Affentitten

Yes many of those tackles would be classed as foul in rugby, where you have to make an attempt to hold the player rather than just shoulder charging him to knock him down. (Which is pointless in the game anyway because if the player is not held he can just get up and keep going.)

Be interesting to see how the ABs do without Carter. I suspect they will have the depth to make up for it though. Whereas Australia will be scrambling again after losing Mitchell yesterday. Nothing worse than seeing a player in any sport suddenly go into that back thigh clutching hop. I saw that one bookmaker here had Israel Dagg at $15.00 to be leading try scorer of the tournament. Thought that was well worth a punt.

I've also heard the same argument about boxing: if we returned to bare knuckles, guys wouldn't be able to hit each other so hard. But not knowing anything about the sport I can't comment on that one. We've also seen a huge increase in the amount of protection worn by cricketers over the last 20 years. These days they look like medieval knights. But as far as I can see there hasn't been any attendant increase in bowling speed....not to the same degree. I see 8 year olds wearing full helmets and padding when all they're facing is another eight year old with a soft style ball. Not sure I approve because I think it teaches them too much fear! Gone are the days of my youth when you would play even at teenage level with one pad on the leading leg and sometimes without gloves if you'd left them at home.

It's an arms race, really. You need the armour because the other guy has it, which allows him to hit you harder, generating techniques that require protection... I think the tackles in NFL are MUCH heavier and much less controlled in terms of which direction they come from and how many players involved. I'd also dispute the article above thats ays AFL is a similarly rough sport. AFL tackles are generally fairly low speed, must occur from in front only and are mainly aimed at pinning the player to the ground. The collisions that cause injury in the game are more commonly caused by bunches of players colliding when they are scrambling to grab a looose ball. I'd say rugby league had more in common with NFL, as does the ruck clear out aspect of rugby union.

Yes but again that Northern hemisphere thing of just trying to outplay each other for 3 pointers.

I'd just point out that the reason the wage is that high is because the outgoings are too. In the mining areas you can end up paying over $1000 a week to live in a caravan and $100 for a slab of beer. The jobs in Perth they mention are for crane drivers etc, which have always been high on the union pay hierarchy. But don't any of you think you can turn up there and get a job on a crane. Not unless your grandad and dad are good union men.

The AFL and NRL finals are on this weekend. Hopefully when they're out of the way we will see some of the RWC knock-out rounds.

Here Channel 9 bought the rights just so nobody else could. Then they are not bothering to show the games, especially down here in Victoria. Rugby or a 5 year old episode of Everybody Loves Raymond? For Channel 9, the choice is clear. I'm managing to watch the games online via some proxy of an Argentinian TV feed.

Just a Q for the Kiwis: are you getting the games live on free-to-air TV? Or delayed? It's just about impossible to get to see any of the games free to air here. Even the Wallabies matches are often not shown until the small hours of the morning, let alone anything else.

Geez. If they're calling that penalty fest "one of the best games in rugby history" you can seriously say that the writer is a total rugby dunce. And for the record, I think the 2003 final was one of the best games in rugby history, and we were beaten by a bitter rival in it.

He was correcting my typo. I don't mind.

I think it's really a case of proportion. The majority of the Australian population don't even know that the RWC is on, let alone who is in it. Whereas for NZ, it's the one thing they get to crow about so it's much more life and death for them. Hence the juvenile"I support two teams: NZ and anyone playing Australia" syndrome. Having said that, I do think that having you and the kids spat on at the game is taking things a bit too far. And I NZ were playing England or South Africa, I would definitely cheer for the ABs.

I think the difference between the cases as well though is that the ones SO highlights are retarded rednecks abusing players. (Or players abusing each other.) The issue with the AB supporters I linked to was involving abuse of fellow fans, including those with children. It reflects my own experiences watching rugby in Auckland.

I was just fishing around in my Excel RWC sheet and putting in some hypothetical scores. Seems the main beneficiary of the Australian loss to Ireland is going to be England, who are likely to face France and Ireland on their route to the final instead of Australia in the quarters). The Ireland-Italy game is going to be crucial since so many permutations hang on the result and bonus points. Plus it's the last game of the pools so everything will go down to the wire. Also important is how many points Australia and Ireland can smash onto Russia, since there is the possibility if Ireland loses to Italy, that points for and against will decide who goes through of those two.

Kiwi fans up to their usual tricks

Ooops! Misread a zero! I read 63,200 for SA when I checked the IRB site. Note that the picture I painted as far as the rugby being dominated by Polynesians is much more exagerrated here in Victoria where rugby has always been a minor sport yet there is also a high rate of immigration from NZ. As the father of a girl who plays rugby it's interesting that on the IRB site, the ARU lists us as having zero young female players. I guess because there is no official comp for that so all registered players are effectively genderless.

I fear that Australian rugby will only dwindle from here. Either that or the whole team will continue to be made up of Polynesian imports. It's lost the battle to AFL and the bubble wrap generation here are all in intensive soccer coaching clinics. We're currently running at about 2/3 of the number of registered players as NZ. South Africa even has less than us and I suspect that our numbers have been swelled by immigration from there as it is. Both my kids play, though my daughter will have to stop soon under the rules (and I think it will get too tough for her anyway). It's really nice at our club. Like the Tri-Nations plus the Six Nations. But here in Victoria I would say that about 80 - 90% of players are Maori / Poly and some clubs exclusively so (though they always need halfbacks :-) )

What's clear is that the pool games are no longer the formalities they used to be. France did it tough there against a Canada who were probably playing the game of their lives. And both the tries for the main part of the game were pretty much the rugby league style bomb kick and hope the other team makes an error. There is still the possibility that the Italians could beat Ireland. The last time they played (Feb 2011) the Irish only scraped home by a last minute drop goal. The Fiji v Samoa game should be a cracker and the ARG v SCO match will be do or die for the group of death.

I wouldn't say it was a good game from Ireland. They managed to negate some of the Australian tactics but they weren't that brilliant themselves. They never looked close to scoring a try. It was just the Wallabies were dreadful. A team at that level should be able to adapt to losing players at short notice and they obviously couldn't get over it.

Also known as beer goggles!

He was talking to the FAC about some targets near where some friendly arty was landing. Then he kept being badgered by his wingman about some other vehicles elsewhere....a completely different gridref on a different side of a canal. After some other exchanges of info about the initial target he asked the FAC to confirm if there were any friendlies operating "there". The pilot meant the 'other area' but the FAC (having not been privvy to the leader-wingman chat) assumed he was still talking about the initial target and said there were certainly no friendlies THERE. Then the A-10s roll in on the Brits in the other grid. The scenario fullfilment there was with the wingman. He straight away noticed the orange recognition panels on the friendlies but somehow ignored the possibility they could be friendly. They became "some sort of orange rockets".

OMG!!! European states giving up aspects of their sovereignty for collective benefit? When did this start happening? Oh. 1952 apparently.

Yes confirmation bias sounds exactly like what I was after, thanks. I'm writing a lecture on COIN and Counter-terrorism and mentioning some of the arguments for and against torture.

I'm looking for the technical phrase for when you construct a 'reality' about a target based upon what you *expect* to see, thus leading to an erroneous perception. So like the the A-10 pilot is looking for Iraqi APCs and shoots up some British ones, ignoring all evidence as to their real identity. Could also be appropriate in falsely ID-ing terrorist suspects and threats. Is their a psych-term for this?

Part of the issue here in Australia too was that Wikileaks had pre-released much of the information to the Fairfax media group and they were sitting on a lot of it and releasing it when commercially opportune.