OT - Rugby World Cup

[Baron Grazic]

G'Day Oleg,
I am waiting to see how happy you will be when the Ozzies beat the English team in the finial.

[Alneyan]

Originally posted by Baron Grazic:
G'Day Oleg,
I am waiting to see how happy you will be when the Ozzies beat the English team in the finial.

We will see, I have yet to decipher the tides of time to see what is the result of this match. The result is not as obvious as in the case of England - France. *Smirks* A close victory for England, that is my own bet.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Growltigger:
Englandddd Engalllaannd Enggaaallaanndddd

Sings (with hand gestures) "Swing Loooooooooo, sweet charrrrriootttttttt, cummin' 4-2 carry me hoooommmmmmeee"

Patriotic issue aside, I don't understand your exitment This English team is a sham. They play football, not rugby. No courage and no ability to carry the ball over the the line. For what I care, England lost 1:3 to Wales in quaters and 0:1 to France. If England beat Wallabies in the same fasion, I'll give up on Rugby Union and watch American Football. At least they flash that part of the human body.

[Baron Grazic]

Oleg hit the nail on the head on what people are saying over here. Why even attempt for a 'try' when you can just kick the ball and win the match?

I'll stick with my AFL if that is the case.

[Growltigger]

Englandddd Engalllaannd Enggaaallaanndddd

Sings (with hand gestures) "Swing Loooooooooo, sweet charrrrriootttttttt, cummin' 4-2 carry me hoooommmmmmeee"

Yippee, Les Bleus are now Les Cocks and are on their way home due to the English ability to play tactical rugby in a monsoon. I bet Michalak feels a mighty bit narked at the moment.

Seriously, good game and good to see the English simple cummin at'cha and grinding the French down.

But as for Mr Dominici, cheating rascal trying to hit Billy Whizz like that - not simple the done thing you know.

As for the Aussie/Kiwi bash, the Aussies upped their game when they needed to, came on like a freight train and on that performance, would have taken out ANY team in the competition. The kiwis couldn't get into it, but hey ho, the Kiwi/French game on Thursday will be a corker, as both teams have pride to play for.

As to the final, dunno. The Wallabies looked awesome, but they took a lot of injuries to get that victory. I hear the bookies are currently making England 7/4 favourites to win.

I think we will win, it will be close and a visciously physical game, but at the end of the day, English experience and defensive solidness will win the day.

[Growltigger]

Oleg and Baron Grazic, you play the game whatever that game will be.

The French game is not a case in point, as if you have ever played rugby union, you will know that you cant play a running game in a monsoon. You gott a play for the kicking game and that is what the boys did.

As for the kicking of Mr Wilkinson, it is an asset we have, and that is what we have used in some desparate matches.

Why is no one criticising the French given that is what exactly Michalak has been doing all tournament?? even more so than Mr Wilkinson!!

As for the passing game, that has been developing, but the English have faced some unexpectedly strong defences so have had to resort to other matters to break through.

Anything else is sour grapes?

I will not even comment on what I think of the Australian media's impartial reporting on the world cup. Read the French media, they are full of praise for England throughout the competition, even Eddie Jones has been saying how well England have been playing in their respective games.

We will wait and see what happens on Saturday.

[Growltigger]

Oleg and Baron Grazic,

A few facts to enlighten you. I was reading the paper this morning and an interesting fact came out, following on from the Australian media's repeated denounciation of English rugby for being boring because of our reliance on kicking, and that we score too few tries.

The article was interesting, the author had undertaken research at the Last two year's data, and the result was that England have scored more tries per game on average than Australia, and a higher percentage of English points have been as a result of tries.

Hmmm, may be the Aussie media should just shut up!

[oleg]

Sure, the one and the only objective is to win the game. Nobody argues with it. But may be we should consider some changes to the rules to make game more exciting ? I have nothing against drop-goals, it is a pleuforia of penalties I don't like. Scoring points should be something more challenging than kikick the ball after some minor infringement in the scrum !! Why not move the scrum 5 yards forward, something akin to American football rules ? Or award more free kicks ? It is just a profanity of the game when all the scoring is due to referee desisions and not by teams. Just MHO.

[Growltigger]

I dont disagree with you Oleg but I think penalty decisions like moving the scrum forward 5 yards will favour those teams with powerful scrums.

My personal view is that you need the penalty kick in order to incentivise teams not to foul, but what you should do, IMHO, is make tries worth a lot more than 5 points, maybe 8 or 9 points and conVersion worth 3.

Tries then become paramount, and you would need an awful lot of infringements to make it match.

I think drop goals should be worth 4 points as having played the game for years, I know how damn hard they are to do, when the opposing team is doing its best to slam you down. Kicking straight under that sort of pressure is TOUGH with a capital OUCH

[oleg]

Well, but decreasing the penalty or increasing try score will have exactly the opposite effect - bigger insentive to foul to stop the try ! But if the foul will NOT remove the possiblity of try but make it even more likely, that may work. That why I like the idea of moving the ball.