Affentitten

Yeah but you gotta love the Kiwis commenting underneath bringing up Ireland. Still talking about it long after the Paddies are back at home in their tartan rugs.

God. I wish I had as much luck with my ocean fishing as I do with my lures here. BTW, can I go on the record and say "ABs, please go back to the old Hakka. The new versions are dull. Original is best."

Well we have a worried French supporter in my house. Guess I will be supporting France as well, given as I never really found much to like about Welsh people. The NZ-AUS game should be a good match-up, but I fear that it could also be a dour one, with neither side willing to take any risks. I'm betting that the winning points will come from something like an intercept or some other sort of handling error that will be against the run of play.

Given that a RWC squad is 30 men, this allows for plenty of opposed sessions. As the story states, the gripe was about a New Zealander NOT in their official squad being allowed to train with the team and especially in this case it was the use of a player (at the time) thought likely to be brought into the squad at short notice, a luxury that would not be available to other teams and allowing NZ to keep their options open, effectively creating for them a 31-man squad. It's a bit of a loophole and really more of a case of "having your cake and eating it too".

I guess. It's a bit like having a news story along the lines of "Dog eats meat" or "Politician obfuscates the truth".

All Blacks cheating again

Some other stats to muck around with from our discussion earlier about the penchant for 3 pointers: South Africa has won 2 RWCs. But they have never scored a try in either of those finals. In fact in both their finals no tries were scored by either team. England reached the semis in 2007 but only scored 12 tries throughout the competiton, less than even Scotland or Fiji.

Well if we want to go for recent form we can say that the last time we played the AB's we won! I'm not sure if that cancels out the other defeats though! I was fairly confident of beating the Boks because of (a) recent form and ( I think they are consistently over-rated, especially when playing away from SA. I never expected it to be so close though. I'm not sure that the going through the whole thing undefeated is so relevant any more. Partly because it's a no-brainer after the pools. But also when you look back at the relative discrepancies between the top four teams and the also rans in years like 87 and 91, things are a bit more even now. In the eraly RWCs you also had only 3 pool games, which made recovering from a loss more difficult.

More importantly, what implication does this have with GM foods?

I'm not big on those sort of "never won on Tuesday in November" stats. If they always held true, then nothing would ever change. Recent form is far more important. But converting recent form into a RWC is always the All Black's achilles heel!

He makes osme interesting points: ■three of the teams that won their Pools (Ireland, England, South Africa) are heading home. ■three of the teams in the semis (Wales, France, Australia) have lost one (or two) games in this tournament. ■Pool C has no team left in the tournament. ■Pool A has two teams left in the tournament I'd also add the interesting stat that as far as I can work out, NZ have conceded the most tries out of anyone left. Doesn't matter I suppose if you're putting plenty on the boaord yourselves. But the only hope I can cling to is that defence is the one area where gold has it over black.

An Englishman, an Irishman and a South African walk into a bar.....at the airport departure lounge.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. I thought it was a terrible game from us. Disorganised, clueless, kicking when there was no need. We didn't win it. SA lost it. I've had 3 strokes in 40 minutes and pulled all my hair out. I thought BOTH teams were quite hard done by the ref as well. You normally expect a ref might miss a couple of things, but he missed about a dozen, sometimes at game-changing moments.

Hope you didn't put any money down, Jon.

Will Wales have the Torchwood team on their side?

That's right. I'd rather have my eyes plucked out by hot needles than watch that crap!

Let's face it, NZL being beaten by ARG is a fairly unlikely scenario. The other 1/4 finals will be much more even, particularly if France has one of its 'good' days.

Don't forget the ritual sacking of the coach!

Are you sure you can't express any sense of humour once in a while? :confused:

Nah. Props can't run! I'll be drummed out of the second rowers club, but I love it when I see one get the ball and make a break. After about 5 strides you see their head come up and this kind of WTF? look on their face that they haven't been tackled. Then they usually panic. If they get another 10 metres that's when they usually decide that they're now a back and they'll try to do something creative....like dummy (to no-one), goose-step (the wrong way) or chip kick (off the side of the boot).

I think the hookers these days are required to do a lot more than 20 years ago in terms of play making and standing in the back line for plays. Though it's more entertaining watching a second rower trying to pass or receive a ball at full pace!

All bias aside, the comment I made about scrapping for penalties means I think the Wallabies are the only team that can stand in NZ's way. The SA game of late has been set around goal kicking and I just don't see that is an adequate remedy for the NZ back line, which is perhaps the best in the world at converting opportunism to points on the board. You make a mistake against the ABs and you will pay with 7 points.

In my experience usually by your own team!

Faingaa got knocked cold by a head vs knee in the Wallabies vs USA. One of the Samoans I think also took a nasty head and neck blow against the Boks in last ditch defence too. And I recall sitting in the stands with a sick feeling watching the Wallabies against the All Blacks in the 2003 RWC as Ben Darwin's broken neck was being braced following a scrum collision.

The point is though that they won't. Any team who think they can beat the 2011 AB's by scrapping for penalties is unlikely to be left holding the Cup.