Rugby World Cup Schedule and Dates details here
Also, he’s remarkably small for an international player too. Readers of this messageboard might be aware of my representative road cycling background - and in cycling, power to weight ratio is everything. When I was younger, I was lean - really REALLY lean. As the years have gone by, I’ve filled out a bit as a man, that is, I’m stronger in my upper body now naturally and I stand 6’1" and a few years back - I think at the end of 2009 - I was having afternoon tea in my fave little restaurant/cafe at Paradise Point here on the Gold Coast and in walks James O’Connor with his parents and brother - all of whom live at Paradise Point. My point being that I know a bit about athletic performance, and where muscularity exists etc.
We got to talking, and I was heartily impressed with Mr and Mrs O’Connor - truly lovely folks, so young James won’t ever stray too far from the smart path - but more than anything else he was small, and very slight. Since then, he’s bulked up a bit - maybe 5 or 7kg in upper body muscle mass - but he’s still small. Tops, I’d say 5’10", more likely 5’9".
One day somebody huge is gonna nail him big time. There’ll be nothing but two legs with boots on sticking out of the turf, like javelins after they’ve landed.
Interestingly, in terms of alma mater, The Southport School is unusually represented in numbers of former Old Boys in this year’s Australian World Cup squad - I think the number is 4.
Oh I don’t know - they’ll have to catch him first. And it seems to me that small players have a tendency to bounce off the hulking behemoths rather than get broken by them. All in all I kind of like the fact that normal sized human beings still have a place on the rugby field.
Granted, it is nice to see in this modern era of uber pro athletes. Nonetheless, I reckon somebody will line him up - eventually.
My money is on Sonny Bill Williams doing the number on him. SBW knows first hand from his years as a back rower for Canterbury in the NRL what it means to line up your target and smash 'em. It’s just a matter of time I reckon. And this World Cup I reckon SBW is gonna be a wrecking ball - both offensively and defensively.
There may be a parallel with a certain Mr. J. Wilkinson. He too is less than 5’ 10" and was slight as a boy and yet is known almost as much for his driving tackles as he is for his kicking. So who knows how this other youngster will develop, size certainly no guarantee of hitting power and resilience.
( at this point feel free to comment on all that aggressive tackling curtailing his career somewhat, and you’d be right. )
Well the teams are assmbled and we’re only three days out from the first game with New Zealand to open the tournament against Tonga on Friday night (NZ time). Anything less than a 40 point victory will be met with dismay by the New Zealand rugby public, but I think Tonga has the players to at least score a couple of tries so my pick is 53-12 to NZ.
Saturday sees Scotland v Romania; Fiji v Namibia, France v Japan and Argentina v England. The first three games should be fairly predictable, although Scotland might let Romania get close. The last game is the best match up of the first weekend in my opinion. I think Argentina will give England a bit of a fright but lose a close game in the end.
My (somewhat random) score picks Scotland 23 v Romania 15, Fiji v Namibia 45-12; France v Japan 48-6 and Argentina v England 24-27.
Let the games begin!
New Zealand busy cruising past Tonga - 29-3 at the moment after 60 min.
A song to inspire the All Blacks
… don’t that just bring tears to your eyes.
It wound up being a pretty straight forward victory by the scoreboard but I would bet that Graham Henry will want an improvement in precision following the performance against Tonga, particularly in the second half. For the first 40 mins, there were some great skills on show and a desire to finish the moves they started in clinical fashion. It kind of went off the boil a little in the second half - without ever looking like the game was going to be close. Still, they can tinker a little bit and build for the France game - the ABs still look very strong (even with the defeats in the 3N, I still have them down to win this - though perhaps less easily than I previously thought).
Tonga played bloody well in the second half and deserved to score the try they got. I think if they hadn’t been overawed in the first half we might have had a far closer game.
Today the underdogs have been playing well, with Romania and Namibia both leading their games for a bit. Argentina lead England 6-3 at half time, and have missed four penalties. Misses I’m sure they’re going to regret.
Oh and England in black is just wrong, even their numbers are falling off in protest.
I never thought I’d say this (hate rugby) but the Japan-France game was very entertaining!
England scrape home, but not with much to spare. Apparently both sides missed a bunch of penalties. Early days yet, we started slow in 2003…
I am very glad that I chose to work this morning (weeks ago) without realising England would be playing. Judging by the BBC live text, I don’t think I could have coped with watching that. Still, best not to peak too soon! Hopefully will be a wake-up call for how poor discipline really costs you - though goodness knows we have had enough of those. I have said this before, but I think Johnson is behind the “do whatever you can if you think you can get away with it” attitude and we will not lose that until he goes. It worked in his day but refs and touch judges are a lot better at spotting infringements now.
But the referee and touch judge missed a blatant late tackle in the dying seconds as Argentina went all-out for a match-winning try.
Today we have Australia v Italy, Ireland v USA and South Africa v Wales. My guesses:
Australia will ruthlessly crush Italy, and score six tries to win 45-9.
Playing on the tenth anniversary of 9/11 will propel the USA to play out of their skins for the first 60 minutes. only to fade in the last 20 as Ireland’s dominance begins to tell, Ireland 28-17.
South Africa to clinically dispatch Wales, despite Welsh emotion. South Africa 32-18.
Enjoyed NZ v Tonga greatly. I think that it was a pretty good warm-up for the ABs and they will get better from there. I thought both sides would get another try or two though.
Heard that Argentina-England was a pretty good match.
[Oval ball-related Aside] The Warriors were abysmal! Tried to do miracle plays every time they got the ball. I gave it away at 50 minutes. Seriously, They could have put me on and they would have played better - and I’d be learning as I go…
Wales go down by just a single point to the Boks. They had their chances, but their all-time record against South Africa remains at just the one win ever.
Once again, the Bok team improved immensely once the substitutes came on… and just in time to…
Indeedy. Wales may have had a touch of bad luck on one of their penalty attempts, but I don’t believe the ref is allowed to refer goal-kicks upstairs. Too bad, they had their chances and didn’t make them count. (Naturally as an Anglo my only disappointment is that both sides couldn’t lose :D)
“A touch of bad luck,” seems a bit of an understatement, that penalty in the first half was over for sure. Wales were robbed.
We get a break now until Wednesday so here’s my impressions so far:
- no one seems to have told the minor teams that they’re supposed to be outclassed.
- a well-drilled committed defence is very hard to break, until the defenders tire and the gaps start appearing.
- there have been some questionable options taken by some of the teams, captains seem obsessed with taking shots at goal, no matter how marginal, at the expense of kicking to the corners and applying more pressure, I’m looking at you Argentina and Wales.
All in all an entertaining weekend, Wales have gone up in my estimation and England down but I’m sticking to my original predictions.
I’ve caught bits and pieces of this, and I just have to say that rugby is pretty awesome. I’m a football fan, so it’s interesting to see the similarities, though there are things I didn’t quite figure out in the approx 30 mins I’ve been watching. These aren’t so much questions, as the point my brain has gotten to without looking anything up:
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a " try" is a touchdown? It seems it was always worth 3 points, but given the wide-screen image on our non-widescreen TV, we were missing half the scoreboard graphic and it was hard to figure out
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there seems to be something similar to the CFL’s no-yards call; a punt receiver gets to be 5 yards (or whatever distance) away from other players when he catches the ball
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no forward pass; having just watched the Dallas Cowboys fail at a series of reverse passes to try and tie/win an NFL game, it’s rather interesting to see how reliant North American football is on the forward pass…there are some really cool plays happening in rugby!
-what’s to stop the guy with the ball in a [scrum?] from a) just giving the ball to a teammate or b) fucking running and scoring? That is just a bizarre way to start a play; I’m clearly missing something.