Eloise's Thoughts and Fancies

The last full weekend of matches and a number of relatively predictable games essentially topped and tailed by two good looking matchups. France v Argentina On paper this looked like a good game. France are transitioning in a number of positions and while their youth are good, they lack experience. Meanwhile, Argentina had a number of senior, valuable, players returning and looked stronger than the side that narrowly lost in Ireland. They will also have the anger of that defeat in their mind. The scoreboard would suggest it wasn’t all that close - France won by 14 points. In the sense that the game is about scoring points, more points than the opponents, it’s not lying. However, if you watch the game, it didn’t feel this unequal. The big difference between the sides was that France were more clinical, especially in the first half, and took their chances. Argentina were much more profligate with their chances, and ultimately that was the difference. Some of that was French brilliance...

After a southern hemisphere whitewash last week, can the northern hemisphere mount any sort of resistance? There are some interesting matchups, will Ireland bounce back or can Argentina claim the final Top Eight scalp and their first victory over Ireland at home? How will France and New Zealand and then Wales and Australia match up? One is a clash of two of the rugby elites, albeit both of them weakened by injury, the other is a match of teams trying to rebuild, one buoyed by a good win and the other becoming desperate after a record-equalling string of loses. Australia's win last week was unexpected, can England repeat that unlikely victory to upset the current world number one Springboks and also reverse their recent dismal record? Ireland v Argentina Despite what the (Irish) commentators would have you believe, this was not a good Irish performance that answered the questions hanging over them. It was, undeniably, a better Irish performance and there were moments when they lo...

The Matches This weekend mostly saw North v South (France v Japan was a rare exception) and quite a few new and old grudge matches lined up, with replays of various matches from the World Cup coming through. Ireland v New Zealand This game was a huge start to the weekend. It saw the number one v number three sides in the world facing off, but for around 100 years New Zealand never lost a game to Ireland. Over the last five years, Ireland have beaten the All Blacks no less than eight times, including a 2-1 series win in New Zealand but a quarterfinal loss in last year’s World Cup. This might not have the history of the rivalry between New Zealand and South Africa, but over the last few years it’s become just as intense. Defensively you can argue that the game lived up to expectations. There were some huge tackles, attacks were stymied, ball spilled under the weight of the tackles and so on. Both sides only scored one try. The All Blacks handled that better and played most of the game i...

There were only two matches this weekend, as most northern hemisphere countries were gathering players into training camps still. England used one of their agreed training weekends to pull their squad from the premiership a week early, and faced the All Blacks, Scotland used their home-based players (so were basically Glasgow) against Fiji, who were also missing their overseas players and were basically the Drua. England v New Zealand This was an odd, but compelling game, in part because of the way it played out. In the end there were two points between the sides, with England pulling out an eight point lead with about 20 to go, but New Zealand scoring the last ten points to win. The All Blacks scored three tries and butchered four more, England only scored one - that from an interception - and didn’t really ever look like scoring any more. Even when they had a 5m scrum in the last minute it didn’t feel like they were going to score. As it was, the AB scrum shunted the English pack b...

Somehow I didn’t review LOVM seasons 1 or 2 so I’m going to do all three seasons at once. The Legend of Vox Machina is an adaptation of campaign one of Critical Role, an Actual Play streamed D&D game with a bunch of self-proclaimed nerdy-assed voice actors that started as a birthday present for one of them, grew into a regular home game, then a steamed AP, then a creative and gaming giant in its own right. Next March will be their tenth anniversary as a streamed game. By the end of season three we’ve had 36 episodes and a bit under 18 hours of animation. We’re also, depending on how you look at it, either at episode 85 or 100 of the show. That’s over 350-400 hours of content compressed into Blindspot for a lot of campaign 1 and the start of campaign 2 and was frequently away. But she’s available throughout the filming of this, and present a lot more. She does have a bit of season 1 where she goes away and comes back through astral projection at a critical moment - that mirrors ...