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Rugby World Cup 2007

Infinite Jest said:
Damn, turned on at 19-13 with Tonga playing well, few minutes later England had scored twice and it's all over :(

Same with me. I think their fitness was a big factor but they definitely played with spirit.

I really hope NZ and Australia play more tests against a Pacific Island team in the future.

Oh yeah, well done to Johnny Dropgoal! Nothing like hammering home the advantage with a drop goal when you're 3 try's ahead. :\

Ok, off to the pub to watch the gayFL grand final and warm up for some Kiwi and Aussie whitewashes!!!:D
 
Fiji look on course for the biggest shock of the tournament.

They lead Wales by 25 - 3 after half an hour!!
 
What a fucking game:D

Well done Fiji - thought they were dead and buried ten minutes into the second half but the pulled it off!

Game of the tournament, without a doubt.
 
Chaos Butterfly said:
On a related note, I had a conversation with an English guy while playing Facebook poker last night about Johnny Wilkinson... he was trying to convince me that lil' Johnny was the best flyhalf the world has ever seen.

I replied that, yes he is a good kicker, but he can't read the play anywhere NEAR as well as Dan Carter or Stephen Larkham... but him being English refused to listen to irrefutable logic.

Ahhh, the blinkered English sportsfan! In 2003 Wilkinson was, most would agree, the best flyhalf in the world, or at least the most influential. But as IJ points out, Dan Carter's performance in the second Lions test in 2005 was perfection. He's definitely raised the bar for everyone else.

Anyway, Wales v Fiji was one of the best games of rugby that I've ever seen. An absolute classic. Well done Fiji! The Pacific Islanders have really lit up this World Cup.
 
Mofo: I thought I'd be getting up and watching Wales-Fiji. Thanks to Daylight Saving, I missed it :(.
 
Faces of delight, or in the islands they call it - Kum Facah!

fatty230.jpg


Well done Fiji!!!
 
Top stuff fiji!!

Simon, I've PM'd you about the facebook thingy...

I'll try and find you, but may not...

CB :)
 
well done fiji... top game, we were leaping about. so glad to see one of the pacific island teams making it through, since their rugby (collectively) has been exciting. i'm not sure south africa will worry much though since fiji are missing nicky little.

did anyone see RSA vs USA? although ultimately i want the bokke to win i was still cheering heartily for the americans... which was a first ;) it was fucking excellent to see them playing for, and scoring, tries. top stuff. and that zimbabwean guy... all the talk about habana's speed and he literally blew him the fuck away. awesome!

can't wait for next weekend :D
 
Saw bits and pieces of SA-US this morning. The Americans definitely had some good moments, they looked quite professional. (And at least they scored more points against SA than England did =D).

We really need some kind of Pacific tournament, bringing in the islands, US, Argentina, Japan and maybe Canada, plus the Australian/NZ second teams (or NZ Maori maybe). No point in those teams playing the All Blacks all the time, but would be great to give them a regular game against our second string teams, and hopefully they'd improve a lot.
 
always great to see Bryan Habana burnt for speed.

Always great, because it pretty much NEVER happens.

Top stuff that guy!!
 
This blog is interesting. It talks about some interesting stats on the World Cup, but more importantly about the All Blacks poor stats (see the "God is in the numbers" section).

For example, we've got the worst handling error percentage, one of the worst scrums and one of the worst lineouts. The only positives are our try scoring ratio and the turnovers. An interesting read anyway.

Things could get much closer than we think.

Game on tomorrow night! Go Aussie, and go NZ!
 
I think I used to play touch with one of the guys who writes that. He's going to be my MP in a few years (maybe even next year).

I'm hoping that we're building towards the knockout stages and peaking at the right time. Like the Aussies always do in cricket tournaments.
 
I am going to hunt down and kill that referee.

By my count, France scored three legitimate points - their first penalty.
Second penalty: non-existent foul by McAlistair.
First try: scored while McAlistair was wrongly sinbinned.
Second try: apparently the rule against forward passes was suspended for the time it took France to score this try.

French defence was magnificent, but they got a hell of a lot of help from the officials.

I can't believe the ABs didn't try for a dropped goal, though. All that time to set one up, right in front of the posts, when they finally do it, it's from halfway.

Sigh. Good luck to France for the rest of the tournament. Would be good to see someone new win.
 
Obviously that was already in there however now it's in 20 point font, bold and underlined.
 
Infinite Jest said:
I am going to hunt down and kill that referee.

By my count, France scored three legitimate points - their first penalty.
Second penalty: non-existent foul by McAlistair.
First try: scored while McAlistair was wrongly sinbinned.
Second try: apparently the rule against forward passes was suspended for the time it took France to score this try.

French defence was magnificent, but they got a hell of a lot of help from the officials.

I can't believe the ABs didn't try for a dropped goal, though. All that time to set one up, right in front of the posts, when they finally do it, it's from halfway.

Sigh. Good luck to France for the rest of the tournament. Would be good to see someone new win.

I was going to blame the ref (he was awful), however we simply didn't deliver.

What was with our kicking??? I reckon Carter kicked 3 balls out and missed with 20.

And what was with advantage over when we kicked that drop goal?? FAAARRRK.
 
Carter was injured though, wasn't he? Before he went off, even?

Yeah, we did make some bad errors, too many dropped passes and knock ons (and if you remember, their winning try came when we'd been on attack, and had tried a fancy pass and knocked it on).

I'm also surprised we didn't trust our backs to run with the ball a bit more. Seemed like we wanted to make every attack last 20 phases.

Two ambulances have gone past me in the last 10 minutes; I'm wondering if people are having heart attacks, or punching each other out :(
 
^Suicide maybe?

Who know's what the idea behind the pick and drives were. We needed to mix it up more and yes, back the backs.

I so very very disappointed.... :(
 
Chaos Butterfly said:
Will be good to smash the English in the quarters :)

Will it now........ :)

Fuck me, what a day!

Did anyone give England a chance against the Wallabies? I know I certainly didn't, but today came close to the final in Sydney 4 years ago for sheer nail-biting tension, & I'm still in a state of disbelief that we actually managed to do it.

As I said in the 1st post of this thread, I always suspected that the Aussie front row would be their undoing, & so it proved today. They got absolutely hammered in the scrum & at the breakdown, & the English front 5 were immense. Not pretty by any stretch of the imagination, but as gritty World Cup performances go that was a well deserved victory. I'm just still expecting to wake up tomorrow & for it all to be a cruel dream.

As a (kind of) neutral, the France v New Zealand game was amazing. It had classic written all over it.

I agree that the All Blacks got some pretty shoddy refereeing decisions against them, but even so, they didn't deserve to win. The French defense was superb, but I was shocked at the Kiwi decision-making & combinations that just didn't seem to function properly. Carter going off after 50 minutes or so was a big, big blow, I feel. You would've backed him to take the drop-goal when it was needed.

An England v France semi-final? Never would've predicted that before today, but it's going to be an awesome occasion. I can't wait.
 
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