Or not
No, but Ireland weren’t firing on all cylinders there and one cut-out pass for Italy draws the game. I’m sure they weren’t wanting for there to be only one score in it.
They would have preferred a bonus point as well but really that is academic as the game against France next weekend is the killer. Both will want to top the group and avoid NZ.
For the (unwilling) neutral, it is shaping up rather nicely for the quarters. If it all goes to plan we’ll have
Aus v Scotland
Wales v RSA
NZ v France
Ire v Argentina
Not a bad match amongst those.
Yep should be a good set of 1/4 finals. If it is IRE vs Arg I am hopping Ireland can repeat that pretty lackluster performance.
I had to avoid opening this thread yesterday and this morning, until i could sit down and watch the Australia-England game. Had to keep away from online scores as well, although if you stick to American websites that’s trivially easy to do. 
Very happy with the Wallabies’ win over England. I thought they looked good in most key areas. They allowed England a few too many line breaks, especially in the first half, but the defense nearly always recovered and held.
The Aussie forwards also need to do a better job of protecting the scrum half when he’s kicking from behind the ruck and maul. The English got in a few nice charge-downs today, at times when Australia was looking to kick out of danger.
The passing and the phase play was generally strong, although there were some stray backline passes that cost them at times. About half-way through the second half, they were on the attack inside the England 22, and managed to lose about 30 metres in two plays with some bad passing, with England kicking through to regain the ball and then winning a penalty to bring the score back to 20-13.
With Australia and Wales both through now, it will be interesting to see how the quarterfinals line up. Despite their loss to Japan, South Africa have been gathering steam and look certain to top Pool B, because they’re going to beat the United States, and will likely take a bonus point out of the game as well. That leaves the loser of the Wales-Australia game playing the Springboks, and the winner probably playing Scotland.
I think and hope that the Wallabies can take Wales, but there are no easy games from here on.
Not heard too many voices in support of keeping Lancaster on - you seriously want him to stay? He seems like a good developmental coach, a manager, but he’s miles out of his depth coaching elite players for game day.
It’s true that England lack that core of world class players that can win world cups, so it’s not like it’s been a missed opportunity to win the thing. But he’s had 4 years, won zero 6nations, and the team is absolutely miles away.
Hard to say whether Robshaw should be captain - he’s fine playing at this level [although he did nowt at the weekend], but doesn’t have the obvious leadership qualities you see in most RU captains. Bit of an intangible thing to try and judge, but I’d settle for binning him off along with Lancaster just on general principles of failure.
I think in general, sports team managers (especially football but it seems to be creeping into international rugby as well) are changed too often. Usually it results in a short-term boost to performance but no real long-term advantage. I’m not well-qualified enough to say if he should stay or go, but my position is that he has not had a chance to prove if he is good at “coaching elite players for game day” because he hasn’t had enough elite players to work with. In addition, all the rhetoric for the last couple of years has been about his contract lasting until the next World Cup (I think - certainly it’s for at least two more years) and he is building a team for the future. I think he and the team (and the RFU) knew they weren’t in the running for this tournament, they were obviously hoping for a bit of magic on the day and/or home support seeing them through and in the end that didn’t happen. Of course, they were also fucked by the pool draw - I know I’m about 3 years late on this one but I was going to ask how that happened until I found this helpful article which explains it all very clearly. Had England been in New Zealand’s group they would have qualified in second place comfortably I think, Argentinian heroics notwithstanding.
So in summary I think having a “development coach” is no bad thing at the moment. I also think it’s a little harsh to say they are “miles away” - they’re certainly close to winning a Six Nations, and in four years’ time, who knows? Scotland looked “miles away” 18 months ago and now they’re genuinely competitive, if they cut out the errors they might even pull off a shock QF victory. Whereas Italy looked good at around the same time and are now poor. Not to mention Japan.
One other factor - failure gives you the experience you need to succeed in the future. It’s been a disappointing World Cup for England but why do we always have to have a scapegoat?
Well said Deceased Feline.
There are numerous examples of outstanding coaches getting fired when the simple fact of the matter is the players they have to mold simply haven’t been good enough. Given time they might get there but blaming the coach is shallow.
I’ve spoken with a couple of experienced international players.
They point out:
- Robshaw is not a natural openside flanker (no. 7)
- Australia had two world-class openside flankers (Hooper and Pocock), replacing their usual no .8
- England’s best openside flanker is Stefan Armitage, who wasn’t considered because he plays his club rugby abroad (in France)
- Australia picked the classy centre Matt Giteau, even though he plays abroad
So England should have paid more attention to the breakdown and picked a back row to deal with it (especially against Australia.)
Hooper and Pocock had fantastic games. Hooper, however, now has to face a hearing for his ill-advised charge into a ruck in the first half of the game.
Nick Bloody Phipps. He has a tendency to fling the ball without looking where he is passing. He does it all the time and that could have been disastrous for Australia.
The Hooper, Fardy, Pocock combination (or the Hardcock, if you will) is going very well, although I don’t think we’ll lose too much with McMahon probably coming in if Hooper is rubbed out.
His injuries aside, Pocock is going to go down among Australia’s greatest flankers - Poideven, Wilson, Smith etc.
Just coming back to say that Shane Williams (again!) agreed with me in yesterday’s Metro. I’m beginning to think he doesn’t know much about the game :).
The first half of the Namibia - Georgia game tonight lasted 68 minutes, somehow.
Looks like it ended up a thriller though - 17-16 to Georgia.
At the end it was two exhausted teams just going on on deep reserves, but it was Namibia’s first ever point at the WC, so yay. I’ve still not figured out what happened in the first half, which I didn’t see. Something about uncontested scrums because some props were either injured or sin-binned?
Judging by this minute-by minute reportthere was a series of penalties near the Namibian try line, with Georgia opting for scrum after scrum to go for the try. Add in a couple of yellow cards and TMO referrals as well.
Well, looks like that loss to Japan was quite a wake-up call for SA, so possibly it was a good thing overall. Poor USA.
Habana looks to be on track for top try scorer at the RWC…
Did a quick dip into the stats for this RWC to see if there is any evidence that the gap is closing between the tiers of teams.
In terms of average points difference per game for the pool games (this is for all games between all teams)
2003 36
2007 30
2011 28
2015 24 (with some games still to complete)
In terms of the average for/against points of the top two from each group
2003 132
2007 112
2011 110
2015 78 (with some games still to complete)
In terms of total points scored by the top two in each group
2003 1573
2007 1382
2011 1245
2015 970 (with some games still to complete)
Now whether these are the best metrics to calculate I don’t know, but I do suggest that it shows two things.
a) I am putting off doing some real work
b) there does appear to be a trend here, the teams are getting closer and that can only be a healthy sign for the game in general.
Thanks Novelty Bobble, but I am yet to be convinced it changes me that they may as well call it the All Black Cup right now.
I just don’t know. Looking at the big three you could say that NZ have looked as good as we expected. Aus and RSA look* better* than expected.
As I’m now a neutral in this I’m just hoping that the potential clashes match up to their billing regardless of who wins the thing (though I suspect I’ll be cheering on Ireland most loudly)
Can I bribe you to cheer for Australia? ( A six pack?)
Australia have done well. RSA getting beaten by Japan was probably just a blip. The difficulty is aligning the polls until they start playing each other. Also, if they have drawn difficult pools, how battered they are just getting through.