Week One has provided some excellent rugby, dodgy refereeing and unfortunate injuries.
I think we can all unite around Uruguay as WC champions.
Other competitions are also starting up, so cancel all engagements and be prepared to spend your entire weekend and parts of the midweek glued to the screen. Hopefully not literally.
For those of you who lack rugby preparation skills, let me remind you to order in adequate supplies of booze, fags and possibly food.
Exciting rugby on the telly this week
Friday 27th September
| Cheetahs 48 – 14 Glasgow | 18:05 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Ulster 38 – 14 Ospreys | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Leicester 27 – 7 Exeter | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 28th September
| Argentina 28 – 12 Tonga | 05:45 | ITV |
| Japan 19 – 12 Ireland | 08:15 | ITV |
| South Africa 57 – 3 Namibia | 10:45 | ITV |
| Northampton 32 – 36 Wasps | 15:00 | BT Sport 3 |
| Munster 39 – 3 Drags | 15:00 | Freesports / TG4 |
| Southern Kings 27 – 31 Cardiff Blues | 15:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Scarlets 18 – 10 Connacht | 17:15 | PS2 / S4C / TG4 |
| Treviso 27 – 32 Leinster | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Edinburgh 50 – 15 Zebre | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 29th September
| Georgia 33 – 7 Uruguay | 06:15 | ITV |
| Australia 25 – 29 Wales | 08:45 | ITV / S4C |
Monday 30th September
| Scotland 34 – 0 Samoa | 11:15 | ITV |
Wednesday 2nd October
| France 33 – 9 USA | 08:45 | ITV4 |
| New Zealand 63 – 0 Canada | 11:15 | ITV4 |
Thursday 3rd October
| Georgia 10 – 45 Fiji | 06:15 | ITV4 |
| Ireland 35 – 0 Russia | 11:15 | ITV |
Ovally Balls 
Man the Graun comments section has gone downhill.
Lots of people making comments along the lines of “Hah hah Farrell got a taste of his own medicine”.
Don’t recall Farrell ever doing something like that (regardless of the questionable legality of some of his hits in the past) but either way I can’t understand taking joy at something that could have ended the world cup for someone.
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Guardian Pick. Discuss:
Daly has been involved in most of the good things that have happened to the England backs and has only made one error when he overran Henry for a walk-in try. he is nailed on for the 15 swipe.
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I kinda see what they are trying to do with Daly.
Farrell at 12 is more of a distributor than a runner. Manu is certainly a runner, but one who targets the inside shoulder and uses the cut and step.
They are trying to get Daly on the outside arcing run to put the wingers away.
Personally, I would have Manu 12, JJ 13 and Watson 15. But this means choosing Farrell or Ford at 10 and benching the other. Eddie doesn’t fancy this, so Daly at 15 is an attempt to compensate. I dont think it is working that well (yet) but I get the reasoning
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@FF
Don’t think about it. The Graun BTL is always disgusting during a world cup.
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@Utna
I still think the answer is swap Watson for Daly. Job done.
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Oooh oooh oooh:
Where are the matches being played- I wonder if I can attend this in the guise of visiting Mrs. Cat’s ‘Merican relatives. She can spend time with them, I’ll take FEFH to the games.
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I have absolutely no time at all for Daly at FB. Defensively (under high ball and last man tackler) he is just too poor. Watson is looking very sharp at the moment, so I’d definitely start him there.
This leaves us with the same old England centres debate, because our two best options at centre – JJ and Manu – are both OCs. Personally, I’d play Manu at OC as a first choice because he’s a special player and that’s his best position. JJ is looking sharp again, so it’s great to have him as cover on the bench. You then play a distributor inside – Slade or Faz.
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@Thaum,
Sent you an email about WheresTheMatch.
(And nicely down with the pome, too…)
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Dab – I’m actually very happy with our centres. Pick any combination to suit the game plan and opposition imo.
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Apparently you can get tourist visas to Saudi Arabia now. I think it would be quite a hard sell to the rest of my family tbh.
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DAB, I think they like Daly’s left boot as well. A good option for clearance kicks and those 50+ metre goal attempts. Is Watson’s defence that much better? He was caught out v Scotland, France and Ireland in the last Championship he played at 15 for England.
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15. Damien Hoyland 14. Jamie Farndale 13. Mark Bennett 12. Matt Scott 11. Duhan van der Merwe 10. Jaco van der Walt 9. Nic Groom* CAPTAIN
1. Pierre Schoeman 2. Dave Cherry 3. Pietro Ceccarelli 4. Fraser McKenzie 5. Murray Douglas 6. Lewis Carmichael 7. Luke Crosbie 8. Nick Haining*
Replacements: 16. Mike Willemse* 17. Jamie Bhatti* 18. Murray McCallum (49) 19. Mesu Kunavula* 20. Ally Miller (8) 21. Charlie Shiel (6) 22. Simon Hickey (19) 23. George Taylor (4)
Unavailable due to injury: James Johnstone, Ruan Steenkamp, Ross McCann, Jack Blain, Hamish Watson, Chris Dean
Unavailable due to international selection: W.P Nel, Simon Berghan, Stuart McInally, Grant Gilchrist, Ben Toolis, Jamie Ritchie, Magnus Bradbury, John Barclay, Blair Kinghorn, Darcy Graham, Henry Pyrgos, Viliame Mata
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That YOUR Edinburgh team to face Zebre, btw
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* = debutant ?
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TomP yeah.
Oh btw, I have something for you, I’ll just go get it
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Here you go, the Glasgow stats guy has teamed up with his Cardiff equivalent and they produced all the Pro 14 stats you could wish for. There is a ton of info in there. It’s an on-going job and will continue to grow
https://cardiffrfcfans.com/competition_fixtures.php?competitionsID=1&seasonID=24
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You can almost guarantee that this team will be clowned by the Kingz:
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That’s brill. Thanks.
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@ticht
Tom, the fella behind the CardiffRFCfans site, has been doing it for a long, long time, probably 20 odd years now. Always the place to go if you want to see Nige’s homering stats.
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Isn’t that the midget that was supposed to be the next big thing in Welsh Rugby? Was wondering what had happened to him.
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So I believe, yosoy, Disco/Top of The Moon/Kevin, the Glasgow guy, says
“A little thing I’ve been working on with Tom who runs the CRFC Fans site – all match and player data from the last 2 PRO14 seasons out of my spreadsheets and into the website which can produce all kinds of interesting stuff including visualisations of how players compare to the average performances for their positions.
The plan is to run this through the 2019/20 season. It’s a work in progress and it will be interesting to see where it goes so if you like stats or cool/nerdy visualisations then take a look at”
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Cat, he can be lethal, for both sides
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Some really useless trivia:
That substitute scrum half for the USA was Ruben de Haas. His dad Pieter played for Grey College and South Africa schools in the 1980s. And in 1985 played opposite future World Cup winner Joel Stransky in the Grey v Maritzburg College match,
Also in that game Jeremy Thompson for Maritzburg and Frans Cronje, Chearing Hansie’s big bro,
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He’s fun to watch – as a non-partisan. This cracker from last year stands out:
https://www.epcrugby.com/2018/12/13/stunning-morgan-try-named-best-of-round-2/
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Any reason he hasn’t progressed to international level? Just curious cos I remember some serious embiggening being done.
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@Tomp – Watson is certainly no Halfpenny/ Brown, But Daly is seriously flaky.
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He’s played Tests. We’ve got better outside halves and full backs is the simple answer.
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Pro- are you copying and pasting the same comments here and in the Graun?
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“He’s played Tests. We’ve got better outside halves and full backs is the simple answer.”
I’m a big fan of Nipper, he’s probably the best broken field runner, but if you are picking a test team and you have Anscome, Biggar, Priestland, Liambility and 1/2p available, he isn’t going to get a place.
I’ve probably missed others too
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Patchell for starters
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Georgia have made loads of changes for the game v Uruguay so it could be on for Los Teros, who have opted to change only 2 in the pack. Georgia have only 3 days rest before their match v Fiji while Uruguay are playing Wednesday and Sunday.
Rather than making the big teams play with shorter breaks so it’s a bit more equal with the Tier 2ers it would be better just to ensure everyone has at least 4 or 5 days’ break between games.
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CMW says Sam Davies and Dan Evans.
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Ticht,
Curwin Bosch might go the same way as Morgan. A delightful player at schools/age group level and a gorgeous runner but with pronounced weaknesses at pro level.
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Nipper can be a quite brilliant runner – it’s some Shane/Cheslin level shit if he’s in the right frame of mind, but he doesn’t have much ticker. Those two – and other undersized players like Graham etc. – don’t shy out of contact the way he does when he’s not in the right headspace.
I never saw him as a future superstar as he is incredibly flawed and his all round game is very poor for someone who has played so much 10 – that was obvious from the first watch. His passing is below average for a professional back and his kicking is poor. There’s no point talking about his defence as it’s well below his other attributes and it’ll only make me angry.
Summary: he’s Pro14 impact sub level, no more. Fun to watch on occasions but he was never going to be a 50 capper or better and I’m very much looking forward to having Amos wear 15 at Legend Arms Park.
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But from last week’s English games, this is brilliant by Damian Willemse:
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Phil Dolman
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Desmond Swayne MP for New Forest West has written a blog post:
“I suspect that Justin Trudeau’s cringing apology for blacking himself ‘blinded by his own white privilege’ has done him rather more harm than the original offence.
It was a themed ‘Arabian Nights’ fancy-dress party for heaven’s sake!
It comes to something when you can’t dress-up as Aladdin without attracting the opprobrium of the ‘great and good’. He would have done better to have said it was an entirely acceptable bit of fun and refused to apologise.
I once went to a ‘Blues Brothers’ themed fancy-dress party as James Brown. I went to some trouble to be as authentic as possible. I can assure readers of this column that I have no intention of apologising.”
Just be glad Dessie isn’t the MP for the whole of the New Forest.
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“CMW says Sam Davies and Dan Evans.”
CMW was asleep in bed, ill. He actually looks tentatively at today’s teamsheets and says:
“Luke Price?”
Without knowing who he is.
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Callum Hunter-Hill at number 19 for Sarries there, TomP
I cannot fathom why Edinburgh loaned him out for a whole season when we’ve got the world cup and the 6N this year, there must be a story behind it as we have brought in a couple of guys who, err, are not tipped to be future Scotland stars like CH-H is, lets put it that way
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Bless you.
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CMW’s mates from Ystradgynlais say Owen Williams.
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@Cat – you’d better start practising it now for when you need it at the end of the tournament.
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Cat – I noticed it too but didn’t want to say anything in case he’s copying someone else. Which could be totes awks.
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@CMW-
How much gravel does one have to consume to be able to pronounce it properly?
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Just Deebeed my lunch. No use to anyone right now.
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@Craigs – it’s not made up, it’s just Welsh. People do learn it by copying others though, just like other languages.
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@CMW He’s talking about Pro either copypastaing someone called Blackfiresolutions in t’graun or being both accounts and posting the same thing twice in two places.
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BFS is ‘pro and ‘pro is BFS. No great mystery about it.
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