Rugby World Cup 2015

[ayepatz]

What I meant is Cooper either is ditched because he can;'t cut it as an international 5/8.....or it is the making of Cooper as an international 5/8

I know, but it was just such an easy drop goal, mate. ;-)

Seriously, I agree it will be interesting to see what difference the pack makes.

[Ken Gargett]

agree with rob. as with pretty much all five 8ths (perhaps bar the great paul mclean and michael lynagh), if your pack is crap then you will struggle. cooper won't have it easy. the blicks will be after him. he is one of the players who most scares them so if they can play him out of the squad, they'll do it.

problem is that we are very well short of any real depth or quality behind him. shame he is not playing outside genia.

got an email from a mate in orcland this morning. bucketing rain, blowing a gale, cold as a politician's heart.

[JohnS]

Yes it will be wet tomorrow in Auckand and cold with a forecast top temperature of 15°C. These conditions suit the All Blacks more than the Wallabies who tend to play more of a running game than other teams.

[Ken Gargett]

Yes it will be wet tomorrow in Auckand and cold with a forecast top temperature of 15°C. These conditions suit the All Blacks more than the Wallabies who tend to play more of a running game than other teams.

john, i think the running game thing can be a bit of a myth. nz does okay with ball in hand.

it got a lot of play when the ellas were about. mind you, mark's kicking game meant they had to run it. problem was everyone would rave about the running game and then forget the scoreboard.

i think the great advantage to the blicks in crap weather is that they have grown up playing in it. they know the fields and the tactics needed. we grow up on fast dry fields.

[Ryan]

Here's my unfortunate prediction for Ireland.

Some giant Frenchman will take Sexton out of the championship in the qualifying round.

New Zealand will then clobber Ireland in the quarter finals by a 20 point margin with the hapless Ian Madigan missing everything.

I hope I'm wrong but it's like deja vu all over again.

[JohnS]

john, i think the running game thing can be a bit of a myth. nz does okay with ball in hand.

it got a lot of play when the ellas were about. mind you, mark's kicking game meant they had to run it. problem was everyone would rave about the running game and then forget the scoreboard.

i think the great advantage to the blicks in crap weather is that they have grown up playing in it. they know the fields and the tactics needed. we grow up on fast dry fields.

Yes, that is true Ken, the All Blacks are used to playing in the drizzle on wet grounds and I defer to your experience of the game as I agree that the Wallabies in the 80's with the Ella brothers ran the ball more than in the modern game.

I was reading some statistics tonight which makes the Wallabies task at Eden Park look daunting indeed...

1) New Zealand have won 37 Rugby tests in a row at home. Their last loss was in 2009 against South Africa (32-29).

2) New Zealand have not been beaten at Eden Park since July 1994, a run of 34 test matches.

3) New Zealand have lost only three times in 61 matches in the last decade at home.

As a footnote, in the time New Zealand have won 37 matches at home, they have also won 29 away tests and lost just five. It makes the Wallabies win in Sydney last weekend seem so much more impressive!

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11495195

[free85]

I'd love to see an good Ireland vs NZ final... But my main concern, as a man from the US, is finding a way to WATCH the actual matches!

[ayepatz]

I'd love to see an good Ireland vs NZ final... But my main concern, as a man from the US, is finding a way to WATCH the actual matches!

Join a VPN network with a UK IP address (VPN one click are good, so is Tunnelbear), then watch for free on the BBC iPlayer.

[ayepatz]

Just seen that I can get the Bledisloe cup game tomorrow live at 8.25am! Result!

Unusually for a Pom, I'll be cheering for the Wallabies.

[Ken Gargett]

Yes, that is true Ken, the All Blacks are used to playing in the drizzle on wet grounds and I defer to your experience of the game as I agree that the Wallabies in the 80's with the Ella brothers ran the ball more than in the modern game.

I was reading some statistics tonight which makes the Wallabies task at Eden Park look daunting indeed...

1) New Zealand have won 37 Rugby tests in a row at home. Their last loss was in 2009 against South Africa (32-29).

2) New Zealand have not been beaten at Eden Park since July 1994, a run of 34 test matches.

3) New Zealand have lost only three times in 61 matches in the last decade at home.

As a footnote, in the time New Zealand have won 37 matches at home, they have also won 29 away tests and lost just five. It makes the Wallabies win in Sydney last weekend seem so much more impressive!

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/sport/news/article.cfm?c_id=4&objectid=11495195

the ellas, to a degree (and partly because they were not particularly good kickers), did run the ball more but there was actually a lot more kicking back then. different rules in some part. the boot on both mclean and lynagh, even though only one small part of their games, suited the rules of rugby back then, making them even more valuable.

just got an email from a mate in orcland. absolutely bucketing and has been for 24 hours. won't be pretty.

watched the last game again last night.

love our entire back row but pocock towered above everyone. was so clearly the best on park.

phibbs was even worse than i thought, if that is possible.

foley possibly not as bad as thought but uninspiring.

giteau is essential to the wallabies in so many ways. shows what we have been missing for so many years.

horwill is back to near his best, suggesting the coaching in qld is even more dire than we feared.

the scrum was excellent, the line out less so.

amazing to think we beat the all blicks for the first time in ages and yet both our half and 5/8 played so poorly they have been dumped. plus a winger.

[ayepatz]

Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere, we have Ireland V Scotland kicking off at 5pm GMT.

Trying times for us Scots. Interesting article in today's Times:-

Scotland problems run deep while the Irish fly high Don Rutherford, the former England full back, used to say that the one thing you could rely on with Scotland was their supply of back-row players. There might have been weaknesses elsewhere, but the Scottish production line turned out a stream of rampaging breakaways who would give any team on earth a run for their money.

It brought forth, 25 years ago, the holy trinity of John Jeffrey, Finlay Calder and Derek White, players whose ferocious driving play set the tempo for Scotland’s tumultuous 1990 grand slam-winning side.

Or maybe it is not so staggering. Of the ten back-row forwards in Vern Cotter’s World Cup training squad, only two were born in Scotland and eight of Scotland’s starting XV today are essentially the products of other rugby cultures. Ireland’s side, by stark contrast, are overwhelmingly home-grown.

There was a time when non-Scots drifted into the national team almost by accident. For the 1925 grand-slam season, the Scotland selectors picked the Oxford University three-quarter line en masse, and nobody much minded that it was made up of one Scot, a New Zealander and two Australians.

Even in the modern era, there was nothing too pernicious about such “kilted Kiwis” as Sean Lineen, Glenn Metcalfe and Shaun Longstaff, but the trickle became a flood and the flood has since become Murrayfield policy. Why bother with developing players when you can ship them in ready-made?

A country with only two professional club sides can be forgiven for casting its net wider than others, but as Scotland hold 12th place in the world rankings, and Ireland are second, it would be pushing it to say that the import strategy has been a riotous success.

Joe Schmidt’s Ireland are already up and running after a 35-21 victory over Wales in Cardiff last weekend so, for Schmidt, the game is about refining his squad for next month’s tournament. Cotter has bigger questions to deal with, as, indeed, do the men who run the wider Scottish game.

How they line up
Ireland: S Zebo; T Bowe, J Payne, G D’Arcy, L Fitzgerald; I Madigan, I Boss; D Kilcoyne, S Cronin, M Ross, D Toner, D Tuohy, J Conan, C Henry,S O’Brien (captain). Replacements: R Strauss, M Bent, N White, P O’Connell, J Murphy, E Reddan, P Jackson, D Kearney

Scotland: R Jackson; S Lamont, R Vernon, P Horne, T Visser; G Tonks, H Pyrgos; R Grant (captain), F Brown, J Welsh, J Hamilton, G Gilchrist, B Cowan, H Blake, D Denton. Replacements: R Ford, G Reid, M Cusack, R Harley, J Barclay, S Hidalgo-Clyne, D Weir, M Scott.

Referee: P Gauzère (France).

Coaches’ checklist
Five questions for Joe Schmidt (Ireland)
1. Can Simon Zebo, a natural winger, put in a decent shift at full back?

2. Is Sean O’Brien a captain in waiting?

3. Would another comfortable win mean Ireland are peaking too early?

4. Will the 35-year-old Gordon D’Arcy show he merits a fourth World Cup?

5. Has Ian Madigan learnt how to control a game at fly half?

Five questions for Vern Cotter (Scotland)
1. Will Hugh Blake, the fast-tracked New Zealander, emerge as a player of international calibre?

2. Will Ruaridh Jackson, first-choice fly half at the 2011 World Cup, do a credible job at full back?

3. And will Richie Vernon, a No 8 in 2011, pass muster in the centre?

4. Will Sean Lamont, in his 94th international, prove worthy of following Chris Paterson to 100 caps?

5. Can Grant Gilchrist rediscover the form that earned him the captaincy last year?

Words by Alasdair Reid

[ayepatz]

And another from the Times ahead of England V France at 8pm GMT today:-

England can benefit from trial and error

Experimental side can help coach to fine-tune his World Cup plans at Twickenham tonight, Owen Slot writes

Victory, today, is not everything. For once that is indisputably the case. No matter what the England coaches have been saying. Twickenham, tonight, will look rather different. It has been dressed up differently. It has had a long run-in to the World Cup, a long time to think about what it wants to look like. So too its home team. This is a first day of term. Naturally, England want to look the part.

They have been telling us how hard they have worked, how smoothly their combinations have been operating, how they are bang on with their preparations.

So yes, of course they want to look right. They would like a victory, some momentum, they want to start the job of persuading the Twickenham crowd that they could go all the way. They want to take the nation with them.

Yet they can still go all the way, even if they do not win today.

When England beat Wales in the equivalent warm-up fixture at Twickenham four years ago, the victory was a boost, but it was irrelevant compared with the fact that on that day they gave a debut to a young star who proved that he could be England’s match-winner. That was the much-lamented, once-arrested Manu Tuilagi.

Likewise, in the long run, one suspects that New Zealand will end up sleeping OK on their defeat by the Wallabies in Sydney last weekend — because that game gave them the two-try debut of Nehe Milner-Skudder, the sparkly heeled wing. In a short-term loss, there was potentially huge long-term gain.

Four years ago, New Zealand lost their last two games before the World Cup, to South Africa and Australia — and that did not hurt them much. When England took their long run-in to the World Cup in 2003, their defeat by France in a warm-up international in Marseilles was, according to Martin Johnson, the captain, a crucial plank in their tactical planning for the ultimate victory three months later.

We are at that point when coaches across the world apply finishing touches to their World Cup projects as if they are works of art. Wales are quickly doing a dramatic touch-up job after discarding Mike Phillips and Richard Hibbard — that can never have been in the plans. Meanwhile, there does not seem to be a more immaculately planned campaign than that of Ireland.

England would like to paint the broad shoulders of Sam Burgess into their schemes tonight. In one of the boldest, most far-fetched pieces of World Cup planning, one that is so out of character for the measured, detailed mind of Stuart Lancaster, they arrive wondering whether Burgess can burst on to the world scene in the same way that Tuilagi did four years ago.

This game is not about Burgess — at least not quite to the extent that the media may have portrayed it. Yet his rise has figured prominently in the England project, especially since Tuilagi eradicated his name from the equation. It may just help that France are setting out as experimental a side as England could hope for, with a backline lacking the stardust to worry Burgess and Henry Slade, another England player making his debut, outside him. Rémi Lamerat and Alexandre Dumoulin, the French centres, have only two more caps between them than the English novices. As Andy Farrell, the England backs coach, said yesterday of Burgess: “There’s more subtlety in his game than just being a battering ram.” This is a fine chance to prove it.

In a direct contravention to the protocol for this event, the French announced their team only yesterday afternoon. Last weekend, Ireland and Wales shared one of these “friendlies” with the coaches having agreed beforehand on the relative strengths of their team selections. There has been no such “entente cordiale” here.

The concept of any kind of friendly engagement is anathema to any international rugby player, particularly when they are Englishmen and Frenchmen opposing each other for what will, today, be the hundredth time.

Not that the hundredth edition of Le Crunch will be a result of note. More important is to see which of the separate parts are working.

“We’re not used to coming to England in August, but the traffic was bad like normal and the weather was bad like normal,” Philippe Saint-Andre, the France head coach, said yesterday. “So on the pitch it will be like normal!”

He is wrong in that last assessment. On the pitch, it will be an audition, an experiment, a trial run for when it really matters next month.

Stuart Lancaster’s checklist

1. Sam Burgess. You might have heard — he’s making his debut tonight. Lancaster needs evidence that the great experiment can work.

2. To be an individual or a team. Tricky. Players are playing for England tonight and their places tomorrow. When Lancaster judges performances, he has to account for those twin drivers.

3. Which debutants can hack it? He has four uncapped players: Burgess, Henry Slade, Luke Cowan-Dickie and Calum Clark. Sorry boys, there is no time to be nervous or find your feet. Any sense of being overawed is the end of your World Cup.

4. Ben Morgan. Lancaster won’t have high expectations for the No 8 in his first game back since an ankle injury in January, but he would like evidence to answer a straightforward question: will he be up to speed by the Fiji game?

5. Alex Goode or Danny Cipriani? Goode is ahead on the teamsheet and in Lancaster’s mind. Can Cipriani force him to rethink?

How they line up

England: A Goode (Saracens); A Watson (Bath), H Slade (Exeter Chiefs), S Burgess (Bath), J May (Gloucester); O Farrell (Saracens), R Wigglesworth (Saracens); M Vunipola (Saracens), R Webber (Bath), K Brookes (Northampton Saints), G Kruis (Saracens), G Parling (Exeter Chiefs), T Wood (Northampton Saints, captain), C Clark (Northampton Saints), B Morgan (Gloucester). Replacements: L Cowan-Dickie (Exeter Chiefs), A Corbisiero (Northampton Saints), D Wilson (Bath), D Attwood (Bath), J Haskell (Wasps), D Care (Harlequins), D Cipriani (Sale), B Twelvetrees (Goucester).

France: S Spedding (Clermont Auvergne); S Guitoune (Bordeaux), R Lamerat (Castres), A Dumoulin (Racing 92), B Dulin (Racing 92); F Trinh-Duc (Montpellier), M Parra (Clermont Auvergne); V Debaty (Clermont Auvergne), D Szarzewski (Racing 92, captain), N Mas (Montpellier), A Flanquart (Stade Français), Y Maestri (Toulouse), Y Nyanga (Racing 92), F Ouedraogo (Montpellier), L Picamoles (Toulouse). Replacements: G Guirado (Toulon), X Chiocci (Toulon), U Atonio (Stade Rochelais), S Vahaamahina (Clermont Auvergne), L Goujon (Bordeaux), R Kockott (Castres), R Talès (Racing 92), G Fickou (Toulouse).

Referee: J Lacey (Ireland).

[ayepatz]

And FYI, Argentina V South Africa is on at 20.40 GMT. Just a four game day today!

Up early and kettle on for the Wallabies V All-Blacks - should be a corker.

For the sake of a great World Cup, it would be great for us neutrals to see an historic Wallabies win.

[Ken Gargett]

that england v france article is a bit ordinary.

it almost seems to insist it is important to lose at this stage. and nz being happy about discovering a winger so no problem losing last week. what nonsense. they have wingers out the wazoo. and they can discover a player and still win.

as for "In one of the boldest, most far-fetched pieces of World Cup planning, one that is so out of character for the measured, detailed mind of Stuart Lancaster, ". seriously?

they are claiming this was lancaster? he might benefit but i think it was very much burgess himself.

[ayepatz]

that england v france article is a bit ordinary.

it almost seems to insist it is important to lose at this stage. and nz being happy about discovering a winger so no problem losing last week. what nonsense. they have wingers out the wazoo. and they can discover a player and still win.

as for "In one of the boldest, most far-fetched pieces of World Cup planning, one that is so out of character for the measured, detailed mind of Stuart Lancaster, ". seriously?

they are claiming this was lancaster? he might benefit but i think it was very much burgess himself.

It's classic England journalism. Build them up, then rip em apart when they (usually) fail. Even worse in football. There's an unspoken assumption with some journalists that it's England's right to win everything. Drives the rest of us Brits potty.

By contrast, I can't really have any qualms with the Scotland piece.

[ayepatz]

I think the papers will be calling that a Tale of Two Fly-Halves...

[JohnS]

All Blacks vs Wallabies August 15th, 2015...four words, "why Quade Cooper, why?"

[ayepatz]

One stupid high-tackle, made out of frustration at his own ineffectiveness, and he cost his team mates dearly.

Gotta say though, when Carter is on that sort of form, he's one of the very best fly-halves I've ever seen.

[Fuzz]

Quade Cooper should never have been put on the team.

[Ken Gargett]

I know Quade will cop huge flack over that catastrophe at Eden Park but I think a lot of the blame should go back to Cheika. It was a poorly executed tackle but aside from that, he’d been no worse than most of his teammates and better than some. I can say this now with no Reds bias as Quade is no longer a Red. And how the hell is that a yellow card if taking a bloke out mid-air is not – unless you have a spineless ref scared of upsetting the home crowd. Owens is 3^rd rate and the game showed just how far ahead of him Barnes is. Also, interesting that Cheika seemed to blame Toomua more than quade.

I would also argue that this test was lost before we took the park, thanks to Cheika.

1. If Cheika always wanted to play Quade, and I’d argue that there is more than a good case for doing so – not least because there is simply no one else (Foley is seriously bog average and Toomua goes missing at times) or that he is no worse than anyone else, then Cheika needed to play him as much as possible. It seems to be forgotten that Cooper has played less than a full game on the paddock in the last 4 months, thanks to injury. He needed as much time playing as possible. Cheika did not even have him on the bench last week. Crazy. He needed as much time as they could find and his teammates need as much time as possible playing with him. Cheika denied everyone that. The only possible explanation is that Cheika has no idea what he wants and no coherent plan.

2. Not that one wants to subscribe to conspiracy theories, but if one did then hard to go past what they did to Cooper. Almost no game time for months, not even on the bench last week, and then thrown into a Bledisloe decider at Eden Park. It almost stinks of yet another underhanded move from the pondscum of the NSW/ARU admin. But I’m sure that is just coincidence.

3. Move away from Quade, which in reality is a side issue. Last week, our best forward was Pocock and our best back was Giteau. And Cheika drops them both for the decider? Explain that? If Deans had made that call, we’d all be screaming about a Kiwi plant and so on. It was lunacy. But it got worse. Dean Mumm was another of our best. He is dropped as well. This is all on Cheika, not Quade. What possible reason?

4. We had four tests to develop combinations for the World Cup. I think I am right in saying that in those four tests, only Moore and Folau (possibly Kurandrani but I don’t think so) played in their position for them all. Everyone else is bounced around, dropped, recalled, shuffled from bench to team, shuffled about in different positions. What chance did we have to develop any combination at all? That screams of a coach who does not have a clue. And it all came unravelled in this game. Our next game is in the World Cup. Does anyone have a clue who’ll play where? What a shambles.

After the win against NZ, I thought perhaps Cheika’s madness had a method. Now it seems exposed for utter cluelessness. Yes, Cooper made an error with the tackle but that was barely the tip of the iceberg. Anyone imagine that the kiwis or the Boks would be carrying on like this circus?

Before the game last night, I thought that we would either get dumped from the Cup before the quarters or win the entire thing. Now, winning the entire thing seems as likely as me running up Everest.

[Dimmers]

Agree Ken, Ckeika's selections were stupid. Entire team played like rubbish. Cooper is just the easy scapegoat

[JohnS]

Dare I say that the selection changes were a rouse to an alterior motive on Cheika's behalf because the team that won in Sydney was strong in the forwards and gave us a real chance to be competitive at Eden Park.

http://www.theroar.com.au/2015/08/14/michael-cheikas-russian-roulette-selections-for-eden-park/

One thing's for sure...we can't play with these selections in the World Cup.

[Ken Gargett]

Dare I say that the selection changes were a rouse to an alterior motive on Cheika's behalf because the team that won in Sydney was strong in the forwards and gave us a real chance to be competitive at Eden Park.

http://www.theroar.com.au/2015/08/14/michael-cheikas-russian-roulette-selections-for-eden-park/

One thing's for sure...we can't play with these selections in the World Cup.

john, interesting stuff. the roar occasionally tosses up a good article though much of it is rubbish and rants (bit like here).

david lord an old hand but odd he says he doesn't agree with some selections but then goes all out with support for cheika. i think that cheika has been given a huge amount of latitude by fans as he is decisive and positive which is needed, even if makes bizarre decisions, and fans so sick of the crap we have had from coaches - right back to the toxic hobbit then deans then mckenzie. we really really want to believe.

but i think the emperor's new clothes might have been exposed last night. i can't see him getting such blind faith from the fans again.

the one thing is that everyone has a differing view of fly half and it is not a qld/nsw thing any more. i think the problem is that we have no viable candidate. and what team has ever won, or even competed seriously, at the world cup without a stellar 5/8?

[JohnS]

That is exactly right. All the great teams revolve around a great fly-half (and/or halves). Yes, you can only go so far without one.

[El Presidente]

I woke up at 3am this morning. Seriously it was because of a Wallabies induced Nightmare. Di asked me "what's the matter honey" and I said "effing Wallabies!"

If I never see Cooper again in Wallaby colours I couldn't care. He is a failed experiment. Ditch and move on.

I am a fan of Quade. He has more talent in his left Index finger than Foley has in his entire body. It doesn't however make you an international top 4 side five eight. Carlos Spencer anyone?

An international 5/8 of the highest caliber has to lead. Has to manage his attack, has to manage the 1%, master the mundane. That includes kickoffs which are beyond him. At international level, he has shown no glimpse that he can do it against a top 4 side.

There are options. Toomua at 5/8 is direct and safe. Has some vision. He is not a centre. He can pass, kick and defend. That is enough. Secondly, Gitteau. Third Foley. No place for Cooper in the WC.

I posted the other day that Cheika was in a no lose situation. He can now drop Cooper from the squad with not a whisper of complaint. He knows now that Palu or Will Skelton are but bench players and mid week World Cup bullies. We will play with Hooper 7 and Pockock at 8. We will play fast and direct.We will almost get there.

Performance is the only measure at this level. Take off any rose coloured glasses and see who has stepped up to battle when the chips are down. It is not all lost.

And congratulations to the All blacks. Almost a flawless performance.