The teams: Argentina Australia Canada England Fiji France Georgia Ireland Italy Japan Namibia New Zealand Romania Russia Samoa Scotland South Africa Tonga USA The world rankings: IRB World Rankings - 29 August 2011 Position (last week) Member Union Rating Point 1(1) NEW ZEALAND 90.55 2(2) AUSTRALIA 88.84 3(3) SOUTH AFRICA 85.69 4(4) FRANCE 83.78 5(5) ENGLAND 82.89 6(6) WALES 80.79 7( SCOTLAND 78.83 8(7) IRELAND 78.50 9(9) ARGENTINA 78.40 10(10) SAMOA 74.54 11(11) ITALY 73.88 12(12) TONGA 72.48 13(13) JAPAN 71.95 14(14) CANADA 71.56 15(15) FIJI 70.83 16(16) GEORGIA 70.30 17(17) ROMANIA 65.69 18(1 USA 65.00 19(19) RUSSIA 61.92 20(20) NAMIBIA 61.42 It's going to be an interesting competition, NZ were clear favorites (again) but just lost to SA and the Aussies. England beat Aust the last two meetings (home and away). The USA gave the then champtions (Eng) a real scare in the pool stages last year and have been beaten by Canada twice this year. France - which team will turn up? Ireland - how can a team made up of Munster and Leinster perform so bady for their country? Can't wait!!!
I will be trying to watch it, but the Scottish team has been playing inconsistently for a few years now. It usually ends in me wanting to throw the tv like a rugby ball... I like to watch NZ, SA and Oz though. Different game.
They start to look better under Andy R, but the changes will take a while. I'd love to see a good Scotland again, especially in the 6N.
Naaa, They stand a chance at the semi's if they get some momentum though. This Eng team will be looking good in the coming years though I reckon!
Hmmmm.....is it me, or is there a name missing from that list?!!! Is this a jealousy thing, omitting the name of the tournament's best team, and obvious inevitable winners?!
No great surprises in the opening game - Tonga pretty much overwhelmed by New Zealand, although they put up a spirited display at points, and Richie McCaw getting away with all kinds of handling on the floor and hanging around offside violations as usual. Maybe one day a referee will see through the shield of invisibility he seems to have and actually give some of the deserved penalties against him! I'm not holding my breath on that, though! Some interesting matches coming up this weekend. I guess South Africa v Wales and England v Argentina are the obvious big clashes, but Australia v Italy could be an interesting one, too.
The ABs looked pretty ordinary in the second half. Great try to Tonga after humbling the AB scrum. I think we can expect the All Blacks to choke again - as they have done so many times before. It is the Wallabies for No. 3.
Certainly a possibility, although home advantage could work in their favour on that, as it did in 1987 - there's really no doubt they are the team to beat (again!), though. Australia and South Africa are always likely to be strong contenders, but to be honest if I were to have to put a bet against the All Blacks this time, I'd be strongly considering France. That all depends which France turn up, though, obviously!
You're hallucinating if you actually think Wales is coming anywhere, btw . They're coming in where Scotland is And have you seen Japan? They've given France a bit of a fright. Good for them.
Scotland survived their first match through "home" advantage at Invercargill. It's a veritable sea of saltires! 15-3 in the first quarter, and it's looking like a rout. Ten minutes to go and it's 24-24! What happened! Two tries made the score look respectable in the end, with Scotland taking ten-point win, but we desperately need consistency. Good play in the initial twenty minutes, and the last ten, is not enough! England looked lacklustre against Argentina, but did enough to win.
Bit of a stuttering start for Scotland, but I thought they looked the better side for most of the game, but just needed it to 'click' as it finally did towards the end. Not surprising, with the lack of warm up games, but then I guess the knew their first two World Cup games would be against the relatively weaker sides in the group, which eases them in a bit without having risked too many pre-tournament injuries. Can't say the same for England, though - I thought Argentina looked the better side for almost the whole game, and didn't think England deserved to win at all. That's England in World Cup mode, though - they won it in 2003 by looking like the worse side in almost every game, but somehow scraping those few points to get the win every time. If they let Scotland suck them in to that type of game, though, there are quality backs in the Scottish team that could do more damage that the Argentinian backs were ever likely to. Bit of a warning for Wales from the Fiji v Namibbia game. We already knew how dangerous Fiji would be if they were allowed to play an open game of sevens, but now we know (if we ever doubted it!) that Namibia can be pretty tough opposition too, and have the potential to punish you if you get frustrated and give away needless penalties. As for Wales's chances, I'm not holding out much hope for winning the tournament, but I wouldn't write off the chances of us doing pretty well just yet. The problem we have is obviously the group we are in. In all the groups there are 2 quarter final places up for grabs. In the other 3 groups there are realistically 3 teams going for those 2 places (in Scotland's group it's obviously them (ranked 7th in the world), England (5th) and Argentina (9th)), but in Wales's group there are 4 (South Africa (3rd), Wales (6th), Samoa (10th) and Fiji (only currently ranked 15th, but that doesn't really reflect their skills, especially in 7s type open play, and until June 2011 they were ranked 10th)) in with a genuine chance of getting through if other teams aren't constantly playing at their best in every game - very easy group to slip up in! We also don't have the luxury of being able to 'settle in' against relatively weaker opposition as Scotland did - South Africa first up! At the moment I think Wales are still a couple of years ahead of Scotland in development terms, and I think have the better team and squad for this world cup. How that will translate in the tournament, with the groups as they are, is anybody's guess, though, obviously! One obvious problem with the World Cup being on the other side of the planet is lack of sleep for me, though. I was up from about 1:30am to midday to watch the games, and haven't managed to get any decent sleep yet. I'm going back to bed soon!
Na, you're completely wrong as usual. The wind derailed the kicking. Scotland would have scored how many more points if the ball hadn't been blown off the tee and then off course and it's not the kickers fault. I think he is the most successful kicker in the world at the moment. They seemed a bit disoriented by all the support though. Wales is through. If they don't beat Fiji and Samoa there is something far wrong. I don't understand this staying up to see it business when it's on first thing the next morning. When Peru hosted the Copa America football my husband avoided going away on holiday, then when pushed tried to book a villa with live reception of it, then recorded every game and still set the alarm clock and got up at 2:30 a.m. to watch the games.
Maybe not so much wrong, after today's game! We deserved to win, and were the better side, but just that final couple of kicks letting us down. Gutted, but it's a losing bonus point, and put us in a good position. If we can maintain that kind of performance for the rest of the games, we should have no problem going through in second place (and challenging australia in the quarter final). If South Africa continue that kind of performance against Samoa in particular, we might still finish top of the group, but I doubt that will happen - I don't think Samoa have the same capacity to stop them playing as Wales exhibited. Then again, though, Samoa and Fiji can't ever be written off - two very, very talented sides who are (of have recently been) around the top 10 in the world with very good reason - the gap between the top few teams and the rest has closed considerably in recent years.
You must be gutted. So close. I hear SA has issues regarding the captaincy and some of them are maybe not happy campers. I still think they played, but it might have taken them down somewhat. Wales were great to watch, they played a good attacking game. Thought they were never getting through the wall but they kept attacking and SA just didn't do that much but defend for long stretches. When Wales went ahead, to SA's credit they did pull it back. Wales might have won if they'd put the late kicks away, but it might have triggered another response from SA, who knows. Credit to both teams, one of the most entertaining games for a long time and I'm sure Wales take a lot more from it than SA.
Ireland beat the US, 22-10, we should have done better, but at least it was a win the team needed it after the shocking warm ups. Don't know if we'll get out of the Group. Who knew that they had rugby in Japan. 6.30 is a cruel start time.
I don't know what is wrong with Ireland at the moment. On paper they have such a great side, but it just doesn't seem to work somehow. They seem to rely heavily on O'Driscoll doing something 'magical', and he doesn't seem to me to have been at his best for a while. On paper, Ireland should get out of that group quite easily, but Italy pushed them close in the Six Nations, and could beat them this time. USA v Russia is one game I'm looking forward to in that group, though - should be a fascinating contest. USA should have the quality to win, but I would never underestimate a team (Russia) with coaches like this: Team Director - Kingsley Jones (former Wales flanker and Sale coach) Scrum Coach - Darren Morris (former Wales prop - always a master of the scrum as a player) Backs Coach - Henry Paul (former England union international and NZ league international). They also have the advantage that nobody knows much about them, despite them being ranked 19th in the world at the moment, only one place below the USA. It's unlikely to decide anything in terms of group positions and quarter finals, obviously, but it could be a cracking game, especially given the history between the two countries - it's one both sides will be up for and really wanting to win.
Wales v South Africa. Best game so far and really tough playing from both sides. I was sure Wales were going to win. Ah well, next time.
Our men played well, put up quite a display on defense, just couldn't seem to maintain possession of the ball as we all know Rugby is a game of possession. I was glad to see the try at the end where they were able to put some points on the board. The Irish seemed to dominate the scrum and were very impressive in the maul where they were able to gain some great field position and eventually break off for the trys. And I had NO idea that there was Rugby in Japan either.
We won against South Africa too (see photograph of ball between posts in today's Guardian). Pity about the referee.
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Overall I thiought he had a pretty good game. I agree he was probably wrong on that one, but that was only one decision, and if the points had been given the rest of the game (and it was early on) might have changed anyway. No use crying over such spilt milk - these things happen, and sometimes they work for you (ask Irish people about the 'same ball for a quick throw in rules'!), and sometimes against. We should have been far enough ahead by the end for those points not to matter, but we weren't - that's our fault for not scoring points when we had other opportunities. 'We wuz robbed', but that's life in top level sport!
True. I was in fact amazed at how well the boys played. Can they put in that last extra bit, that's the question.
