BF2S Forums Rugby World Cup England 2015

I dont want to be pedantic, x8 games in Cardiff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34282743

Have a look what our council have done to The Castle, its about 100 yards away from The Millenium Stadium.

Good luck to Fiji today.

Japan beat South Africa. The biggest upset in rugby history, up there for biggest upset in sporting history.





Incredible South Africa would have been expected to get something like an 80 point victory. Instead the Japanese captain twice refused an easy penalty to make it a draw and Japan scored the winning try deep into the red zone. Amazing.

Heard someone equating it to a lion losing to Hello Kitty in a fight. Sums it up.

Looking at that video, Bok captain, (#12,) Jean De Villiers looks emaciated. The guys a centre, one of the toughest strongest players, and he looks fit but marathon runner fit, not rugby fit. Think there are some serious problems in the Boks camp. Scotland and Samoa may smell blood though I expect the Boks will respond hard.

Games today: Samoa beat the USA, Wales beat Georgia, New Zealand beat Argentina. Everyone's trying to act as if that last one was really close but it wasn't, NZ took the lead before the three quarter mark and din't look like relinquishing it even if for the most part they played like arse. People want another Japan I guess which isn't surprising but the Pumas are no Japan and the All Blacks are the All Blacks.

Discussion topic of the day was McCaw's yellow card for an idiotic trip. Deserved but if you listen to some people that one thing justifies all those who keep saying he should be yellow carded just for running onto the field.

Wouldn't be so sure. Japan beat South Africa, anything can happen.

Interested to see how the Wallabies go against Fiji. Expect them to win, likely more comfortably than England did, but I still think England will beat them later on. Wales I'm just not sure about. The injuries have gutted them no question but one back-to-the wall mongrel performance against either England or Australia will really upset things. Any team can have a bad day and England and Australia would be dumb to assume Wales will roll over.

No surprises today. The Hooper-Pocock combo seems to be working for Australia, though it reduces their options in the line-out and makes them predictable there. Fine for Fiji but Wales and England will look to exploit that.

Big games tomorrow. Wales vs. England and South Africa vs. Samoa.

Anyone for predictions?

South Africa will be aiming to respond to their shock defeat to Japan but I have to say for the first time ever I'm concerned that they don't actually have anything else. They've played five matches this year and won one of them - Argentina away - with the loses including Argentina at home and the Japan upset. Samoa meanwhile ran the All Blacks pretty close at home and when they played in 2011 came close to undoing a much better Springbok team. They are big powerful units and most of them are products of New Zealand rugby, (not to mention most were born and raised here.) When the Boks have their backs to the wall they generally rely on crash-em bash-em rugby but they'll find themselves matched in this regard.

I think with the return of Willie le Roux and a few other playmakers the Boks will have the edge but I also think this is possibly the best opportunity Samoa has had to roll them. With being determined to respond to the Japan game comes the additional pressure and nerves and it may be too much for an unimpressive South African outfit. Either way I don't expect the game to end with all 30 players on the field.

As for Wales vs/ England... who knows? England at home in Twickenham are the favourites but pressure is a funny thing and this is a young England team. Wales have been hit hard with injuries but that gives them an air of "nothing to lose, everything to gain" and they certainly have the ability to beat England. England will want to dominate the midfield so Wales will look to attack on the outside. Will be a great clash of two even teams looking to win in different ways.

My predictions: South Africa by around seven, (too much history to discount the Boks just yet.)
                       Wales by less than five, (predicting the pressure to be too much for England and Wales to go for broke.)


Both games worthy of knock-out matches, (both in many ways are.)

Bring it on!

South Africa routed Samoa. Well done to them for that.

England-Wales seems to be a traditional northern hemisphere three-times-table slug fest. Scores are tied up three quarters into the first half.

Edit: Wales just let in a weak try. Gotta be better than that.

Edit: Half time; England 16, Wales 9. Only that try in it. England don't look to be letting the occasion get to them though Wales finished the half stronger.

I still find England fans singing an old slave song to support their team odd. Waltzing Matilda it ain't.

Edit: WHAT A TRY WALES! Soon to be even 25 each with nine minutes to play!

Edit: Wales ahead by three! Five minutes left!

Edit: One minute! Ty's prediction so far on point!


WALES BEATS ENGLAND AT TWICKENHAM, INJURES AND ALL!!! What a match!

lol england

close enough

The more I think about it the more I think Robshaw's decision to go for the touchline was less brave and more stupid. There was time for a restart to try and position for a penalty or drop goal to take the win and a draw would have been a preferable result over a loss for England. It was an over-estimation of their own ability, maybe a desire to win in one swoop and replicate what other teams had done, but tactically in a crucial World Cup pool match it was dumb.

I mean they threw to the front of the scrum, obviously out of the fear that Wales might nick it even though Wales' lineout wasn't particularly good. Robshaw surely would have known that while throwing the ball at the front of the lineout may give the other side less opportunity to snatch it, it also provides the weakest attacking platform for a rolling maul which he planned to use. Wales responded just as they should have, by shunting the English into touch. That sealed it.

Maybe easy to say in hindsight but I think England's decision making turned to pudding when Wales kept refusing to let them get away and then landed that killer blow that they always seemed to be holding in reserve in the form of Davies' try. For Mike Brown to give away a penalty in kicking range immediately afterwards was bizarre and simply reflects panic. Lancaster wasn't particularly good either. Why, when Wales was clearly the dominant attacking team, would you take off Sam Burgess? I still don't rate him as much of a union player but he still probably represented one of Wales' biggest obstacles and Lancaster replaced him with George Ford, bringing Owen Farrell into the inside centre position. Wales scored their try almost immediately after that because they recognised the chink in the armour this represented. I'm not sure if it was genius or good fortune but either way Lancaster's decision made it easier for them.

I predicted this might happen back in May when England were talking up their ability to win the cup. I tried to point out that winning home World Cups in the professional era is actually really hard given the amount of pressure you're under and that with a young and inexperienced squad that hadn't had a lot of results to boost their sense of belief would have trouble handling it. I asked what would happen if England lost their first big match up. Would the pressure cause them to crumble or would they be able to rally? Now that it's happened I'm still not sure but at least I get to find out.

The gut feeling that made me think Wales would get a narrow win makes me think England's going to pull this out of the fire against Australia. That's IF they can psychologically deal with the pressure of a must-win match. The Wallabies are coming in confident but that confidence isn't really backed up by much. They won the Rugby Championship but it was a half-length tournament and Australia got to play both big rivals at home, both of whom were foxing and experimenting for the World Cup. In the games since they've been utterly flogged by New Zealand and performed nothing better than adequately against lesser sides, including Fiji which gave them a far tougher time than they gave England. Add to that the fact that Australia doesn't perform in hostile territory, particularly when their opponent brings a do-or-die attitude, (though in fairness examples of this have mostly been against the All Blacks.) Cheika's either playing his cards close to his chest or he's bluffing and I'm not sure which. I think the Wallabies of the last few years are at their worst when they're confident and at their best when they're under fire, it will be interesting to see if Cheika has changed this.

I'd feel sorry for England if they're the Pool of Death casualty, they were so confident and it's a tough blow to take at your own tournament. It'd be kind of funny too of course. Easy to feel sorry for England when we mostly beat them but remembering how they act when they get that once-in-a-decade win over us makes me feel better about the prospect of them bowing out early.

Still personally I'd rather they go through than Australia, simply because I don't like the prospect of Australia holding the league, union, and cricket world cups at the same time while enjoying at least four years of taunting us about having more Rugby World Cups than us despite rugby being in our blood and rugby over the Tasman being a third, fourth, or fifth choice sport depending on who you talk to.

Predictions for the rest of the pool:
Wales will beat Fiji. √
England will beat Australia.
Australia will beat Wales.
England will beat Uruguay.

(Fiji will beat Uruguay but that result will have no bearing on anything.)

Wales need a big win against Fiji in case they finish on 14 points with Australia and it comes down to points differential. England simply needs to beat Australia. If Australia loses to England, they need to beat Wales either with a bonus point or by a margin that prevents Wales from getting one. If England does beat Australia and Wales loses to Australia England can take top spot by flogging Uruguay. So many ways it could go.

Of course if Australia beats England this all becomes academic.

Aus will beat England

If England win then that keeps them in it, for that reason I hope AUS win.  If England were to play again I think they Eng would beat Wales that time aswell (as I wrongly predicted last week).  They'll be stronger in the knock out bit.