Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

We’re back to the men and women playing, plus the Top 14 starting but I won’t be reviewing that. Argentina are in Australia, South Africa in New Zealand. At the WRWC we largely have the top two teams in the pools playing off for bragging rights, in Pool A, USA are still in contention. Because Argentina v Australia was an afternoon kickoff, their time, so still in the dark my time, I’m starting with second match. TRC New Zealand v New Zealand At half time it was 14-3 to the AB and that might suggest the game was dull. That’s not what happened. This was a game where the Kiwis have worked out how to disrupt the Bokke machine and applied themselves to doing that. They’ve made everything except the scrum look very ordinary and they’ve taken a scrum penalty too, although they conceded a couple, but it’s far from complete dominance there. As an example of how badly the AB are disrupting the Bokke, there was a penalty when, ok, Pollard was a certain three points, which he delivered, but th...

I decided not to watch England destroy Samoa, beyond the highlights. So, on with the suprise result of the weekend. South Africa v Italy I said last week that watching SA play reminded me of Bryan Habana era Springboks. this week has really reinforced that. Their dominance at set piece over Italy was brutal, the French will be analysing that and thinking about it, but not necessarily worrying about it too much. They seemed to have corrected most of their lineout woes from last week and their scrum was also incredibly dominant against the Italians; it also pretty much holds its own against the English scrum which I’m guessing is better than the South African scrum, so I don’t think it’s going to be such a big weapon for the SA side next week. The forwards are not their only weapon, their backs are quick and can exploit a space, they scored some nice tries. However, 29-24 feels like a fair reflection of the game. Italy were able to defend quite a lot of attacks, and although they coul...

It’s a rest week in the rugby championship this week, so just eight WRWC games to go. These are, again, all teams expected to reach the quarterfinals against others, but like last week, where Scotland v Wales had the potential to be an upset (even though Scotland cruised to an easy victory), this week Australia v USA is an eye-catching fixture. One of the things I didn’t notice last week at the time, but was more obvious in retrospect: all the on-field officials are women. The TMOs are mostly men but all the referees and ARs are women, which is nice to see. Continuing that theme, at least in Britain we’re largely having female presenters around the game (before, after, halftime), with a mix of male and female guests. most of the main match commentators are male, with female colour commentators. Brian Moore, who was a huge advocate for, and supporter of, women’s rugby in the early days tends to be a colour commentator for England games but given his history with the game I don’t mind t...

Reviews of the matches I didn’t watch over the weekend Canada v Fiji This is a match, like so many others, that featured a giant v minnows. Canada are currently ranked second in the world, Fiji somewhere in the teens. Like the other matches in these categories, scrums tended to be an issue, although they weren’t as bad as some, and the Fijian lineouts were pretty good. As you would expect, ball handling was pretty good too. What let the Fijians down was mostly speed of thought and details of execution. Canada could easily concentrate the Fijian defensive line, and then run around the outside of it - it looked like a sevens defence but with more bodies - and worse than the scrummaging was the kicking from hand - it was usually really short, or out on the full, or both. Fiji had moments, and stretched Canada, they scored possibly the try of the tournament as well, and will trouble both Scotland and particularly Wales in their other pool games. But they’re just too inconsistent and giv...

Rather than splitting these up into separate reviews, I’m just going to review all the games in one huge list. One thing that is going to crop up in my reviews of the WRWC is talking about different groups of teams. Right at the top we have England, who are red hot favourites to win it all, being undefeated since the last final. Then there’s a second group, consisting of Canada, France and New Zealand who are the likely semi finalists. They may not all make it, but they’re the most likely contenders. They could beat England in the final, but it relies on quite a bit of luck. Then there’s a third tier that is too large to all fit into the quarterfinals but who are competing for that, and for some a chance at a semifinal. This group includes Australia, Ireland, Italy, Scotland, USA and Wales. With the exception of Canada, all of these nations have some sort of professional national team and may have a professional league as well. Under this there is a group of also rans, minnows if you ...