Rugby World Cup 2007

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is with the Six Nations teams and the major suckage so far?

Lack of access to a regular supply of good players from a collection of tiny little islands?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

What is with the Six Nations teams and the major suckage so far?

Lack of access to a regular supply of good players from a collection of tiny little islands?

In which case the Aran Islands, Shetlands, Channel Islands and Ynys Môn have a lot of questions to answer.

Well, North Wales isn't really a rugby area (not by Welsh standards anyway...).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Wales play Australia today. Oh dear...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

at this point I actually think England might lose to Samoa.

If that happens, then tis time for all fans of Welsh Rugby to engage in some revenge-gloating...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Wales/Australia game was better than I expected. We lost (of course), but in a respectable way.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Lame.

Did Ireland manage to beat Georgia in the end?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yep, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I remember checking the scores in the first half... first time was 3-7, then 3-15, then 3-18, then 3-24...

They have got to do something about their dire showings during the first half. Second half; fine. Good side in the second half. First half; dreadful, leaning diabolical.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Are the Welsh obsessed with rugby?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We've got decent rugby and high unemployment, thanks for the latter Labour.

If you're going to make a pointless (not to mention off topic) partisan point, at least try to make it an accurate one; unemployment in Wales these days is around about the U.K average.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

But what an average

Official unemployment statistics are, of course, a fiddle (up to a point anyway). Though they're actually less of a fiddle now than they used to be.

There are, of course, a lot of people on IB in Wales (a consequence both of an economy reliant on heavy industry and of the economic catastrophe that hit South Wales in the 1980's and early '90's), and as a result the overall employment rate in Wales is slightly below the U.K average.

Blaming the current government (both at Westminster and at Cardiff Bay) is just silly; it's quite clearly not the fault of either.
I happen to think that more can be done as regards the social problems in the Valleys (housing is a big issue; the area will continue to lose population until the quality of housing improves. A majority of houses in the Rhondda Valley were built before 1918 and many are in a dreadful state) and I also think that more could have been done over the past decade (little rant here; the Assembly Government might have been able to do more had the official measure of deprivation not been deliberately rigged against the Valleys), but the time to deal with (at least in the sense of "getting them jobs") the issue of former miners on IB and the like (along a lot of people who were just unlucky enough to be young in the early 1980's) was in the early '90's.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The country is miserable,

Nonsense. I've got issues with the way some things have panned out post-devolution, but overall Wales is better off (economically and in other ways) than it was a decade ago.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Funny how New Zealand never quite make it, isn't it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worst game of Rugby I've watched for ages. And I speak as a neutral.

England are in the final. Thanks to Johnny Wilkinson. Again.

Not so; Wilkinson was rubbish in the first half. Main reason England won is because France gave away too many penalties.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Looking over comments here and in the media, I think I must be missing something. Wilkinson is playing dreadfully at the moment; if England had a half-decent kicker they'd have beaten France heavily.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Worst. Final. Ever.