Rugby Union

[Mark Connolly]

It cannot be another warning - that has to be a yellow card

[Jaggy Snake]

Another warning for Wales. It's not even close to fair refereeing.

[stanton]

Game on 

[Guest]

Cmon Fiji get a move on

[Guest]

Shame he cannie kick

[Mark Connolly]

They need to score under the posts, and even then...

[Michael W]

Aw man. Sickening. 

[Mark Connolly]

Robbed blind

[stanton]

Lucky bar stewards 

[peasy23]

Ffs Fiji 

[Jaggy McJagface]

f**k right off West England

[invergowrie arab]

Worst world cup ever. No fun whatsoever 

[Carl Cort's Hamstring]

That was great fun but that was an outrageous refereeing performance. How can you give away penalty after penalty 5 metres out with no sanction? Wales were offside at basically every ruck in the final 6 minutes and were constantly time wasting but nothing happens.

Must be sickening for Fiji.

[Cheese]

 

[Eednud]

NZ poll who will win the RWC after week 1?

https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/rugby-world-cup-2023/300968103/rugby-world-cup-week-1-poll-who-will-win-the-tournament

[honestly united]

The lineout has been our biggest issue for years and we have done nothing to improve it. I get that the SA 2nd rows are big lumps so trying to go to the tail is an option normally, however with a slippery ball due to the heat - and just as big a lump in Grey, just keep it simple and win the ball. Its the lineout that cost us last time vs SA, when 5 points down and we had a 5m lineout we lost 2 on the bounce leading to a SA penalty in our half and we are 2 scores down. 

I thought defensively we were good, but off it in attack, due to SA's good defence. To often we were slow to the breakdown allowing SA to disrupt. On the rush defence, I dont remember ever seeing runners off of Finn, everyone was much wider - it was mentioned that we had a plan to deal with the rush defence then apart from the one break we looked clueless against it.

To be positive, at least we didnt have Carley reffing our game, how he is allowed to ref internationals is beyond me. TMO was worse than Gardner. I have some smypathy for refs as the TMO's are butting in showing incidents in slow mo (or not as the case may be) that look innocuous at hte time and forcing ref's to make decisions based on 'player safety'.

We lost to SA (currently the 2nd best team in the world) who have just dismantled NZ and not some dross like England or Wales, and not by a lot. Its fine tuning that is required and we have 4 weeks to get the plan right to beat Ireland. Im not saying we will, and have a track record of disappointing but there is hope, although that hope is probably resting more on a raft of red cards and injuries for Ireland over the next few weeks more than us being able to have a functioning lineout

Edited September 11, 2023 by honestly united

[HoBNob]

18 hours ago, Gianfranco said:

I’m utterly deflated after that one. I mean there are positives. We stayed in the game and I think we were defensively fine. Both tries were ruthless. The scrum also did better than I thought it would tie the majority of the match. 

We just didn’t have enough in attack. Each time we had an opportunity it lasted seconds rather than minutes. Losing 5 or however many it was attacking line outs was criminal. Just as you think that particular Achilles heel is fixed. It’s been a while since we haven’t scored a try in a match.
 

It was always going to be a tough ask for us to go through but at least we didn’t lose a bonus point. Do we hope for Ireland to beat SA with a bonus point so they’re already through when we play them? 

Aye that sums it up well for me. 

I think we need an extreme one way or the other, either Ireland get a bonus point win, or they get absolutely battered and they're rocking upto the game against us with players in stookies.

[GHF-23]

3 hours ago, honestly united said:

The lineout has been our biggest issue for years and we have done nothing to improve it. I get that the SA 2nd rows are big lumps so trying to go to the tail is an option normally, however with a slippery ball due to the heat - and just as big a lump in Grey, just keep it simple and win the ball. Its the lineout that cost us last time vs SA, when 5 points down and we had a 5m lineout we lost 2 on the bounce leading to a SA penalty in our half and we are 2 scores down. 

I thought defensively we were good, but off it in attack, due to SA's good defence. To often we were slow to the breakdown allowing SA to disrupt. On the rush defence, I dont remember ever seeing runners off of Finn, everyone was much wider - it was mentioned that we had a plan to deal with the rush defence then apart from the one break we looked clueless against it.

To be positive, at least we didnt have Carley reffing our game, how he is allowed to ref internationals is beyond me. TMO was worse than Gardner. I have some smypathy for refs as the TMO's are butting in showing incidents in slow mo (or not as the case may be) that look innocuous at hte time and forcing ref's to make decisions based on 'player safety'.

We lost to SA (currently the 2nd best team in the world) who have just dismantled NZ and not some dross like England or Wales, and not by a lot. Its fine tuning that is required and we have 4 weeks to get the plan right to beat Ireland. Im not saying we will, and have a track record of disappointing but there is hope, although that hope is probably resting more on a raft of red cards and injuries for Ireland over the next few weeks more than us being able to have a functioning lineout

Yeah it's years now under Dalziel where the lineout has looked very creaky in these high pressure matches. The players have to take a lot of it as there's some awful execution amongst those misses but there were 5 options for jumpers yesterday and neither Turner or Cherry are bad throwers - it has to be something deeper IMO. I think we get out-thought at the lineout pretty regularly, which is all in preparation. When you're not even trying, and then leaving behind, someone like Henderson who regularly runs the lineout for a team like Leicester you're asking for trouble, bringing Richie Gray back in has been a good move but it's a sticking plaster over it really. We need our lineout to work for our attack to go and too often against SA, Ireland et al it just falls to bits. All that hard work to match them physically in the loose and get them thinking in the scrums, and then a huge psychological loss to just be turning it over at your own lineout again and again. 

[Snobot]

21 minutes ago, GHF-23 said:

Yeah it's years now under Dalziel where the lineout has looked very creaky in these high pressure matches. The players have to take a lot of it as there's some awful execution amongst those misses but there were 5 options for jumpers yesterday and neither Turner or Cherry are bad throwers - it has to be something deeper IMO. I think we get out-thought at the lineout pretty regularly, which is all in preparation. When you're not even trying, and then leaving behind, someone like Henderson who regularly runs the lineout for a team like Leicester you're asking for trouble, bringing Richie Gray back in has been a good move but it's a sticking plaster over it really. We need our lineout to work for our attack to go and too often against SA, Ireland et al it just falls to bits. All that hard work to match them physically in the loose and get them thinking in the scrums, and then a huge psychological loss to just be turning it over at your own lineout again and again. 

And the one time we did something innovative (long ball over top to Sione) we should have scored.

[GHF-23]

1 minute ago, Snobot said:

And the one time we did something innovative (long ball over top to Sione) we should have scored.

Yeah I get that can work but I think it's such a psychological problem now that we need to just take our first 4/5 lineouts and hit the first man - set a reasonable maul and then play from there. Then we can get into the situations we were trying yesterday where you lob over the top or have 5 guys in motion in the line.