Rugby thread (6 Nations, Heineken Cup etc)

[Captain Novaforce]

Ridiculous score line, and that's with 3 failed conversions!

[McFly]

Scotland showed some great play, Russell at his almost best after misfiring last week, a team performance from top to bottom. Bonus points could be crucial.

 

Tomorrow's game, if Italy are disciplined could be a good one

[g wings]

1 hour ago, Matt Defis said:

Wales have been absolutely shocking this second half, not sure what to expect really considering how bad things are with the WRU and rugby in general in Wales. Not even the great Warren Gatland can sort this shit out and it's going to be years before it's sorted. 

Bring back Pivac, all is forgiven!

 

But in all seriousness Wales are awful. Our defence has more dog legs than crufts and our play going forward seems to lose 10 yards with every pass. And stop fucking box kicking.

 

 

[Rattlehead.ie]

It can't be easy to watch for any Welsh fan, as there are talented players out there to pick from.

Until the whole regional/club/area feeding into the National team is sorted I feel Wales will struggle for mich longer than needed.

[g wings]

23 minutes ago, Rattlehead.ie said:

It can't be easy to watch for any Welsh fan, as there are talented players out there to pick from.

Until the whole regional/club/area feeding into the National team is sorted I feel Wales will struggle for mich longer than needed.

True but the welsh structure has been broken for decades. But for a while we had a very strong group of talent that were just waiting for a good system to play in. Gatland provided that and they got the rewards for a good 10 year period. 

[Matt Defis]

Anybody want to call it because I'm not totally sure. 

[Matt Defis]

Well i didn't think Wales could beat England but now it looks like it might not even happen as it looks like Welsh players might strike.

[glb]

Was reading about the strike earlier. Had seen snippets of the issues in Welsh rugby but no idea things were so bad.

[Matt Defis]

Huge amounts of the Welsh team/region players currently have no contracts, the WRU has counted on international games to pay for the regions and its players for years now and COVID really fucked that.

 

Instead of realising years ago that nobody gives a fuck about the regions, nobody wants to support them, go see them, watch them on TV, they've used peoples love of the national squad and the money that brings in to paper over the cracks when they should have cut their losses and done something much more financially viable and supported by the Welsh people.

 

I think we're getting to the inevitable end of the regions now, I think they'll desolve the 4 regions down to 2 which will be Cardiff and Scarlets and even less people will support them and they'll be completely financially unviable and we'll fall back into clubs being the top tier in Wales while they figure out what to do next. 

 

Edit: FFS, the WRU bright idea to save themselves from this shower of shit is to merge the Dragons with Ealing (yes the club in England)  and have the Dragons play in London. On what fucking planet are these people on? Pay your players first you clowns.

 

[disperse and recoagulate]

Jack Welsby the GOAT. Makes Ben Barba look like Alfie Seeley. 

[merman]

Really hope the Welsh players get a good settlement and the strikes are avoided.

[g wings]

That Welsh team selection is surprising. Got to hand it to Warren, it's a bold call.

[Matt Defis]

After seeing Italy perform i don't think Wales are going to win a game this year. 

[g wings]

5 hours ago, Matt Defis said:

After seeing Italy perform i don't think Wales are going to win a game this year. 

Agreed. I thought Wales were absolutely awful today. Honestly whoever is coaching the scrum halfs to endlessly box-kick needs to be fired. I reckon we hand over possession 9 times out of 10 and seem to gain 10-15 metres at most. Woeful. 

And I’ve looked forward to seeing Owen Williams at fly half for a long time but he blew it. Looked panicked, bad kicking and couldn’t wait to get rid of the ball every time it came to him.

 

[Rattlehead.ie]

57 minutes ago, g wings said:

And I’ve looked forward to seeing Owen Williams at fly half for a long time but he blew it. Looked panicked, bad kicking and couldn’t wait to get rid of the ball every time it came to him.

 

I'd generally tend to agree here, I've watched him play and looked promising, but the only thing I'll say in his defence was that as a scrum/out half behind a pack that just isn't firing it's insanely difficult.  England weren't great either, it's just back to big bang bosh rugby. I'm glad Ireland have them last.

Game tomorrow will be interesting. 

[g wings]

1 hour ago, Rattlehead.ie said:

I'd generally tend to agree here, I've watched him play and looked promising, but the only thing I'll say in his defence was that as a scrum/out half behind a pack that just isn't firing it's insanely difficult.  England weren't great either, it's just back to big bang bosh rugby. I'm glad Ireland have them last.

Game tomorrow will be interesting. 

Yes, but he was literally shipping it out blind just to avoid pressure. He had a bad start, put in two awful kicks and then unfortunately his confidence was shot. He should get more game time but probably as a sub when wakes are already winning (if that happens again).

[McFly]

Great game this afternoon, wipes away the stain of yesterday's late game 

 

 

 

[merman]

On 26/02/2023 at 16:39, McFly said:

Great game this afternoon, wipes away the stain of yesterday's late game 

 

 

 

 

Thought it was going to be ruined as a contest by the first red card, but both sides were going for it.

 

A long ban for the French prop helps England too.

[McFly]

11 hours ago, merman said:

 

Thought it was going to be ruined as a contest by the first red card, but both sides were going for it.

 

A long ban for the French prop helps England too.

Same here. The Scottish one could maybe have been a yellow but I dunno. The French was definitely a red card as it was head to head and blatant attack. The thing that impressed me a lot was the ref and toich judges discussed these big decisions and listened to eachother and came to.the right conclusions, great stuff.

[Matt Defis]

The WRU saga isn't over and striking seems to be still on the table, Haskell on the GBR podcast has been great, didn't realise he'd lead 2 possible strikes in the past for players at Wasps and England, I'm horribly depressed by all this, it should have been sorted out ages ago and how it's taken so long to get here is beyond me. Welsh rugby is going to be in a very dark place for a good few years I think.

[g wings]

The Welsh set-up is horribly out of date and has been an embarrassment for over 40 years. I remember years and years of getting routinely demolished by the Southern Hemisphere and getting trounced by England and England regularly. To the point that people around the game wondered if the Celtic nations would ever compete again and kept pursuing the idea of a tiered competition. Ireland sorted their shit out. Scotland Are having a purple patch. 

 

The general public don't help though. It's so Welsh to refuse to get behind the regions even if that is literally the last chance for survival. 

[Matt Defis]

The regions thing was never going to work, there isn't a region north of the M4, it's was and is insane to think for example that the people in the valleys would go and support Cardiff, it will never happen, Nelson RFC is 10 minutes up the road from me in Pontypridd and they're in the Dragons region even though they're half the distance away to Cardiff rather than Newport, it was all so badly thought out.

 

It's easy to see why the regions worked in Ireland, the regions names and places exist and it's something the people there can get behind, if the WRU copied the Irish model they way they thought they were going to then we should have had A South West Wales Ospreys, A South East Wales Warriors and a North Wales Dragons with those teams alternating between the big rugby grounds in that area, instead we got the amazing idea of Cardiff and Llanelli and everyone within 40 miles of those new clubs should go support them, it was silly.

 

Some of the Welsh international players have been told this week their wages will go from 250k a year to 30k a year, that's fucking crazy and one of the Welsh inrternational players in the current Welsh sqaud was told this week at Cardiff RFC that they can't offer him a contract because the offer was so small that they thought it would be insulting to him, it's completely fucked.

[g wings]

2 hours ago, Matt Defis said:

The regions thing was never going to work, there isn't a region north of the M4, it's was and is insane to think for example that the people in the valleys would go and support Cardiff, it will never happen, Nelson RFC is 10 minutes up the road from me in Pontypridd and they're in the Dragons region even though they're half the distance away to Cardiff rather than Newport, it was all so badly thought out.

 

It's easy to see why the regions worked in Ireland, the regions names and places exist and it's something the people there can get behind, if the WRU copied the Irish model they way they thought they were going to then we should have had A South West Wales Ospreys, A South East Wales Warriors and a North Wales Dragons with those teams alternating between the big rugby grounds in that area, instead we got the amazing idea of Cardiff and Llanelli and everyone within 40 miles of those new clubs should go support them, it was silly.

 

Some of the Welsh international players have been told this week their wages will go from 250k a year to 30k a year, that's fucking crazy and one of the Welsh inrternational players in the current Welsh sqaud was told this week at Cardiff RFC that they can't offer him a contract because the offer was so small that they thought it would be insulting to him, it's completely fucked.

I know it’s not exactly the same but the premiership is proof you can move clubs around geographically and still build a

fan base. The welsh fans would rather stay away from the regions (with squads full of great talent) and see the game fail than give in. They don't exactly flock to club games either. Apathy and belligerence I’m afraid. 
 

But yes, could have been set up far far better at the start to try and get the foundations right.
 

As for the current issue; it’s awful and the player drain is going to be very significant you would think. But if the game is financially sustainable how does this get solved? 

[Matt Defis]

I still go watch my local club of Pontypridd weekly since I had to stop playing, you get a good crowd of about 6k people for each game at Sardis road, I'm not sure you get that many going to see each regional team.

[g wings]

11 hours ago, Matt Defis said:

I still go watch my local club of Pontypridd weekly since I had to stop playing, you get a good crowd of about 6k people for each game at Sardis road, I'm not sure you get that many going to see each regional team.

That’s my point. The game can’t survive if even the most popular clubs only get a few thousand people even if everything was run well.  

[Fry Crayola]

On 03/03/2023 at 09:54, Matt Defis said:

It's easy to see why the regions worked in Ireland, the regions names and places exist and it's something the people there can get behind

 

Very much so, the four provinces are well embedded in our sporting psyche through the GAA provincial championships in both football and hurling, and even in soccer they're used to regionalise the non-league structure.

[Matt Defis]

17 hours ago, g wings said:

That’s my point. The game can’t survive if even the most popular clubs only get a few thousand people even if everything was run well.  

 

The regions completely split the fanbase, it was even worse for Cardiff and Llanelli, who did you watch Cardiff RFC or Cardiff Blues and the same for Llanelli and Scarlets, those clubs should have probably been swallowed up as regions entirely to keep all those supporters in one place. 

[Matt Defis]

A win is a win but I don't really know what to make of that, Rhys Webb was fantastic though. 

[Rattlehead.ie]

Without offense I think Italy lost that game rather than Wales win it. Agreed though R.Webb was something that Wales needed 

[dug]

On the other hand, this is France winning the match rather than England losing...