Here comes the World Cup! Oh, and an English Premiership Cup match too.
Exciting rugby on the telly this week
Friday 20th September
| Japan 30 – 10 Russia | 11:45 | ITV / S4C |
Saturday 21st September
| Australia 39 – 21 Fiji | 05:45 | ITV |
| France 23 – 21 Argentina | 08:15 | ITV |
| New Zealand 23 – 13 S Africa | 10:45 | ITV |
| Exeter 28 – 14 Bath | 15:15 | BT Sport 3 |
Sunday 22nd September
| Italy 47 – 22 Namibia | 06:15 | ITV |
| Ireland 27 – 3 Scotland | 08:45 | ITV |
| England 35 – 3 Tonga | 11:15 | ITV |
Monday 23rd September
| Wales 43 – 14 Georgia | 11:15 | ITV / S4C |
Tuesday 24th September
| Russia 9 – 34 Samoa | 11:15 | ITV4 |
Wednesday 25th September
| Fiji 27 – 30 Uruguay | 06:15 | ITV4 |
Thursday 26th September
| Italy 48 – 7 Canada | 08:45 | ITV4 |
| England 45 – 7 USA | 11:45 | ITV |
Ovally Balls 
which is why they are heroes. To a man.
This is a good point
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Price might be out too – ankle problem apparently.
This is all going swimmingly, isn’t it?
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I think the idea England were pish is just click bait hyperbole. They put some great attacks together, then ruined them with loads of handling errors. If a few of those had stuck it would have been a big win. Frustrating to watch, but different from previous occasions when they’ve looked lost, when the breakdown or set pieces looked incoherent, when they looked as though they hardly knew each other. If they’re still making the basic errors in the next couple of games, then it’ll be time to worry (more than I usually do). For now, first game over, start catching the ball, and move on…
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2003 world cup England got mighty frightened by Samoa and plucky little Wales. Still won it.
One handling-error-strewn display isn’t cause for panic.
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I think they were pish. The penalty after the first try was completely fucking inept. It looked like they’d never met before, for instance.
I might have the FEAR, based on previous tourneys. One thing I will say, though, is that they didn’t look heavy-legged/ knackered, which is definitely an improvement from 2015,
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One thing about Scotland’s “performance”, that Ticht sort of touched on, was the amount of tackles that they seemed to just fall off. I’d imagine that’s a fairly easy area to improve, though.
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Exactly. England are very well prepared albeit with some honing to be done, but the order of the group fixtures is perfect for this. The vibe for want of a better word is so much better from England this time round – far better than 2011 and 2015 when an implosion was a wished-for possibility that could actually come true.
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An implosion this time around is impossible to imagine.
Were they heavy-legged and knackered looking in 2015? They just got beat in a close game against plucky injury-decimated Wales. If they’d won that, things would have been different. Tactical nonsense and an opponent that refused to lie down were all that it took.
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@yosoy, I think Parkes has an ongoing problem with hand bone injuries?
Underneath the bluff and big talk Gats must be shitting himself if Hill has to go home, because flying him out there in the first place pinpoints our lack of depth and quality at lock. Is Charteris is still alive?
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Twas ever thus with England – don’t let them walk away with it and then see how they cope when Plan A isn’t working under high pressure.
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Anyway in less happy news I was apprehended and booked by 3 police officers today. Luckily I had proof of identity with me otherwise I might have been marched off. Feeling like a criminal now, and ashamed of my errant behaviour.
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Apparently it is illegal to feed the ducks on the pond.
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@iksy
The police officers mothers must be very proud of what their offspring are doing with their lives.
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I am seething with rant when I see the shit people get up to around that pond. The comical thing is the cops were loitering and chatting there, and I said ‘Guten Tag’ before I started feeding the ducks.
I also saw the funny side of 3 coppers booking me in front of about 15 ducks 1 meter away just looking and waiting like silent witnesses.
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When we were in Bavaria in the summer, we went for a walk in the Bayerische Wald. Very politely, I thought, I greeted an old guy with a hearty ‘Guten Tag’ and he scowlingly replied ‘ grüß Gott’. I said to my missus, who speaks the Deutsch, that the geezer wasn’t polite and must have hated foreigners, one of which he’d clocked me as being because of my not very authentic accent. ‘Nah, he probably thought you were from Hamburg,’ was her reply.
Anyway, the coppers in Paderborn were very polite when we spoke to them last year. Even allowed us to take a photo of them with our lad.
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Slade, I like the idea of Slade at 15 more than Daly, tbh. I think daly is a lovely rugby player, but he keeps doing little daft things that annoy me. I was pleased to see that he took all his high balls yesterday, as usually he either misses them entirely or drops them, but he lets the ball die too often when he could pass, or tries a little grubber. there were several examples of doing it right, May for Manu’s second try, and Joseph for LCD, where they finished clinically, drawing the man and putting in a certain try scoring pass. Slade to Daly would have been exactly the same, your boy drew the last man perfectly, and just hesitated enough to hold up the cover, before popping a perfect flat pass to where Daly should have been. He also has a habit of fluffing tackles.May, Watson and Nowell should all be ahead of him on the flanks, and also Big Joe. Would be happy to see Slade or Watson at 15.
DCI, I didn’t think it was that bad either, just stoking the KittyFear.
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Illegal to feed the ducks? How else can you make em fat and tasty ?
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Daly’s a wing or a centre, not a FB. He doesn’t seem to see the space from FB the way someone like Watson or Liam Williams does. I’m still not sure why Eddie’s picking them like this.
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@Iks
He had a compound fracture of the finger out in Argentina last year. No idea if this is in a related area.
Sadly, Clarteris has just retired. Bradley is playing as if he’s older than Methuselah and Seb Davies hasn’t come on as I’d hoped. Pickings are slim.
Scott Andrews has played a bit of lock, you’ll be pleased to know.
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I’ve just had a dekko at the pool standings, and Italy are top of their pool – that being, of course, the one that includes the ABs and the Boks! They must be relishing this moment.
Gutted for Hamish, that is awful.
Again, I only got to follow today’s match through the Graun’s live blog of it. Wish I’d seen Biggar’s comedy conversion attempt, although well done to him for not letting it affect him.
As for ducks, I’m under the impression that bread is actually not very good for ducks, and that’s why duck-feeding has been banned in some places?
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A quick google suggest you’re right, thaum. Gives them angel wing, apparently. Them German coppers are bloody heroes.
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It’s not very good for garden birds either, and nor is anything with any salt, as birds can’t process salt. Or maybe this is a theory put out by the RSPB to convince you to buy their bird food.
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If we are talking about what to feed birds, I can confirm that chickens love to eat bbq chicken wings.
They’ll attack people for them. Probably, not good for them either.
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Ah, the sickly stench of Big Bird Protection* up to its old tricks. We need our top people on this.
* When I say ” Big Bird Protection” I don’t mean ostriches or Big Bird, but the Big Bird Protection like Big Pharma.
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I didn’t purposefully feed chickens to themselves BTW.
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“chickens love to eat bbq chicken wings”
My good lord. That’s horrible.
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I think the criminal mastermind that is Iks has been feeding the ducks proper bird food – in fact, I seem to remember him talking about buying tons of it at one point. Probably has barns full of the bloody stuff.
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I should probably explain…..
We had 4 chickens and as they sometimes do one of them got a small cut on their body. We woke up to find that the other chickens had pecked it to fuck and took it to the vet. It survived and we had to spray it with something that smelled like Oregano to put the other chickens off.
But they’d had their taste of their blood and flesh and started eating their eggs*. One weekend we had a bbq. My son dropped a wing he was eating and in the midst of trying to clear it up one of the chooks got to it first.
From then on we couldn’t have bbq wings without fighting off the birds. To the extent that we’d lock them in their enclosure to eat.
*it was at this point that Mrs Craig’s fell out of love with our flock. I miss them however.
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BB – ha, I suspected our Iks would have been more sensible, but a law is a law, and if a bread-bearing person sees a seed-bearing person allowed to feed the ducks, then anarchy could break loose!
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I’ve not heard of any foodstuffs that chickens *won’t* eat. I’m sure they’d eat us if they thought they could get away with it.
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I have friends who keep chickens and ducks for the eggs and as pets. (They don’t eat them, and the chickens are generally rescued from battery operations.)
The chickens are all hens and not a problem. The ducks, however, are mixed-sex, and the males are brutal rapists. After they’d killed a female, my friends ended up keeping the sexes separate.
The friends also maintain that ‘free-range, organic’ poultry are an impossibility as poultry will eat bloody anything they can find, so are not maintaining an approved organic diet if they are indeed free-range.
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(I should clarify that it was the male ducks and not my friends who killed a female.)
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Thaum – ours were egg giving pets until the badness started. Then they were just pets.
Then they died and weren’t replaced. Because of the badness.
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Easier to just have a cat. They don’t give you eggs, mind.
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Craigs – clearly the solution would be to flavour your chicken wings with oregano.
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Cats are The Enemy.
Since my dog died, I’ve invested in a bird-feeding station as a dog-substitute, and the bloody neighbourhood cats lurk in the shrubbery and try to kill the poor wee birds – and sometimes succeed.
I did have the pleasure of seriously soaking one of the fuckers a while back, as I just happened to have the hose handy.
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Craigs – clearly the solution would be to flavour your chicken wings with oregano.
I think we did this. But the Oregano crisped up and the smell of their cooked brethren drove them crazy.
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Hmm. It seems that chickens are just smaller pigs with feathers.
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Mrs Craig’s has pretty much vetoed pigs as pets.
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More observant viewers will remember the members of the self-titled “Intellectual Dark Web” did not arouse especially strong feelings of sympathy on AOD. Billy Bragg has just done the clearest, yet polite takedown of one of their number on Facebook – I think this link should work:
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Craigs – but they can round up sheep, and everything!
Said friends also have pigs on their land, although it’s sublet for the purpose. The piglets are awfy cute when they’re small, but I don’t fancy jumping into the pen as they reach maturity.
They’ve got alpacas and sheep too, which are less threatening. Although the sheep weren’t keen on the alpacas when they arrived, and tried to beat them up.
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OT – can’t see that link as it’s presumably FB-based.
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@thaum
not sure how a public post works as a link on here – embeds on my chrome browser here mind. I shall bow to those with superior website knowledge to explain why it might not work……
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Alpacas and sheep are less threatening? You sure about that?
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OT – it’s self-inflicted by me, as I’ve blocked Facebook on my computer.
Now to watch the menacing sheep. :-)
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OT – the post has come out fine. Clearly Thaum is the sensible one amongst us.
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That was interesting, OT. Thanks for the link.
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BB – well, as I mentioned, the sheep (at least one of the two they have!) did try to attack the three much larger alpacas. But that’s a ram in your video.
Here’s a bad pig:
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OT – ugh. There’s quite a bit that’s wrong there. Eric Weinstein created the term as a joke but then decided that he was somehow a serious public figure. But really he has nothing to say.
It wasn’t ‘launched’ either. Bari Weiss did a column on it but it wasn’t something they got together and organised. Joe Rogan said that he was literally on the way to the Comedy Store when his photo was taken.
Dave Rubin is the lowest hanging fruit as well. He seems so fucking confused right now. Even libertarians think he’s an eejit.
Most of the more serious people in that group only use ‘IDW’ as a joke. Some use it seriously to further themselves, but it is such a wide net that it becomes meaningless. The synts at the Majority Report also use it to further themselves creating a load of straw men to rail against.
Tbh it is meaningless. I’m not even sure what there is to ‘take down’.
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@Thaum
Ah. So you mean ewes then?
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