Rugby World Cup 2007

[Tetro Kornbluth]

BUMP - It started today.

And how...

France 12-17 Argentina.

Roll on the Frogs, I say. The hosts are screwed.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Argentina aren't even assured of qualfying.. if we beat and France beat us (For those ignorant, we\us = The MIGHTY IRISH!111) it may still go down to bonus points or even Trys scored or whatever the Tiebreaker is.

We need to make high scores against Namibia and Georgia.

The World Cup would be far nicer if it weren't for New Zealand and Australia stealing all the best pacific players.. Fiji and Samoa (and to a lesser degree, Tonga) would be pretty competitive then.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

To go off on a tangent here, It would make much more sense to put Argentina into the Tri nations, where then we would have at least have two hemisphere-based tournaments both with an even number of countries competing.

In saying all of this, in a strange way I'm looking forward to Portugal - New Zealand.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

All the games tomorrow are boring... Though it will be nice to watch England fail to thrash the United States (they'll still of course..) but Australia v Japan and New Zealand v Italy.. bleh.. {Never mind Portugal and the rest - the gap between within the world's top ten between #1 and #10 is huuuuugee. Right now I rate NZ as #1 and Italy as #10 yet it would be a good result for Italy to keep it within 20}

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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?

So in other words, you want Wales to steal all of Ireland's better players.. (all 15 of them)..

[Tetro Kornbluth]

When England managed just to beat off the United States with the effort of an constipated moose in an orgy I thought it was a classic case of "Well, our opponents are the balls. So let's just relax for 80 minutes and pretend there's no game on at all".

But I was wrong. England are just rather sh**t.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Wales play Australia today. Oh dear...

Indeed. If the performances of Six Nations countries are anything to go by so far... at this point I actually think England might lose to Samoa.

Ireland play Georgia today.. will watch with interest. Still unsure whether I want to watch the Rugby Chainsaw massarce (ie. Portugal vs New Zealand) which is also today.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Lame.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Lame.

Did Ireland manage to beat Georgia in the end?

Officially, the moral victory was Georgia's though.
They were a matter of inches from a winning try at the end.

Inches? More like the hands of super-Leamy.

It's actually amazing how close we've come to having a huge upset.. yet there has been none yet (France - Argentina was an upset, but not a huge one) - I mean Italy - Romania, Georgia - Ireland, Wales - Canada - all those games could have ended with different teams winning.. plus USA - England and Ireland - Namibia were much, much closer than first imagined.

So... eh.. Come on Samoa!

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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An upset, yes. But nothing on the scale Georgia beating Ireland would have been.

As for expanding the Six Nations all I would state is that it would be extremely damaging for any country which would be relegated from such a system. But Romania, Georgia and Russia (who apparently according to the IRB site ranked higher than Georgia; and there was 45,000(!) attendance for the WC qualifier between the two teams last year which saw Georgia qualify) should be more encorporated into the European system. As should to a lesser extent - Portugal, Spain, Germany.. and any other non-professional nation.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

An upset, yes. But nothing on the scale Georgia beating Ireland would have been.

Yep, no question.

As for expanding the Six Nations all I would state is that it would be extremely damaging for any country which would be relegated from such a system. But Romania, Georgia and Russia (who apparently according to the IRB site ranked higher than Georgia; and there was 45,000(!) attendance for the WC qualifier between the two teams last year which saw Georgia qualify) should be more encorporated into the European system. As should to a lesser extent - Portugal, Spain, Germany.. and any other non-professional nation.

Damaging? Possibly. But the extent of such damage, and also of the potential benefit to the new nations , would depend on how exacting it would be structured. (Say just a plain 7 or 8 nations top tier, or maybe 2 pools of 4 teams or something.)

A year in a lower league, say for Ireland, would increase the profile of the lower division. And if they couldn't get back out of it, it would presumably be deserving for them to stay there.

No doubt true on one level; but I can't imagine alot of the fair weather fans (and we both know how many of them there are.) would stick around with ourselves battling out with say, Italy, Romania and Georgia to win Four Nations B. And lower Attendances no matter what is not good. Ireland v Georgia at half (at best) filled Croke Park (I hoping we can somehow convince\command\bribe the Gah into making headquarters a permanent sporting home.) would not be a pretty sight. Ireland's rugby has done so well of late due to the exploding national profile it's got in the past 10 years. We don't want to back to the 90s when we regularly thrashed by France and England and the grassroots game was a mess, surely?

How these teams would be encorporated though is a big question; hell Italy has problem arranging Autumn tours as it is. Never mind Georgia, etc.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I have to say, things don't really look promising for us, at all, at all, at all...

Go Tonga, now I guess...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Big game tonight.. So I expect us to show up.

But we'll still lose though.. wouldn't be surprised at another last minute try for the French. Something like 29-26.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

And so the State of the Irish Rugby team..

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Aer Lingus! No, no - surely Ryanair!

Nah they go on Aer Lingus so they can avoid carrying the Shell that was Ronan O'Gara into the luggage department and thus paying €1,000,000 for the priviledge...

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I think we can say officially now "we are out".

Though I'm still hoping for surprises from Tonga and Fiji.. It's been an interesting RWC so far all things considered (even if the worst performance ever by an Irish side in one.)

[Tetro Kornbluth]

All southern hemisphere semi-finals, here we come!

Argentina will beat Scotland, and Australia, South Africa and New Zealand are too good to lose to any team other than one of the other two. I'm hoping for Argentina vs. Australia in the final, but it'll probably be South Africa vs. New Zealand.

WRONG.

Allez Les Blues!

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Personally I'm rooting for an Argentina - France rematch in the Final. Though the Argies were extremely lucky today it must be said.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Official proof that Jonnie has sold his soul to the devil..

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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.

Actually I know; it's just that he is - like the rest of the English team - an extremely lucky bastard.

I had a dream last night where South Africa won. So up the Bokke.