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 
Cat
France should be at least ‘meh’.
There was some decent play there, and many of us thought they’d lose that game.
ps. you missed Canada, who are ‘shit’.
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Explanation from rugby refs uk here http://therugbyref.blogspot.com/2017/03/a-query-on-penalty-tries.html
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Cat – Yes. Which makes me feel very old.
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I like that it’s called the Beam Me Up Scotty approach
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@Dov
Christ, me too. Thought it was- he looks like his old man.
@Pro- see the thing is they were OK for half and then absolute raging dogshit for half. I need to see another match from them to put them up. At the moment, they’re very marginally shit- the most marginal of the lot of them.
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And can’t believe I missed Canada. Sorry Dog.
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This is great news: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/sep/30/jonathan-strange-and-mr-norrell-author-return-susanna-clarke-piranesi
I really liked JS&MN
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yeah. especially since France beat Argentina so cant really be shit when Argentina get a meh.
Its like you haven’t put any serious thought into this Cat.
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Think I’ve been rumbled.
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France haven’t played their second match yet. Argentina have. Can’t reasonably promote them until they fist the USA like Fisto onna Fisting Rampage.
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NZ: Good
SA: Good
Italy: Good
Group of Death!
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There was another incident where Gordy Reid was carrying very close to the line, less than a metre out, the ball was kicked out of his hands, or not so much kicked as deliberately dislodged with. Samoan foot, that could have been another penalty try, but it’s difficult to say without seeing it again
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Ticht – Richard Thompson will 70 (!) soon, and is doing a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. Nice interview below:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/sep/30/richard-thompson-at-70-on-love-loss-and-being-a-muslim-in-trump-us
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How come Italy get ‘good’ for thrashing 2 minnows and England only get ‘meh’ for doing the same?
Not that I’m taking this at all seriously.
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Cos we should expect more from England. Anyway, when NZ stick 80 points on Italy, I’ll drop them straight to shit.
What do you mean you’re not taking it seriously. That took me literally seconds.
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That long?
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Cat – if we are thinking about it :
Wales – winners
The rest – losers
That’s how it will be.
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That took me minutes.
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What more could we have expected from England? We duffed up 2 terrible teams without breaking sweat.
Don’t get me wrong, we’re losing to one of France or Argentina and going out in the quarters to Wales but we should be ‘good’ for now at least.
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Wales did look good yesterday.
Australia looked good as well for a half
Don’t fancy either in the quarters.
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@Ticht – I do see your point, but isn’t the condition for a penalty try that a probable try has been prevented by an offence? In this case, yes there was an offence, but it (in my opinion, and this is very debatable) the offence was not what caused Maitland to lose the ball. Therefore the penalty try is not merited.
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Dov – really? We’ve digged both those teams recently without breaking a sweat too. I hope this doesn’t jinx us. I’m saving the jinxing for someone else. Obviously who that is is a secret.
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The All Blacks won’t put eightily on Italy, because they’re gonna try to lose so the Boks don’t go through. It’s their only chance of winning the whole thing. Except of course Ireland will stuff them up their holes in the QF when they rush Rettallick back too soon and he’s further off the pace than a Prius in an F1 race and a ref finally has the guts to ping Joe Moody for his illegal scrumming at every scrum.
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Well I’m jinxing the Boks on my own, so you’ll have to find someone else Craigs. #RUMBLED!
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Dan,
He clearly had the ball under control and was sliding towards the line until he was hit. I don’t think it was an unreasonable inference that the hit caused the fumble.
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Deebs – sorry, the boks don’t need jinxing.
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The person that complained about Naga Munchetty and the racism thing needs to have a good long look at themselves in the mirror. They complained TWICE- and the second has this in it:
The BBC should have told him to sling his hook.
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Our recent record against Wales isn’t all that. Australia will be tougher at a world cup. I don’t fancy our chances at all on neutral territory,
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cat – that whole episode is just fucking stupid from the BBC.
Load of total bollocks.
Bag of wank.
Pile of toss.
That is to say, I’m generally not in agreement with their actions,
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@Dov- and I don’t think we’ve lost to Australia in ages. I think it might be 2015 was the last one. Well overdue.
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@Dov- I saw the whole interview, and how she can possibly be in trouble for saying that, as a BAME woman, racist words and phrases are racist is absolutely absurd.
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yes. Absurd as well.
My descriptions were better though.
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But Oz have a big victory over the ABs on their recent record. We’ve got chuckiung away massive leads over Scotland and a couple of defeats to Wales.
Worry worry worry.
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I’ve barely been following this but isn’t the accusation that she shouldn’t be seen to be biased. Even though she is entitled to her opinion.
It’s a way to get at her and I think it’s racially motivated. Or just a way to pwn the libs. But it’s also a silly mistake to make no?
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The whole thing is stupid. She was asked, specifically, as a minority woman what those phrases mean to her. She answered. The fact that it is stunningly obvious what those phrases means to anyone, regardless of pigmentation, is not the point. Saying that telling someone to “go back where they came from” is racist is such an overwhelmingly simple and clearly correct answer that it’s massively unjust to punish her for it.
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I don’t know how she could have been impartial.
Trump uses racist language but remember the alternative facts, type of thing?
‘sbollocks.
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Maybe she could have blamed herself for taking offence and offered the counter point that Trump might just be a bit misunderstood?
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“I do see your point, but isn’t the condition for a penalty try that a probable try has been prevented by an offence? In this case, yes there was an offence, but it (in my opinion, and this is very debatable) the offence was not what caused Maitland to lose the ball. Therefore the penalty try is not merited.”
Dab, at the risk of labouring this, it isn’t “my” point, it’s the guidelines in the laws. The “Beam me up Scotty” guidelines mean that you take the Samoan winger off the pitch, he doesn’t exist, so there is no one there to tackle Maitland, no need for the dive short of the line and therefor a try would definitely have been scored. Whether we agree with those guidelines or not is not really relevant here.
However, Maitland clearly had control of the ball until the winger slid into him, it was dislodged after contact, we could argue whether or not the contact caused the loss of possession, but one thing did happen after the other
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@Dov- as soon as wosshisname asked her about her personal reaction to the actual words used she was in trouble. I have no idea how she could’ve got out of it. To be honest, I also don’t see why she should have to get out of it, either, and don’t even think that what she said showed political bias.
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do we beam him up from the point he offends or retrospectively for the entire passage of play?
If its the first play of the game and he gets a red he’s effectively never taken the pitch. Maybe gets no cap and can be replaced?
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Probably could have said that she couldn’t give an opinion as a BBC journo.
But that would mean non white employees being forced to swallow this sort of thing. There probably needs to be a change in the guidelines tbh.
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There is a lot of Aussie whinging BTL on the Match report for the Wales loss
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Maybe a caveat could allow journos to give opinions on all things. I. E. ‘me personally’. This should be in the guidelines so that it’s clear the BBC has no opinion but the journo does.
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ref blaming?
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If BBC employees aren’t meant to offer opinions then BBC Breakfast needs to scrap that excruciating light hearted chat they do between news pieces. It’s arse clenchingly awful.
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Cheers for the link, BB.
It’s a bit weird to think of RT as 70, he’s always been “about 40” in my head, even when he was younger than that
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@Craigs- she said specifically that she was commenting “as a black woman”. I have no idea how she could have been more explicit.
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Also, there was ONE fucking complaint. I mean, really, ffs. One sad sack with too much time on his hands (blatantly his), complained. Out of millions.
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Cat, the complaint just sounds like a “what about the white male Christian straight pride?” thing
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I took it as more standard BLAH INSTITUTIONAL BIAS BLAH BLAH BLAH crap, but you may well be right. He sounds like a right prick, you can be sure of that. I half wondered if it was Father of Cat, but then decided that I wasn’t being charitable.
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