The Rugby Union Thread

[Comrade 86]

Argh! They're going to do it again, aren't they? The Boks will roll right over us, then do to the Kiwis what they did immediately before the tourney. They are absolutely brutal in the contact and there's nobody left who can even remotely match them up front. The bomb squad does its work again 😵

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

9 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

Argh! They're going to do it again, aren't they? The Boks will roll right over us, then do to the Kiwis what they did immediately before the tourney. They are absolutely brutal in the contact and there's nobody left who can even remotely match them up front. The bomb squad does its work again 😵

I expected they would.  I also expected Ireland to be there as well.  I think they would have been if they didn't get such a penalty happy ref at the scrum and had started taking shorter lineouts from the off.

[cstand]

14 hours ago, cstand said:

Great game feel sorry for Fiji hit the posts twice with penalties. 

 

Changed my mind after watching South Africa beat France feel sorry for England instead. 😀

[RadioactiveWaste]

Something came up in discussion last night and I'm wondering if anyone on the forum who plays/played can confirm.

One of my uni housemates was a player at a local club in Swansea and he always said the most important thing in rugby is after you decide if you're a forward or a back, you then must dedicated your life to taking the utter never ending piss out of the other.

Is that right? Is taking the Mick out the forwards/backs (delete as appropriate) the most sacred dudy of rugby?

Also, as a chonky not rugby player, I do love it when one of the fatties gets to have a try. We saw a few over the weekend.

[Comrade 86]

52 minutes ago, RadioactiveWaste said:

Something came up in discussion last night and I'm wondering if anyone on the forum who plays/played can confirm.

One of my uni housemates was a player at a local club in Swansea and he always said the most important thing in rugby is after you decide if you're a forward or a back, you then must dedicated your life to taking the utter never ending piss out of the other.

Is that right? Is taking the Mick out the forwards/backs (delete as appropriate) the most sacred dudy of rugby?

Also, as a chonky not rugby player, I do love it when one of the fatties gets to have a try. We saw a few over the weekend.

I can confirm that the fat lads (forwards) relentlessly take the piss out of the backs, or girls as they are known, especially the likes of Rees-Zaamit who feel the need to shave their legs and everything else for the benefit of their female audience.

As an  ex 10/15 myself, I can also confirm that the backs will give plenty back, pointing out that the forwards are slower than molasses and have the ball-handling skills of a common house brick. The forwards always win the banter battles though because they are typically massive, ugly, thick and extremely short-tempered and violent and therefore not to be messed with too much.

Edited October 16, 2023 by Comrade 86
family site ;)

[Ram-Alf]

13 hours ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:

I expected they would.  I also expected Ireland to be there as well.  I think they would have been if they didn't get such a penalty happy ref at the scrum and had started taking shorter lineouts from the off.

I was surprised to read after that Gatland in the Wales/Argentina match complained about the English ref, Oh I thought here we go...more England bashing, But no, It was that they knew how Jaco Peyper ran the game so knew what they could and couldn't get away with in the scrum, Homework on refs looks to be a must 👍

[Comrade 86]

Well the bomb squad did their job and it appears that rather than address SA's predilection for a bench full of 120 KG props, other sides have simply hoped the issue would go away. Big mistake.

France really should have put them away, but you have to (grudgingly) respect the Boks and their willingness to put everything on the line. It's not pretty to watch them strangling teams to death, but I do think that the two best sides in rugby have both managed to underperform when it really mattered, if only marginally. Sadly, that's all the likes of SA and the Kiwis need.

I remain mystified by the calls from the bunker and quite why South Africa were allowed to stand offside all game when out of possession. Behind the rear foot is pretty unequivocal and you'd expect a competent ref to be all over it as It's easy to display blinding line speed if you give yourself a 3 yard head start. Also, I lost count of how many times SA closed off the ball at the break down.

Ah well, you play to the ref I suppose and the Boks had done their homework better than the French. Sorry to say, but they'll beat the Kiwis comfortably in the final, with our lot mere cannon fodder en route.

Ah well. C'est la vie! 

 

[RadioactiveWaste]

17 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

I can confirm that the fat lads (forwards) relentlessly take the piss out of the backs, or girls as they are known, especially the likes of Rees-Zaamit who feel the need to shave their legs and everything else for the benefit of their female audience.

As an  ex 10/15 myself, I can also confirm that the backs will give plenty back, pointing out that the forwards are slower than molasses and have the ball-handling skills of a common house brick. The forwards always win the banter battles though because they are typically massive, ugly, thick and extremely short-tempered and violent and therefore not to be messed with too much.

The age old wisdom of never debate with stupid people, they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience would seem to have some application.

The description that most amused me in the discussion last night was along the line of "the forwards are just having a little cuddle and whispering to each other about which of the backs at their club they hate the most"

My rugby experience amounted to "all the other other boys in my year have grown massive and I haven't, so I respectuflly disagree with the PE teacher's assessment that I should be a prop and thus I recuse myself from further participation in all PE lessons" exept delived as a teenaged tantrum followed by skiving all PE lessons.

My rugby playing housmeate on the other hand lamented "Im a full back and my club has 4 full backs and no wings so I've played on the wing all season and been on the end of one f-king overlap" he was also very, very, very Welsh and at the time the Wales side was very, very bad (much to the amusment of the entire house)

[Comrade 86]

3 minutes ago, The Last Post said:

Homework on refs looks to be a must 

The Kiwis worked this out decades back and played on the limit brilliantly. Richie McCaw much?

[Ram-Alf]

25 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

The forwards always win the banter battles though because they are typically massive, ugly, thick and extremely short-tempered and violent and therefore not to be messed with too much.

Sorry names not known, But last night the French forward...Huge mother fecker steamrolled the Boks number 11 in the 22, The commentator said said it was like pushing a schoolboy over 😁

I thought it was game set and match in the 1st 8/9mins France was like a runaway train...unstoppable, But the Boks got the try at 7-0, 1st time i've ever seen in Rugby where the Boks caught a kick in his 22 and decided to go for a scrum rather than kick it back, They won the scrum and got a penalty from it...I'm always learning this wonderful game 👍  

[Comrade 86]

6 minutes ago, The Last Post said:

Sorry names not known, But last night the French forward...Huge mother fecker steamrolled the Boks number 11 in the 22, The commentator said said it was like pushing a schoolboy over 😁

I thought it was game set and match in the 1st 8/9mins France was like a runaway train...unstoppable, But the Boks got the try at 7-0, 1st time i've ever seen in Rugby where the Boks caught a kick in his 22 and decided to go for a scrum rather than kick it back, They won the scrum and got a penalty from it...I'm always learning this wonderful game 👍  

The moment you step on the field you have to accept that you're going to get hurt. Most often not badly, but the morning after you'll be in pain. It's a heavy-contact sport and the little lads need to be brave, even if they are mere human speed bumps.

We used to play the Army once a year when I was at school and it was borderline farcical. The scoreline would show that we mullered them every season, but in-game, they literally kicked the f*** out of us. Grown men intent on bashing up lads as young as 17. Made me lose respect for them tbh, but we'd walk off the pitch each time, hiding the damage they'd done and showing the feckers nothing. That's rugby. To play at any kind of level, you have to be a tad mad.

[Ram-Alf]

5 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

The moment you step on the field you have to accept that you're going to get hurt. Most often not badly, but the morning after you'll be in pain. It's a heavy-contact sport and the little lads need to be brave, even if they are mere human speed bumps.

We used to play the Army once a year when I was at school and it was borderline farcical. The scoreline would show that we mullered them every season, but in-game, they literally kicked the f*** out of us. Grown men intent on bashing up lads as young as 17. Made me lose respect for them tbh, but we'd walk off the pitch each time, hiding the damage they'd done and showing the feckers nothing. That's rugby. To play at any kind of level, you have to be a tad mad.

My school was a football school...Olive Eden in Chaddesden, Then it changed to Lees Brook after I left in 1972, They had a PE Teacher(John Goulding)who was into Rugby so the pupils started to play the game, Leesbrook Rugby club was then formed and became a pretty decent team in the amateur game, I knew some of them in the 90s, I then went on to watch Derby Rugby when they played at Haslams Lane, A great set up with all the facilities there, Not been for a good few years now.

In my day I weighed in at 18 stone and would have loved to have played the game, And being a forward in the scrum I would have fitted the bill perfectly but not so thick and I could run 😉 I worked the doors in Derby City centre in the 80s where being big was an advantage...at times.  

[Comrade 86]

1 hour ago, The Last Post said:

My school was a football school...Olive Eden in Chaddesden, Then it changed to Lees Brook after I left in 1972, They had a PE Teacher(John Goulding)who was into Rugby so the pupils started to play the game, Leesbrook Rugby club was then formed and became a pretty decent team in the amateur game, I knew some of them in the 90s, I then went on to watch Derby Rugby when they played at Haslams Lane, A great set up with all the facilities there, Not been for a good few years now.

In my day I weighed in at 18 stone and would have loved to have played the game, And being a forward in the scrum I would have fitted the bill perfectly but not so thick and I could run 😉 I worked the doors in Derby City centre in the 80s where being big was an advantage...at times.  

It's a game for all shapes and sizes, that's the beauty of it, but whatever your build, you must have heart. I had heart, was quick and had a boot on me, but I was 11 stone wringing wet, which as you level up becomes a bigger and bigger issue. It took forever to put weight on and by then I'd taking a few too many kickings! My poor mum absolutely hated the game on account of my injury record!

With those experiences in mind, watching 100 KG+++ units run @11 seconds on grass is great fun as a fan, but bloomin terrifying as a participant. Forwards these days are humongous and not just the odd one, all of them and scarier still, some can actually run. They say the collisions endured these days are comparable to those experienced in a car crash. Like I say, you have to be a little mad when you actually think about it, which rugby players literally never do until they get hurt. I love the game, but when I see the contacts being made today I feel happier in the stands sharing a hip flask of single malt with the lad. Much safer and no pain, nor plaster casts the next day either 🙂 

Edited October 16, 2023 by Comrade 86

[BucksRam]

3 hours ago, Comrade 86 said:

It's a game for all shapes and sizes, that's the beauty of it, but whatever your build, you must have heart. I had heart, was quick and had a boot on me, but I was 11 stone wringing wet, which as you level up becomes a bigger and bigger issue. It took forever to put weight on and by then I'd taking a few too many kickings! My poor mum absolutely hated the game on account of my injury record!

With those experiences in mind, watching 100 KG+++ units run @11 seconds on grass is great fun as a fan, but bloomin terrifying as a participant. Forwards these days are humongous and not just the odd one, all of them and scarier still, some can actually run. They say the collisions endured these days are comparable to those experienced in a car crash. Like I say, you have to be a little mad when you actually think about it, which rugby players literally never do until they get hurt. I love the game, but when I see the contacts being made today I feel happier in the stands sharing a hip flask of single malt with the lad. Much safer and no pain, nor plaster casts the next day either 🙂 

I played scrum half until my late teens - was probably the smallest guy on the field (probably no probably about it) - but tackled way harder than my size and was really quick.  Used to absolutely love it, but when I got hit by one of the forwards, especially where I didn't see it coming, jeez I'd go flying.  Never stopped me going back for more.  

Not long finished Haskell's book What A Flanker, and one thing he makes clear is that rugby players spend their lives in pain; it's something you just live with, week in week out. Part of me would love to see what it's like out there at the elite level, but I know for a fact I'd only go in for one tackle but wouldn't be getting up again. Watching from the stand with a pint is far safer. 

[Comrade 86]

13 minutes ago, BucksRam said:

I played scrum half until my late teens - was probably the smallest guy on the field (probably no probably about it) - but tackled way harder than my size and was really quick.  Used to absolutely love it, but when I got hit by one of the forwards, especially where I didn't see it coming, jeez I'd go flying.  Never stopped me going back for more.  

Not long finished Haskell's book What A Flanker, and one thing he makes clear is that rugby players spend their lives in pain; it's something you just live with, week in week out. Part of me would love to see what it's like out there at the elite level, but I know for a fact I'd only go in for one tackle but wouldn't be getting up again. Watching from the stand with a pint is far safer. 

It's addictive, because once you've been absolutely smashed a few times and realise that most often, you're walking away ok, it all becomes rather compelling. Sounds like a form of temporary insanity when you actually vocalise it, doesn't it? 🤣

[BucksRam]

2 hours ago, Comrade 86 said:

It's addictive, because once you've been absolutely smashed a few times and realise that most often, you're walking away ok, it all becomes rather compelling. Sounds like a form of temporary insanity when you actually vocalise it, doesn't it? 🤣

Which sums up rugby players nicely

[Van der MoodHoover]

Marcus Smith out for the semi-final so back comes Freddie Steward, who would probably have been first choice because of his aerial ability.

 

Can England score a try? Can't compete really with the Boks power game, but we don't really have frightening pace on the outside unless arundell can come on.

 

I'm suspecting a rerun of 2019. In terms of score.

[Gee SCREAMER !!]

You get the semi final you deserve I suppose when you stick the best 4-5 sides in one half of the draw. Could be 40-50 points in this if NZ don't bring on more second stringers.

[Comrade 86]

On 19/10/2023 at 17:59, Van der MoodHoover said:

Marcus Smith out for the semi-final so back comes Freddie Steward, who would probably have been first choice because of his aerial ability.

 

Can England score a try? Can't compete really with the Boks power game, but we don't really have frightening pace on the outside unless arundell can come on.

 

I'm suspecting a rerun of 2019. In terms of score.

Same as. Saffas to batter us into submission upfront, before Kolbe and Arendse are released to dust May and Daly out wide. Sadly, Arundell has not made a matchday squad since his 5 try debut. Borthwick is clearly intending to try and out-Bok the Boks and what I think of that strategy is not appropriate for a family website. Hard to fathom how or why he has digressed so much from the methods that saw him transform Leicester. 

[Van der MoodHoover]

16 minutes ago, Comrade 86 said:

Same as. Saffas to batter us into submission upfront, before Kolbe and Arendse are released to dust May and Daly out wide. Sadly, Arundell has not made a matchday squad since his 5 try debut. Borthwick is clearly intending to try and out-Bok the Boks and what I think of that strategy is not appropriate for a family website. Hard to fathom how or why he has digressed so much from the methods that saw him transform Leicester. 

Could it be double-bluff? Ben Earl being quoted as being "excited" by the novel new game plan. I wonder what he means?

Apart from not having the size up front to out-muscle the boks, we don't really have a lot of pace.

So what's left.....endless box-kicking?