before passing it goes to a forward, its done off slow ball. When te ball arrives to him faster he passes faster and without the steps straight to the backs. He does sometimes take some steps when doing the Roberts crash ball close to the ruck however, but when it goes to Priestland it goes faster. Its meant to draw defenders onto him to open up spaces for others. He got a lot of slow ball on saturday because England played to the ref better and were no doubt happier with a slow ball game anyway. Phillips can pass poor at times but what he does is what the coaches want, having said that he can get hacked off with shit ball and decide to show his forwards how to get over the gainline in close a bit too much. Scrumhalf always get blamed for the ball being slow when its not always their fault. He’s a multi test lion so people somewhere must agree with me.

He is miles better than Blair tough TJ, I think Cussiter is better than Blair too TBH.

AA – so thats why all the ball he provided was slow and he kept getting caught in possession or giving hospital passes?

He has his attributes for sure but the speed of his pass is not great.

Cussitr is the best at winding folk up 🙂

Dylan Hartley – 6 Warren Gatland did not wind him up this year and he kept his composure as the temperature rose. Lineout throwing faultless, but England’s scrum was less effective.

Lineout throwing faultless eh, I can remember a least 1 not straight.

Glad England were so good and lost to wales who were crap.
Botha and Parling are far too small and lacking in physical presence and lineouts aside the welsh front five destroyed england. Even the welsh lineouts were pretty good, occasional **** ups were down to welsh mistakes rather than england disrupting. Corbisero cole and hartley got hammered in the scrums, although I reckon this maybe due to te midgets in the second row.

Strettle failed to score with a gilt edged chance but apparently was better than North who beat a load of defenders.

Typical shite that comes from the england centred press.

Priestland was shit though right from his first touch.

AA – so thats why all the ball he provided was slow and he kept getting caught in possession or giving hospital passes?

Oh well I tried if you dont want to listen dont bother responding, like I said multi test lion and one of the players of the world cup, not to mention grand slam and triple crown winning player.
Just because you fail to understand the system wales play dont criticise the player. The ball was slow because the ball was slow coming out of the ruck that aint his fault. still we have beaten Scotland, ireland away and england away despite for some reason the coach picking this millstone, whn all we need is Peter Stringer clone.

Serious question TJ, ever wonder what part of the reason is for the Scotland backs being so ineffective? I’ll give you a clue, your scrum half these days has to provide a little bit more of a threat than the occassional quick tap.

AA – its been the standoff thats the issue for Scotland – and now that is a bit more sorted the backs look a bit more threatening. Both Blair and Cussiter have not been at their best but Blair looks pretty much back to it now.

As I said – I think Philips has his attributes but he is not the quickest of passers. I understand your point about the way they play but even his quick pass is slower than some others. He did get caught in possession a time or two

Both Cussiter and Blair are lions as well

you guys know too much about rugby – doesn’t it spoil your enjoyment of the game?

What enjoyment? – a being a scotland fan is not about enjoyment 🙁

I’ve come to the conclusion that AA is a robot somewhere just generating PO MO rugby commentary. I’m sure it was written by Alan Sokal et al. 😆

Generate your own here..[/url]

or this[/url]

Joking aside, I’ve got the game recorded so I’m going to see if AA’s theory is true.

Cussiter and Blair test lions? Always behind Peel and Phillips were they not?

Cussiter was 2005

Both were second choice tho

2005 lions has been expunged from my data bases

2005 Lions

Was looking at teh 2005 lions the other day – they took Ollie Smith as a centre and Charlie Hodgson! A lot of England players too

Someone mentioned attacking fly halves for the 2013 lions but in 2005 they didnt have anyone who really attacked just game managers

Look at the back room staff as well!

McGeechan’s view of the 2005 Lions

1500!

2009 wasn’t exactly successful now was it?
Won 1 test of 3.

2005 was the Woodward and his spin doctor fiasco. Woodward thought he could win with his england world cup winners. The sight of Shane Williams when he finally got a test start being used as if he was Cohen , on the crash between the centres and getting smashed was enough to make me cry!
At least the 2009 lions made a game of it.

Yes, the 2005 lions was absolute rubbish. Ollie Smith however, was a really, really good centre. Somehow, after the lions he was never the same again. Not sure where he ended up. The same happened in 2001 (I think that was the year, Aussie tour) lots of players came back physically and mentally broken. I hope they don’t select any English players!

When was the last successful tour, 97?

I love lions tours

It’s one mahoosive soap opera with a bit of rugby now and again.

They are brilliant…in a player destroying, national team meltdown, media frenzied bitchfest sort of way

^^^ This +1 😛

The 2009 tour was sucessful in the sense that it buried some memories of the 2005 debacle and displayed that you could still prepare a competitive test side in a few weeks to compete head-on with the world champs.

OK, they lost but they could have won either/both of the first two tests and there was some cracking rugby.

One sure thing about 2013 will be that the squad will not contain some players currently considered dead certs and include some not even on the radar at the moment.

”There was an incident….”

took you long enough to find that zokes! Hardly representative of ‘most welsh supporters’ though is it? Think you need more than that!

Oh, I wasn’t responding A_A’s abuse – I posted that and thought it was relevant seeing as this is a thread about 6 nations rugby. Similar stories about players of other nationalities seemed to be very relevant to previous rugby threads. Always room for balance and all that…

Scamper – Member
The latest rankings are out and illustrate Scotland being closer to Namibia in 20th than to New Zealand.

POSTED 1 DAY AGO # REPORT-POST

Yup, and England closer to us than NZ as well. Which is strange to me as just 6 months ago you were going to be world champions.

Which is strange to me as just 6 months ago you were going to be world champions.

NZ were going to be world champions every time since they won it the first time. Best laid plans an’ all….

Oh, I wasn’t responding A_A’s abuse

oh ok fair enough.

You do realise Sweeney hasnt played for wales for about five years and Tom James hasnt for about three?
The england world cup fiasco was relevant due to current players at a world cup acting like children. That incident isnt in anyway relevant to a six nations thread.

Anway how about not responding to abuse

That would be responding to it by obeying it. When you’ve washed your mouth out and worked out how to type a sentence to me without using a series of expletives, I might be more receptive.

You seem rather too wound up to be enjoying the leisure activity of discussing rugby on a forum – it’s probably not good for you to get that worked up.

Oh how wrong you are you poor little man. I’m suprised you havent noticed, wales seem to be winning, despite the england team plsying so “well”. If i get down i can always read Strettles post match comments and cheer myself up again and if i was really down i’d find Cueto’s from a few world cups ago… Hows them grapes fella, need a spoon of sugar?

Oh how wrong you are

One assumes that this is the Edinburgh Defence?

Rather than the rugby per se, it seems therefore that it’s posting on here that is winding you up. You do seem to resort to venom rather often, and I’m sure just chilling out a bit would do you the world of good.

Edinburgh defence? They dont have one do they TJ

zokes I am sure you can do better than that, arent you meant to be clever or something. Didn’t you claim that the Welsh bad behavior was before the game? Still waiting for the proof on that or were you telling lies?

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