Such a troll, but a legend all the same.
Such a troll, but a legend all the same.
Foley playing well lol
The IRB are soft cunts
Well Rugby has been ruined.
They'd already had a warning about that.
I must say I have no idea (as with most rugby rules) how the rush defence works with the offside rule - does the interceptor guy have to be behind the ball when Genia (was it?) picks it up?
As for the Irish, which ones is it that don't like the team and is it because it's an all Ireland effort?
It’s not an all Ireland effort, it’s an Ireland + Loyalist Northern Ireland effort, that’s the problem. It’s not a national side at all but more a makey-uppey thing like the Barbarians or something. Any “national” side not playing their anthem before a game for fear of offending our enemies is no national side at all.
It’s also an elitist sport in this country also, which doesn’t help.
It's an elitist sport everywhere.
We're going to go to the wall internationally when Red Jez shuts down the public schools (same for cricket).
I know it's a minefield, but the people from the north who want a united Ireland not wanting to play for a united Ireland rugby team (is that what you are saying?), whatever way you want to look at it, seems daft.
Anyway, does this outcome if it stays the same mean that should England win their group their route to the final is Australia then New Zealand? Hmmm.
This United Ireland that people talk about (the amalgamation of Ireland and Northern Ireland) doesn’t exist so there should be an Ireland (Republic in the name like the soccer team if you like) rugby team and a Northern Ireland rugby team. Or the NI players should be playing with Scotland as the demographic there that plays and follows the sport would be far more aligned to Scotland than Ireland. Then we could have a compromise-free national side of our own.
Same goes for cricket, hockey, etc (the Loyalist sports). ‘Irelands Call’ can kiss my hole.
If we had Toomua starting we would be not as shit. No shame losing to this Wales team obviously.
This is a disgrace.
Is the existence of the team in it's current form an anachronism because it existed before the division of the countries (international rugby has been around for longer than international football) or is it modern construct?
This high tackle shit is worse than VAR in football.
Good tight forward shift.
And our scrum is dominant...
Fuck the French.
Well played Wales.
You will beat us in the QF.
Missing touch at the end is unforgivable, they deserved to lose just for that.
I like the gong. Hopefully it becomes a fixture in every game like that stupid French horn.
Toomua starting that game would be very interesting. Foley is the biggest binman 10 to have ever player Test Rugby.
It is much better than american hand egg.
Fuck off with that, you numpty. In the Midlands and South West it's very much a broad spectrum sport, particularly in the Coventry/Leicester area. I played it at school there and further West in the Midlands, both state schools, one of them in Ofsted's bottom 100 at the time, whilst I lived in council estate mundanity.
Add to that, in Wales and the Scottish Borders and Ayrshire specifically, it is again a broad spectrum playing. South Wales in particular has very little 'elite' or even 'middle' class to speak of, yet it's still revered as the 'national' sport.
Yes, it's very much more the sport of the middle and upper classes in the South East, North (basically it's Durham and Yorkshire, right?) and the East coast of Scotland, but hey yeh, just go ahead and completely ignore the geographical nuance of the sport and make sweeping and inaccurate statements, eh?
It has 10-20 square mile pockets of supremacy over football dotted around the country, largely in affluent areas, but other than that it's just a private school sport and plays second fiddle to football. I live in one of the pockets, so I know.
Of the 33 UK-educated players in the recent Scotland squad, 13 went to private school - just under 40%.
I'll probably give you the Welsh, but without looking into it too much I'd guess a large majority of professional players are hoovered into the private school system. Hence elitist. Maybe it's a chicken and egg (chasing) thing. That is certainly the case with cricket. As for all the wellington wearing hooray henrys who make it the national sport of the south west, well, have you ever been to Bath?
For every Bath there are three or four Launcestons though, he's not wrong there.
In Welsh rugby 'elite' traditionally meant 'white'.
So 40% of one of the squads equates to the entire sport being elitist? I’m absolutely up for saying it is overwhelmingly more popular amongst the more affluent than the less affluent, but that’s a very different statement than to say it is the reserve of the affluent, and I think that figure itself backs that up.
And no, in Wales the players aren’t hoovered into the Private schools, just normal comp ysgols...
Similarly, I’ll give you the Irish wholeheartedly, and admit that the English squads are still dominated with upper class cunts that don’t really represent the broader demographic of participants - but Leicester turning out shite for such a long time along with the folding of most of their Midlands rivals will do that... but again - that doesn’t equate to elitism across the sport as a whole. It’s a farmers sport in France and Italy, and an Everyman sport in any of the Southern Hemisphere teams.
Oh, and the SW also contains Bristol and Gloucester, rugby hotspots that aren’t affluent (albeit Gloucester also has a sizeable rugby going farming community, who are pretty affluent and feed into Glos via Hartpury College).
Rugby league was the stronger code in France before the war, but then the Vichy government banned it as socialist and gave all of its assets to union. The Catalan hardcore (average age: dead) still throw 'Vichyball' around for the lols.
I meant give you the Welsh in that I accept they probably don't even have private schools there.
My limited understanding of Australian rugby union is that most of their players (maybe not the indigenous ones) come from the posho schools of Sydney and Brisbane in the mould of Dulwich College or wherever they go in England. Or league, natch.
They will fade in the last 20 surely.
lol if the Jocks get bounced out by a typhoon.
What a shambles.
Lol, can they just straight up cancel a match?
Yeah, both England v France and New Zealand v Italy have already been abandoned. Officially will go down as 0-0 draws.
Hahahh, that’s amazing. The most Scottish thing ever.
I don't know if's just the time zones, but this has felt like a drudge of a tournament to me. Crushingly predictable results apart from maybe two (rugby is a horribly predictable sport really) and now half the teams having their fourth game cancelled.
Contrastingly I've been loving it, I can watch the early games in bed and then roll out and have breakfast watching the next one.
It's a walkover for the big sides until the knockouts but that's the same every time, the game has too many enormous gulfs in talent to support a tournament that would be competitive all the way through.
Yeah I've enjoyed it well enough. I've found the gaps between fixtures more annoying.
The other thing that annoys me is the bonus point system acts against any upsets that there are being meaningful, e.g. Uruguay were still completely out of contention for 3rd place even after they won their first game against Fiji, and I think the same thing did for Japan last time round.
What are the main profitable TV markets for them? GB&I? There isn't even much worldwide diaspora like there is with cricket.
Unless you count Australians it's here and France.
Keeping the losing bonus point makes more sense than keeping the 4 try bonus point.
If Hurricane Haggis leads to the cancellation of the Scotland game on Sunday they may as well just call the whole thing off. You can't have one of the only really meaningful games of the group stage decided in such an arbitrary way. Sergio Parisse is right to say that with the boot on the other foot and New Zealand needing to win then heaven and earth would have been moved to play that game. Italy, not so much. Thanks for coming. I have a terrible feeling this is going to recur in the proper world cup in Qatar when sand storms, A/C system failures or ISIS start fucking shit up.