The Rugby Thread

[sir roger]

I mean , well done Scotland and all that , but F*ck me there have been at least 8 different articles on the BBC Sport website gloating about it since Saturday.

[Pidge]

Would be remiss of me not to say congratulations to the Irish lads on here, a Grand Slam sealed on St Patrick's Day.  Have a good one.

 

Fingers crossed the Chiefs can land some silverware tomorrow in the Anglo-Welsh.

[G Richards]

Aye, fair play to the Irish on St Patrick’s day too.

[niallers]

Would be remiss of me not to say congratulations to the Irish lads on here, a Grand Slam sealed on St Patrick's Day. Have a good one.

 

Fingers crossed the Chiefs can land some silverware tomorrow in the Anglo-Welsh.

Cheers my friend. England have regressed this season but we did brilliantly when we had to today. Suppose it had to be when it was on our national holiday and again' everyone's "auld enemy!"

[bigthrusts]

Fair play to Ireland. Fully deserved.

 

At this rate they may even get past a World Cup quarter final next year.

[Pidge]

Well in Leinster.  European Champions.

 

Stuart Lancaster as well.

[sir roger]

Brilliantly Machiavellian solution to the World Cup 2019 problems caused by a dodgy Romanian ref ensuring Belgium beat Spain  so his own countrymen qualified for the competition. They've thrown all three of Romania , Spain & Belgium out of the competition because of spurious eligibility problems and Russia have qualified from nowhere.

[Pidge]

All about this match to make sure I'm not in a shite situation for our final for nothing next week.  Fully expecting to end up on the train home from Twickenham with the match on my mobile...  it being free on youtube might save me. 

 

Anyway, ballot for the world cup is also open.  Got tickets for England/USA, South Africa/Africa qualifier (TBC) and England/Argentina (Kobe to Tokyo over the course of a week - ideal result would be Himeji castle, Mount Fuji and nerding out at the Ghibli museum en route - but that's just dreaming at this point) sat in my account.  Need to check with my South African mate whether he's really up for it before rolling the dice.

 

edit: also Saracens looked frighteningly on form earlier...

[sir roger]

Congrats Pidge

[Hand Shandy]

Should be another belting game. Both sides in good form, and Exeter are probably about the only side that can stop Sarries when they're playing well.

[bigthrusts]

Refereeing in both games today was dreadful. Ireland simply made too many errors to win though.

 

South Africa vs England at 4.

[Hand Shandy]

That is ridiculous from Elliott Daly.

 

61 metres.

[Hand Shandy]

Well England aren't fucking about. Try for Brown in the first five minutes.

[Hand Shandy]

Cracking game this.

 

England were 24-3 up, South Africa have just brought it back to 22-24.

 

34 minutes gone, three tries for each team.

[Hand Shandy]

42-39 to the Saffers.

 

Great game.

[KopOut]

Gotta play for 80 minutes, as the French just found out.

[sir roger]

Fantastic game the England one , although if I wanted to be picky , it would have been nice to see the odd tackle thrown in.

[General Dryness]

Gotta play for 80 minutes, as the French just found out.

Loved it, 8-11 at half time, final score 52-11.

 

Nice bit of "rope a dope" from the ABs there. Spend the first half wearing them out, then destroy them in the second.

[KopOut]

Loved it, 8-11 at half time, final score 52-11.

 

Nice bit of "rope a dope" from the ABs there. Spend the first half wearing them out, then destroy them in the second.

To be fair, the French were fucked by the ref.

[General Dryness]

To be fair, the French were fucked by the ref.

What, the entire 41 point gap was down to the ref?

 

Man you is bitter.

[Hand Shandy]

What, the entire 41 point gap was down to the ref?

 

Man you is bitter.

New Zealand were undoubtedly wearing the cheese-eating surrender monkeys down, but even the most blinkered All-Black fan would have to admit that yellow was dodgy.

 

You then stuck three tries on them while they were down to 14.

 

Don't think you can argue it had a massive impact on the game.

[General Dryness]

Yeah that yellow was a bit iffy.

 

I'm just having a dig at Kopout because I know he hates the All Blacks.

 

Don't tell him though.

[sir roger]

I only watch international rugby , not club stuff so am not a particular expert but picking up on what a couple of you guys are discussing, are the referees generally as bad as they seem ?

 

I watched the 3 games yesterday ( not seen Wales or Scotland ) and all three referees were pretty awful. Is it that the rules are too complicated , or are the referees biased / intimidated ? To me they seem to be making it up as they go along & people are pinged for stuff and far worse stuff of the same ilk gets ignored seconds later.

 

On a specific point , what happened after Itoje's try when half a minute later the tv judge seemed to deliberately check something ludicrous to disrupt Farrell's conversion attempt. There was some mention of a possible offside by Itoje, but that was ridiculous.

[General Dryness]

Rugby referees are by and large pretty good I think. Plus they have the TMO to back them up, and only the team captains are allowed to talk to them so they don't get surrounded by players screaming in their faces like in footie.

 

But when they're bad, they're really fucking bad. Like making decisions that cause teams to lose major games bad.

[Bjornebye]

Come on The Irish