Rugby World Cup 2007

I've been studying old RWC photos as part of my (temporary) job, so my mood is definitely switched-on as regards the great winter sport.

I hope Portugal win.

I hope Portugal win.

;_;

Haha, not really. I was merely shocked to discover they were there in the first place!

I'd find it very very very amusing if Australia won something like 15-10 in a final against the All Blacks, with an unparalleled display of dour, defensive, gritty rugby the like of which we've only seen before, ooh, about 3000 times.

I don't think Australia will go that well. Especially if they get a couple of injuries.
For example if Mortlock gets injured we'll get destroyed.

Anyway, the final everyone wants to see is France - South Africa. Possibly. Maybe France - NZ, although that fixture's already seen its zenith.

Really France-South Africa?

Them dirty-playing springboks??

i wonder if grouchy fred nerk follows the rugby

Is that the broken yahoo dude?

That guy's sassy.

Them dirty-playing Springboks getting overturned by the dazzling French would be quite something.

Grouchy Fred Nerk has probably abandoned ILX after the jhoshea I Love Cricket debacle. Actually, I've tried to turn jh onto cricket, with few visible signs of success. I doubt I'd succeed any more convincingly with rugby.

bump?

Australia doesn't care about Rugby Union except for a few homosexual public school boys from Sydney.

But despite that, I was there at the last World Cup when Australia beat Nambia 156-0 at the Adelaide Oval and I was all like "LOL".

I hope Georgia win.

Also, who the fuck let the United States in on all this?

I hope France wins too. I also wish i had tickets to see some of the games, but none of my friends managed to get an extra ticket for me :( Maybe i should take my uncle's place, he's been invited on a boat trip along the Seine all the way to the Stade de France, then the game against Argentina.

Australia to win, after glorious victories over Eng-er-land in the quarters, the Bro's in the Semi and a maering of the 'boks in the Final. At least that's how it went after several ales last night...

"maering" = mauling

http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F30E17FC3A580C758DDDA10894DF404482 (no idea if that link will work)

"Most Americans, myself included, have a vague impression of rugby as squads of 15 beefy brutes, many of them with master's degrees, clanging their heads together until blood streams down their ridged brows, performing unspeakable acts of violence down in the pile. Which turns out to be the case."

^exaggeration

Australia doesn't care about Rugby Union except for a few homosexual public school boys from Sydney.

lol

wallabies - they have the best colors, makes my hat look cool (sea green with yellow strap and logo)

Are you Australian, Cap'n??

Come on, the All Blacks will win.

They're always going to win, aren't they? Yet they've only held "Bill" once.

I hate the nickname "Bill", but i will continue to use it.

It seems in the spirit of the tournament.

FRANCE FTW GUISE

By "always going to win" I'm sure you mean "will choke again".

Yeah, that is what I meant.

Le Coq v Pumas. Let's roll!

lol france

Merde!

OMG WALES

WTF was wrong with Ireland last night? Shocking performance :(

I know! Namibia! FFS.

I was happy for Namibia though, they played really well. I like the way that both teams got a illegal try. That said, fuck a bonus point, we should have been in the 60s at the least!

The pattern so far appears to be six nations teams struggle against plucky minnows. Tri nations teams destroy plucky minnows with chilling, ruthless efficiency. And Argentina beat France. The funniest result in the world cup since, um, the last one.

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/11/13/thumb/d022dh01.jpg

Player of the tournament so far, is Mario Ledesma, the Argentinian hooker. Looks about 55 yrs old, runs around like a 21 year-old, never screws-up a line-out, tackles like a madman, scrummages like a beer truck stuck in first gear and can even manage a deft chip and chase.

The man is a God, and possibly my favourite player ever.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/41687000/jpg/_41687782_marioledesma203.jpg

More Mario.

His loose-head colleague, Rodrigo Roncero was also superhumanly great on Friday

http://www.stade.fr/dbimages/Image/joueur/normal/Rodrigo_Roncero_fleur.jpg

See here modelling the ridiculous Stade Francais kit.

And Argentina beat France. The funniest result in the world cup since, um, the last one.

The funniest part of this, for me, was listening to the sports journalists on Irish radio this morning saying that this would be a disaster for Ireland because the organizers were going to have to do everything they could to keep France in the competition. "They can't afford to let France go out at the group stage", they claimed.

Are they suggesting that the organizers are going to get the refs to cheat to keep France in?

The England score was the biggest surprise, I think, and quite funny.

I was quite surprised how strongly Wales came back - them going 3 tries to 0 behind, wasn't surprising such is the poor state of Welsh rugby right now. Being outmuscled for two close-range tries by the Canadian forwards is pretty poor and leads me to expect some big humpings by the better teams unless they can tighten up in the forwards. They appeared to have learned nothing from the debacle in 'friendly' against England.

Another hero : Canadian tight-head Jon Thiel. He had open-heart surgery last year!

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40734000/jpg/_40734915_jonthiel203.jpg

Are they suggesting that the organizers are going to get the refs to cheat to keep France in?

South Korea, FIFA World Cup 2002.

Hmm. Well, it's possible. It's more likely the commentators are just looking for someone to blame ALREADY for the fact that Ireland are going to embarrass themselves.

but the Rugby World Cup doesn't employ incompetent referees from countries who suck at the game, do they?

I've just written a profile of Guus Hiddink, in which I stated that the reason for the inexplicable decisions against Italy and Spain is probably that of crowd influence rather than actual bribery.

I also wrote an article before the weekend about the highest-ever points totals in RWC games. I mentioned New Zealand's 1999 win over Italy, to the tune of 101-3, mentioning that "Italy are the most-improved team in world rugby" and "such a thrashing would never befall the current side".

Erm...

I don't think they have any Russian linesmen.

xpost

O HAI!

i was wondering if there were any rugby ppl round here :)

chabal looked gorgeous on friday, but was entirely useless.

supporting argentina was odd though...

Boring boring Scotland. Not good enough.

LOL @ Australia

LOL even more @ New Zealand

Vive la France!!!!

every Antipodean on sporting messageboards today: "Who'll play France in the final, SA or Argentina?"

lol

It's a strange sport indeed where Englishmen can actively support France and Argentina.

And Scotsmen can be not overly troubled about England beating Australia.... mind you, not watching and reading the media coverage opf it might have something to do with that

... however, the prospect of an England v. Sarf Ifriker final *shudder*

i was surprised how played down/muted it all seemed actually xp

I think that's what made it bearable. See, if only they could do that all the time.

France v S Africa final. LOL

Anyway, the final everyone wants to see is France - South Africa. Possibly. Maybe France - NZ, although that fixture's already seen its zenith.

-- Just got offed, Monday, 27 August 2007 23:07 (1 month ago) Bookmark Link

*bows*

we also got a F-NZ slight return. :D

but have i spoken to soon?

Yaow.

YAOW

That was amazing - my 10 year old son - who has had a bit of a crappy week at school - has just gone to bed with the hugest smile on his face.

Will greenwood's reaction at the end was v. sweet. So england win again, and there will doubtless be carping over the nature of the victory, but that somehow makes it seem only more satisfying. Again, it was the forwards who won it. The kicking from hand was woeful.

France played badly, of course, but the quarters have seen all the teams playing badly. France were dreadful against NZ, but NZ were worse. SA were rubbish against Fiji, Australia abysmal against England, and yet all these games have been massively entertaining. Weird.

England V France: The team that made the least mistakes won. Shocking match, rather boring.

South Africa on the other hand, well they were on fire!

Admittedly France only made one big mistake, the opening try, but what a mistake that was.

*unbows*

I disagree, I thought that France were tired from the off and fairly dazed at how things were going. There was a lot of hitting rucks from the side and desperate grabs leading to dodged tackles. That try couldn't have helped though, awful thing to have happened!

Yes, yes, I agree with you on that. They just looked a bit uninvolved and uninspired. I guess a bit like NZ against France.

Ha ha sadly OTM!

feel sad for the argentinians though, just a match too far for them last night, they looked knackered from the start, making ridiculous handling errors they hadn't in the other matches...

These fisticuffs in the Argentina - France game are boring, like hockey fights. Someone needs to get a punch off.

lol France

Pumas are 'the big winners' from this tournament.

I want them in the Six Nations, playing a home game a year in Buenos Aires. That is a good holiday.

This is another potentially great match being marred by the tedious kicking game.

even as a scot who wants england beat, that was a try im sure.

I like these commentators, they just said "lets not dwell on it, mistakes happen and forget about it and just try and win".
Great attitude.

Okay so I win a fiver and I don't have to spend the next six months avoiding 5 Live for fear of chinless twunts calling for the canonisation of Wilkinson. Excellent.

And that's coming from an englishman!!

who won?

England scored one try in three finals. Hmmmm....

I don't care about England RU Kerr, it's a class thang for me.

That and the fact that they play boring, shitty rugby.

Thank fuck for that.

Just seen the replay again and his foot touched the line, it wasn't a try. Even Martin Johnson says it wasn't a try now.
Could've went either way but it was a good decision in the end.

Hamilton's path to SPOTY now totally unhindered. Go that man!

Dom and NV are right in that we've just been spared quite considerable quantities of lionising pap. That said, I was still supporting England.

The best team won.

My favourite is when phone-in wankers go "AND THEY ARE PROPER ROLE-MODELS NOT LIKE THESE SO-CALLED FOOTBALLERS WITH THEIR HAIR AND THE GAY SEXING AND BEING OIKS"

and jonny wilkinson wont get his knighthood just yet.

I am impressed he made it thru a whole tournament without one of his legs falling off.

Given that these things tend to happen for me in weekends, then

-Charlton losing to Wolves
-Worcestershire signing basket-case Simon Jones
-England losing the RWC final

will be followed by a Hamilton cock-up tomorrow.

Just sayin'.

I have to say I think Hamilton has bottler written all over him.

I don't, although if he crashes out of his last two races having needed 6 points from both combined, and having not crashed out once in the preceding season, I may come around to your view.

I'll tell you what Hamilton does have. An almost total lack of arrogance, a professional attitude, a genuine intelligence, and a pleasant demeanour. I'm completely rooting for him. Sure, you can also root for the total bastards, but it's the dull majority in the middle who fail to inspire my backing.

Not a big McLaren fan. And I thought he sounded a bit petulant when he threatened to quit.

Well, fuck, if you'd been through all that, you'd feel pretty fed up too! Admittedly, he himself hasn't been particularly affected (touch wood), but the way McLaren's season has gone to shit is going to have inspired doubts, surely?

We'll see. Obviously there are lots of reasons it would be good for him to win. Anyway, time to get back to lol England.

lol England. Two stupid, stupid penalties to calm SA down at the start. Kicking game needed variation once it was obvious just how dominant SA were at the lineout. Tait was immense (stupid penalty #1 notwithstanding), Corry had a good game on the quiet. I dunno, if you'd offered me semi-finalist before the tournament I'd have takebn it, they've done well to get as far as they have.

Before the next six nations (which really should be seven, caek otm) there'll be a major overhaul anyway, it's the end of the line for a lot of this team. I would imagone a young, mobile side getting horribly gubbed for a year or so and then winding up more than half decent, and hopefully possessing the attacking edge england currently lack.

I'm not sure I agree with the comments about england's style being boring, in attack, absolutely, but the defence has at times been exhlerating (witness Sackey's tackle on Mortlock in the QF). Much has been made of England's lack of try scoring ability, less trumpeted is the fact that they've only conceded one in three games. As for boring, SA outyawned england comprehensively. Best team won on the night maybe, certainly not the best team in the tournament though.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/mihirbose/2007/10/post_3.html

check the 1st user comment after you've read the article.

Oh for fuck's sake.

This is specious nonsense, obviously. Has the commenter been to any rugby league matches? Would he like to suggest to the average St Helens or Warrington fan that he's middle class? When was the last time you heard of crowd trouble at a League international?

Furthermore, the fallacy that Union is a middle class sport is disproved by a visit to any rugby ground south and west of Birmingham. Union is the pre-eminent sport in the South West (outside of the cities), ad as such is the sport also of the "working class" for want of a better label.