A feast of rugby tomorrow, anyone attending? Predictions welcomed, reviews also appreciate
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England gonna give NZ a really hard game unless their kicking for goal improves here
Nika Amashukeli just isn’t up to standard; both teams have a lot to be frustrated about due to his rulings. Thankfully he was equally bad so overall it balanced out, but it made for an absolute shambles at ruck time (similar to the game vs Argentina a couple years ago). I think you could make an argument that the mess he allowed to happen at the rucks is what led to TJ Perenara’s unfortunate injury.
I thought him not too bad actually, I liked his breakdowns. Felt flowing to to me. Nothing I actively disagreed with on the whistle either
Perhaps it’s just a huge divergence between NH & SH on the breakdown. Down here you’re not allowed to chuck your hands on the ground as much as he was allowing; and once the ball is lost the ref basically tells them to clean it up and get the game going again. Whereas in this game when the tackle area had definitely become a ruck he was still happy for newly arriving players to stick their hands on the ball to slow it down.
They’re also a lot stricter on the direction they’re coming in on the breakdown as well. So generally in SR it was a lot tidier than in this game; with less players off their feet even when the defending team counter-rucked and blew past the ball.
I was also pretty frustrated by his guesswork and inconsistency at scrum time. The very first scrum dropped with Marler not taking the hit & hinging as much as Lomax overreaching with the gap being set too far apart. He gave a straight arm for that, but then in the 2nd half was resetting scrums for basically the same thing. The use it call on the ABs scrum that took the feed, hooked the ball and then started moving forward was a bit much too I thought.
That run from Mark Telea in the first half. Magic.
It was a great match, far more than I expected today. England are learning game by game again, if they keep that going they’re going to do very well. Next week to be really fun to watch!
ABs classic wobbly first test hopefully, and next week with more training sessions to bed in systems will be better. Perofeta was really good, but Beauden’s kicking game was a marked difference maker in terms of ensuring the ABs spent more time with ball in hand in the right part of the pitch.
DMac’s passing was exceptional but other than that he did struggle against the rush D (every body does, even Mounga) and some of the missed kicks & the time out would have been frustrating. Definitely deserves another shot at 10 and I think keeping BB on the bench to sub in as a change of plan as needed is a good balance.
For mine, England’s best player was their halfback Mitchell - he was possibly the best player on the pitch. Really great service from the base, great pass, managed to keep the defence guessing, a scary good performance. In a way a similar player to Roigaard so its a shame he is out injured to have a battle against a similar player. Perenara was great, but is definitely more of an old school style where Mitchell looks to me to be perhaps a change in style that will become more common in coming years.
Good tussle - could have gone either way. Did feel like the good ol first test wobbles for the abs.
I suspect you’re right about first test nerves. But England will also learn. All Blacks tried up the jumper vs England first half, of course they were going to struggle vs England. All Blacks have another game though, where England will come unstuck is they don’t
Has an ABs supporter that’s a narrative I can get behind, but England were good - definitely not as one dimensional as they have been in the past.
Samoa - Italy from yesterday too which is yet another example to why the new Nations Championship protecting the bottom of the 6 nations at the expense of the next tier that they’re not consistently better than is a total joke.
Oh wow, just checked the score, got to watch the highlights of that match!
Oh another game we missed was Georgia - Fiji; weirdly for compared to all the other games that one was played away for Fiji.
Not many play Georgia to be fair. I suspect only Scotland of tier 1 have ever been
Yeah and I guess all of Georgia’s players are in Europe, and because of the Barbarian’s game all of Fiji were over there so I guess for affordability it probably makes sense.
Its a real shame Georgia & Fiji aren’t getting more matches against the bigger teams, and in particular aren’t getting to host them at home.
This is where the Autumn nations fails. Locking out smaller nations fails for lots. Regional competitions don’t work outside TRC and 6N. Personally, I’d up the world cup to 2 yearly, we don’t have to follow football or the olympics, and the Lions can shift
World Cups are really expensive for the host nation though, even if WR make a bunch of money off of it. The Nations Championship thing could help with this if the self-interest of the weaker teams in the top 10 of the world hadn’t locked out the 13th-24th placed teams for the next 5 years.
But the truth is most nations are struggling to fund the professional game - really only Japan & France are thriving and that’s because of the private wealth that props up their competitions. Which has the unfortunate side effect of making the professional game everywhere else so much more expensive as every other nation & competition has to try to compete with their salaries.
100% - the rugby world needs to reign in spending. But last 3 world cups have made a killing for host nations. Time to up them, the Nations Championship is a world cup by another name anyway, lets make it official and include all. Scotland made that look easy, as expected - Canadian rugby showing what a lack of cash does indeed
Aus v Wales has been a good watch so far; I’d say the Wallabies are looking the better team but struggling with a bit of dropped ball so haven’t been able to take full advantage of the half-breaks they’re generating.
I enjoyed the full game, even though both teams got the dropsies at times. Lolesio trying for a cross field kick instead of just passing into a 2-2 out wide 10m out from the line got him yanked by Schmidt but I think for the most part he was pretty good and is still building into a combination with Gordon. The latter box kicked well but it was a good call to sub when the game started to become a lot looser.
For the most part the Wallabies many rookies stood up & got the job done so they can rightly be proud of getting the win. Wales aren’t a tip top team by any means and are rebuilding themselves - but have had more time in camp and more games played than Schmidt who basically prepped the team with 4 sessions so with more time the Wallabies should improve for game 2.
Thought Brousset was really good too, clear in his instructions throughout, not afraid to follow up on warnings and be decisive.
NZ by 25
OZ by 25
SA by 10
FRA by 25
SCO by 50
So the Ireland match the one to tune in for imo!
I’ll bite…
NZ by 12 OZ by 15 SA by 1 ARG by 3 SCO by 65
If SA revert to type I know folks love those really brutal tackle all day games but for me they get decided by the whistle too much so i’m kinda expecting the Wales v Aus game to be the more fun watch. NZ-ENG has Amushkavili in charge so it’ll be an absolute crapshoot at rucks.
Yeah, in knock out rugby SA’s game comes into its own, with these no jeopardy windows I hope we see all teams throw the ball around more!
Argentina by 3 is interesting too, any reason for the tightness? Frances form hasn’t been amazing, but they are still 4th in the world and the guly between the top 4 and rest has been there for some time
I have a counter-thought about SA’s knockout rugby; it only looks good because they squeaky bummed it in those games. But they only won by 1 point and it could easily have been a result the other way & then people would have been asking questions about why they don’t use their incredible backs more etc.
I just have a vibe about Argentina; they didn’t have as good a year as they would have hoped in '23 but it was still pretty decent and they’re playing at home against a French team that’s only just finished their playoffs. So if they were ever going to get a win it would be now. We’ve seen more of Argentina at home thanks to the Rugby Championship and they’re getting increasingly hard to beat there.
I want sky sports…
Now TV day pass is available. Given more next week, and the week after - might be worth a month pass. Scotland on TNT for some damned reason means I might go to the pub to watch the SA v Ire match
That’s a shout.