Missed this because reasons, but at least it was closer than last time.
Tbh though, part of me would much rather teams in these games just had fun like it was a barbarians game, rather than worrying about who wins. Nobody remembers who wins these matches anyway (he says after making a comment about who won the third place play off in 2007).
Tbf, they won the same match in 2007.
On a side note, what is it with teams spending 70 minutes kicking the ball to Freddie Steward and expecting to get anything from it?
We are all Etzebeth now.
Or something.
Great game for drama, but that was really some pretty terrible rugby all round, with the occasional flash.
England playing ten man rugby, as they’ve largely done throughout with the exception of drubbings against the minnows. Given the turmoil in the set up over the last year,and the conditions on the night you can’t hold that against them but it doesn’t make for a great spectacle from a neutral point of view (drama aside, obvs).
South Africa were clearly hungover after last week. It was telling how the game shifted with the subs later on. I’m sure a lot of the discourse around that will be around the depth of the Saffa squad, but it looked to me more like a knackered starting fifteen playing a relatively fresh one. Ox and Kwagga the point of difference for the second week in a row imo.
Suspect the ABs win number four next week, but that way this tournament is going it’ll probably be England with a chair off the top rope.
The French love to boo. It’s all pantomime, but it’s the same in pretty much every sport. Heck, even the fancy pants Rolland Garros crowd will cheer/jeer based on basically the following order:
Locals
Underdogs
Pantomime villains based on a historic sleight that nobody even really remembers anymore.
Based on the above, I don’t find it strange that England were the fan favourites for the local crowd.
The process of turning fruit into juice also often removes a lot of the good stuff we would be getting from that fruit. For example fibre. So the juice has the sugar (which isn’t in itself a reason to avoid fresh fruit) but little of the other good stuff.
Was hoping for more of a contest, though I think we all knew what was happening in this match before it started.
Think the try before half time ended the match as a contest, in as much as it could be described as such.
KNew what if was from the thread title. No idea why it got pulled, since it was the bbc proper iirc, rather than bbc Scotland or whatevs.
In fairness ireland and France could easily have won their games.
By “easily” I mean it didn’t take a hugely different set of circumstances, such as a ref decision, bounce charged down conversion etc.
Both of those games were won on the finest of margins, and it just so happened that it was the SH teams that won both. Replay both those games ten times and I reckon you get like five wins apiece or whatever
Well that has ruined my year. Some weekend of matches.
Guess I’m Argentinian now.
Thought it was mad England sacking Jones, and I was one of the people that maintained England had been underperforming for about 18 months. Couple of million quid buying out contracts just to get to where they would be right now anyways.
But sacking Rennie was absolutely batshit. If you look at the win % he wasn’t doing brilliantly, but a lot of those losses were very narrow, for eg single point (iirc) loss to France in Paris etc, and in circumstances that were less than ideal. The administrators basically YOLO’d it, and there should be heads rolling higher up imo.