Rugby Thread

[BrianM]

But how much longer since Scotland did.......at any sport

Let’s get away from the Scotland / England thing, Scotland were never getting out of their group.

England had a real chance last night and they pretty much blew it, would be fair to say South Africa had their poorest game of the World Cup so far and England probably played to their max ability and they still couldn’t get over the line.
Encouraging signs for England when you note their performances before the World Cup though.

 

[AmandaJR]

England havent had any success for a while now though. It’s been 20 years since they won anything.

Not quite the point I was making but hey ho

 

[Dando]

Anyone else going to be wearing black on Saturday?

 

[AmandaJR]

Anyone else going to be wearing black on Saturday?

100%. Usually I like the idea of losing to the eventual winners but not this time. All Blacks all the way for me

 

[upsidedown]

Anyone else going to be wearing black on Saturday?

Absolutely, lived there for 5.5 years and bought our first house off Greg Sommerville the All Blacks Prop

 

[Captainron]

I’ll be supporting the Boks

 

[babylonsinger]

Disappointing to see ‘home’ nations gloating in England losing by a point but not unexpected.

Plenty going the other way(s) in previous weeks so I'd imagine a few felt the right of reply

I’d be pretty bitter too if I’d been unable to lay a glove on Ireland or lost to a poor Arg side we beat with 14 men.

Swings and roundabouts - Ireland absolutely smashed that SA side that beat the best England could muster last night. You can only beat what's in front of you and none of the home nations did it when it mattered

 

[WGCRider]

World rugby need to sort out the number of medic coming on, it was a joke tonight.
SA are the worst offenders.
May as well give them a laptop rather than a medical bag to bring on.

Ref saw it differently - he spoke to England about it and then told South Africa. When he was talking about it there were no SA water boys on the field but 3 English.

 

[WGCRider]

Rubbish.
Take off your rose tinted glasses and that was a very poor game from two very ordinary teams [on the night]
Around the world TV's would have been turned over long before the end of that bore fest.

On the one hand you turned your TV off other the other 8.7 million people watched according to ITV. More people than have watched anything else this year!

 

[Doon frae Troon]

On the one hand you turned your TV off other the other 8.7 million people watched according to ITV. More people than have watched anything else this year!

Hmmmmmmm..... that's half the population of Istanbul.

 

[WGCRider]

Genge got pinged for this ,look at Koch's position before ball went in
View attachment 50076

Thing with this is - and it's not a great picture - is it's down the ref's interpretation.
What happened before this, as you know, is that Genge had his knee on the ground. The reason he's do that is to get low and try drive the tighthead up. The tighthead's natural counter to this is to fold in. Problem with a tighthead going - and bearing in mind your job is to push against 2 players, you basically have to just stand still - when you go in your scrum loses power. So not often a tighthead goes in - he goes backwards.
The ref will also see or be told that the rest of the south African front row is straight.
So he has to choose does he penalise Genge for being on his knees or the tighthead for an unnatural reaction?

 

[GB72]

Thing with this is - and it's not a great picture - is it's down the ref's interpretation.
What happened before this, as you know, is that Genge had his knee on the ground. The reason he's do that is to get low and try drive the tighthead up. The tighthead's natural counter to this is to fold in. Problem with a tighthead going - and bearing in mind your job is to push against 2 players, you basically have to just stand still - when you go in your scrum loses power. So not often a tighthead goes in - he goes backwards.
The ref will also see or be told that the rest of the south African front row is straight.
So he has to choose does he penalise Genge for being on his knees or the tighthead for an unnatural reaction?

Listening to the various Podcasts that I listen to each week this morning, the pinion is that Genge's knee never went down. Not seen the footage yet to back that up.

 

[WGCRider]

Hmmmmmmm..... that's half the population of Istanbul.

On the one hand your really solid anecdote, on the other ITV saying more people have watched this than anything else this year? So hard to decide whose right.

 

[WGCRider]

Listening to the various Podcasts that I listen to each week this morning, the pinion is that Genge's knee never went down. Not seen the footage yet to back that up.

Don't know how to link videos but on Rugby Reddit there is a thread that shows the scrum from the ref's side. 100% Genge puts his knee down, BUT it's maybe 2 seconds before the ref puts his arm out for advantage. So...
Listen to Flats and Shanks when they do their podcast this afternoon. Don't know what he will say but he's prop so will give a good idea.

 

[GB72]

Don't know how to link videos but on Rugby Reddit there is a thread that shows the scrum from the ref's side. 100% Genge puts his knee down, BUT it's maybe 2 seconds before the ref puts his arm out for advantage. So...
Listen to Flats and Shanks when they do their podcast this afternoon. Don't know what he will say but he's prop so will give a good idea.

I will listen to that one. Only listened to the Eggchasers this morning and they were very much that a knee did not go down. Will try and find some footage later.

 

[WGCRider]

Just watched it again. He does it twice. Only question is why O'Keefe waits before the penalty.
Edit to add: That's not the only question. Another would be why he didn't opt for a reset.

 

[Doon frae Troon]

On the one hand your really solid anecdote, on the other ITV saying more people have watched this than anything else this year? So hard to decide whose right.

On ITV perhaps, but I do not think ITV had worldwide TV rights to the semi final.
If only 8m watched the semi final worldwide coverage I would be extremely surprised

 

[spongebob59]

Just watched it again. He does it twice. Only question is why O'Keefe waits before the penalty.
Edit to add: That's not the only question. Another would be why he didn't opt for a reset.

If the ball wasn't in then it should be a reset especially at such a pivotal moment.

 

[WGCRider]

If the ball wasn't in then it should be a reset especially at such a pivotal moment.

Don't disagree, but don't agree either. But when you add in the fact that the last 2 scrums were clear penalties for green you can understand why the ref made the decision he did.
To quote Robert Kitson in the Guardian:
"Whether or not the last penalty decision was entirely clearcut mattered less than the picture already lodged in the consciousness of Ben O’Keeffe, the referee: an increasingly dominant green-shirted pack with an edge over their toiling adversaries. Fair play, too, to Pollard who initially missed out on selection for this tournament through injury. As with Morné Steyn against the British & Irish Lions in both 2009 and 2021, there was never the slightest sense he was going to miss"

 

[WGCRider]

I see world rugby is looking into this whole Mbonambi/Curry thing. As a bit of a public service to help you draw your own conclusions allow me to share 2 piece of information with you. Also conscious of the forum language rules.

1. C*** is not a commonly used slur in South Africa. It's not like Scotland or Australia where it's basically a greeting. You will be called a Po** or a Do**
2. In Afrikaans the word for side is “kant” it is pronounced exactly the same as c***. So “wit kant” means white side. For more fun if you heard someone shouting “die c***” in Afrikaans it is written as “daai kant” and means “that side”.

So you can now decide for yourself is he shouting an uncommonly used racist slur in his third language or is warning that a ball is available on the other side in the language commonly spoken on the field.