In their infinite wisdom, World Rugby chose to schedule the World Cup in a country that is prone to typhoons at this time of year, and to make absolutely no contingency plans should a typhoon threaten.
In a development that appears to have taken the organisers completely by surprise, there is a typhoon headed in Japan’s direction, and two matches have been cancelled, with Japan v Scotland still in doubt.
France will miss out on the possibility of beating England to top their group, and Italy will miss out on a historic chance to beat the All-Blacks and progress to the quarter-finals for the first time.
All right, nobody thinks that Italy would have beaten New Zealand, but it’s a funny old game and a couple of red cards, or another sneaky peek at the rule-book, could have produced the upset of the century. Apparently we’ll never know.
As Parisse said:
“It is ridiculous that a decision of this nature has been made because it isn’t like the fans arrived yesterday. It is ridiculous that there was no plan B, because it isn’t news that typhoons hit Japan.
“Sure everyone might think that Italy versus New Zealand being cancelled counts for nothing because we’d have lost anyway, but we deserved to be respected as a team. We had the chance to play in a big stadium, against a great team.
“The alternative is plan B. When you organise a World Cup you should have one in place.”
Should the Japan v Scotland match be cancelled, all three teams in Pool A contention will have reason to feel aggrieved also: Scotland for obvious reasons, Japan because it is not the way you’d want to go through, and Ireland because they miss the chance to top the pool (that being in Scotland’s gift, rather than Ireland’s hands, of course).
Quite frankly, World Cup should be handed a red card for bringing the game into disrepute. Players and fans alike (and no doubt the sponsors too) are rightly furious.
These matches should be rescheduled in alternative locations.
Last weekend’s rugby
For a rundown on the state of play as of 07/10, please see Deebee’s excellent synopsis.
On the telly this week … or not
Friday 11th October
| Australia 27 – 8 Georgia | 11:15 | ITV4 |
| Cheetahs 40 – 16 Munster | 17:15 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Dragons 14 – 38 Connacht | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 / TG4 / S4C |
| Leinster 40 – 14 Edinburgh | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
| Gloucester 24 – 26 Bath | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 12th October
| New Zealand v Italy | 05:45 | CANCELLED |
| England v France | 09:15 | CANCELLED |
| Ireland 47 – 5 Samoa | 11:45 | ITV |
| Kings 17 – 42 Ulster | 15:00 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Scarlets 54 – 10 Zebre | 15:00 | Freesports |
| Ospreys v Treviso | 19:35 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Glasgow v Cardiff | 19:35 | Premier Sports 1 |
Sunday 13th October
| Namibia v Canada | 04:15 | ITV |
| USA v Tonga | 06:45 | ITV |
| Wales v Uruguay | 09:10 | ITV / S4C |
| Japan v Scotland | 11:45 | ITV |
I suppose if you’re going to hold a grudge, moulding their likeness into the shitter is as good a way as any of expressing it
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Here is the French team to face Wales on Sunday, according to the Midol website. Penaud is injured and may not play. It’d be a big loss.
15. Médard ; 14. Penaud ou Raka, 13. Vakatawa, 12. Fickou, 11. Huget ; 10. Ntamack, 9. Dupont ; 7. Ollivon, 8. Alldritt, 6. Lauret ; 5. Vahaamahina, 4. Leroux ; 3. Slimani, 2. Guirado (cap), 1. Poirot.
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Maybe I should be more overbearing….
Is that even possible, Bambi-killer?
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Moulded into the bottom of chamber pots – quite the legacy.
Not sure he gave a shit, to be honest.
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Right, looks like I’m pissing in the wind on this one.
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I’m glad ducks and the criminals they make us be was left off Deebee’s list too.
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That’s an early team announcement Flair. I hope it implies your boyos are in a rush to get things over with and want to head home by Monday!
I think our game might be the biggest nail-biter but worst spectacle of the weekend.
The other thing I dread is a round of anti-climaxes, especially Boks vs Japan. In the pre-tournament friendly SA won comfortably while practicing their defensive set-ups and tackling.
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I don’t kill bambis deebs. Just drink their blood.
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Kipper has Marler to start with Mako on the bench. Would rather see Genge on bench, personally. Billy V should be fit.
Round of anti-climaxes = Australia winning. Fear building.
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Sbt – I’m sanguine with that choice tbh. Losing would suck though. The aussies have hardly set the world alight recently (well, OK, they did that ONE time).
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Amazed Huget is still in there, Flair. Other wise, not a bad team on paper at all.
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Mriks, I think your boys should dispatch France comfortably. France may show some flashes of brilliance but they haven’t been able to play 80 consecutive minutes of rugby for ages.
England and NZ should also qualify easily. Am a bit more ambivalent about SA. Sure, they’re better than Scotland and destroyed Japan in a warmup game but if Japan show the same skills in attack as they did vs Scotland, who knows? Their defence was not bad either, although they did seemed knackered by the 60th minute.
Hope I’m wrong on a couple of these predictions, as usual.
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Huget is there as the more reliable in defence (says a lot, doesn’t it?) as opposed to Teddy Thomas or Raka.
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Craigs, any pubs in your area opening for breakfast for the quarter finals? Think am watching Saturdays games in South London, but may possibly be in Whitstable Sat night. so looking for a venue heading west for breakfast rugby.
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https://westowhouse.com/
This place apparently opening early for games.
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Cwis said I was a scrum half. I always thought scrum half would have suited me. But I couldn’t pass and had no pace, so hooker it was.
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My predictions for the weekend:
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Quarter-Final Round up: The Winner Takes It All!*
Poms to Pulverise Puny Pikers!
Let’s be honest: Cheika’s ‘game face’ looks more like an ageing Jack Nicholson on the lash than the menace of Jack Torrance in The Shining and he’s got a side to match it. Bereft of Dog’s avenging angel and playing the Pooper combo to no great effect at all, they’ll be lucky to get within a score of zero. Song to sum them up? I think we have to Gimme, Gimme, Gimme (a man after midnight) in honour of Izzy’s OTT phobia-which-may-hide-something-else-cough-cough.
Eddie’s Army has marched through the tournament with all the confidence and swagger of an Englishman in a frank sex-ed discussion: fuck all. Trying to muscle in on the action but useless with slippery balls resorting toarse patting as a substitute for the real thing. Song to sum them up? Knowing Me, Knowing You, Alan Partridge style sums up those Little Englander-Brexiters.
England by 10
Kiwis to Club Craicless Clots!
Let’s get the shitty musical reference out the way straight up: Ireland get Head Over Heels, and fuck me, ABBA coulda written that for BoD in 2005, couldn’t they? Dirty Kiwi bastards have no respect for reputation. But the Irish can have a second crack at ABBA with You Owe Me One (which isn’t related to Head Over Heels for those who can’t let it go), which I’ll leave to the Graun’s weird analysis of ABBA hits for you to fathom: “As Ireland entered their twilight years they got fascinatingly weirder. You Owe Me One, the B-side to Under Attack, was a case in point: a snaking Middle-Eastern riff that sounded more Selda Bağcan than Summer Night City, Connor and Cat Face pitch-shifted upwards into Disney-fied adolescence and a breakup lyric that rode into white wine o’clock with a cackle.” Quite. If anyone can fathom that shit, they’ll know what Ireland are up to this World Cup.
Kiwis have purred along quite nicely with a routine win over the Boks followed by batterings of the minnows and a polite decline to play Italy lest any of their soft wankers gets injured. The All Blacks, much like ABBA’s Voulez-Vous “are both on autopilot and at the peak of their powers. As so often, the synts treat seduction as a transaction” is what the dunderhead who wrote the tripe actually meant to say.
All Blacks by 11.
PS – couldn’t find an ABBA song that was crap enough to pair with the Haka.
Welsh Wizards to Whip Wimpy Winos
Much against better judgement, I’m giving Wales this by a country mile. Would give it to them by more, but you’d be in the fucking sea if you walked more than a mile in that pinprick principality. Charles’s ears are bigger than their parliament building, assuming there is one. Held together by the physio and a fear of WAG, the Welsh are looking bloody-minded and bloody strong. AWJ is the glue that binds, the loose trio corrals the opposition and no-one scores tries, but they somehow win shit. And win, shit, too. Song to sum them up? It’s got to be The Name of the Game: they’re on their game, they’re peaking nicely, but as the Welsh here plaintively ask “If I trust in you, would you let me down?” Fucking sure they will, given half a chance.
France, France, France? We know which one will turn up. Crap France. This isn’t 80’s and 90s vintage France, this is Top 14 sausage factory France. Not a dark, bloody Boudin Noir either. The only Flair left in French rugby posts on here from time to time, but they’ll still trouble a Welsh side determined to go back as glorious failures. Song to sum them up? Waterloo, natch, as they fall yet again, with rubbish clichés about little Napoleons directing the traffic, blah fucking blah. A bit of Money, Money, Money playing in the background as a tribute to the clusterfuck of the Top 14 and “[t]he sentiment – find a rich man to shack up with – might be timeless, but it does feel a bit icky.”
Wales by 8
Cuddly Boks to Gently Send the Lovely Hosts into that Dark Night
Yeah right. The Boks will go out to smash six types of shit out of Japan from the get-go and I think I speak for all right-minded folk when I say “Hear Hear!” A brutal pack with another on the bench, defensive solidity to repel the waves of lightning Japanese attacks, this should be a bridge too far for the Brave Blossoms. Japan will rely on speed, guile and wave after wave of attack to break down the Maginot Line (or just go around it, like the Germans did) and it will be a fascinating contrast in styles. Worthy of a Final, which it may well be for a Japanese outfit that played to near-exhaustion last weekend against a side closest to them in style in Scotland.
For the Boks, it’s Super Trouper, as they march slowly towards the Semis, “spun-sugar so tightly arranged and recorded they sound barely human. You might think it’s a nursery rhyme but for the dread and horror in the tackles,” sums up this band of brutes with speed and skills out wide perfectly.
Japan? They’ll be sending out an SOS by the last 20 of the match, with their Dancing Queens not quite up to repelling the horned hordes as they crumple to an honourable defeat. We’ll chuck in Fernando and Chiquitita for them too. Why you ask? Not very Japanese? But then neither is their line-up – more foreigners on the dosh than a Bradford dole queue, as Eddie’s Little Englanders will no doubt be saying.
* Just for Thaum and her anti-ABBA bias.
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@Flair. We tend not to do dispatch, but rather scrape by. The quality of our playing-depth is as thin as November ice, so once again it will be around finding the collective effort to spoil a more talented team that might not have the collective will or gameplan on the day.
There was a clip of Wales training and JDII had more strapping on his leg than Karloff in The Mummy. If he plays like that then it exposes the strength in depth myth once more. We can’t rest Mr. Glue at inside centre even though he has a broken hand and can’t pass properly, and we can’t trust JD’s understudy Watkin to step in just when we need him to do so.
If JD plays on one leg then it says that this is our cup final, and that isn’t good.
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Dova
There have been a few of those, resulting in posters not coming here / to AoD any more.
I do not like banning people and wish I didn’t have to do it, but I think it’s clear that more people have been driven away by this person than there might be people queuing up to read his posts. I certainly have no intention of making a habit of this. Generally speaking, I will only delete or modify a post upon the request of the poster, or if it’s spam.
Expro’s free to post about his favoured sides and whatever positive things he has to say, but I have had enough of the negativity and rudeness. I’ll even link back to any such posts when they are cleared, as I can’t monitor the blog 24/7 to see what’s awaiting moderation.
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I hope it is not true but I suspect Japan burned all their emotional energy against Scotland, and I’d be amazed if they could do it again against a more structured and physically dominant team keeping a lid on the passion they generated against Scotland.
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Deebee – you utter bastard.
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My pleasure, Thaum!
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Sbt – well there’s the Woolpack in Tenterden. Not sure if you want to get there by then. Otherwise I could do some research.
Has there ever been a blog breakfast meet up?
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Currently in need of a new earworm. Billy and Olivia starting to get a bit wearing. Eclectic Iks, you got anything?
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French songsmiths for Flair.
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One for the Brave Blossoms
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Here is a good one for you and the Boks, Deebs.
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Hehehe, gouvernés par des imbéciles sums up pretty well the French XV! Thanks.
MrIks, am I the only one who’s worried by Dan Biggar condition? He seemed to have suffered at least two commotions in quick succession ( and no HIA the last time). Is it really safe to have him play vs France?
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Sbt
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Hopefully a song for Kiwis after the Ireland game.
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Flair – I would assume that Biggar’s been thoroughly checked by the medics in the meantime. I certainly hope so!
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Ooops, wrong one, meant to post Nightmares
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Cheeky Kiwis getting an extra song there.
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Shit sbt that skateboarding video is awesome. I’d have loved to have that for my dissertation at uni.
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Ever a lamer sentence than that?
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That’s better, SBT!
I have been a victim of misheard lyrics. Finally found this song after searching in vain for ‘the Lisheen firebrew’ (and even ‘Llanishen firebrew’ in case they’d crossed the raging seas).
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@Tim, as mentioned to OT, my perennial earworm is ABBA’s Day Before You Came.
But you might try this. It starts all synth cold wave. Then vocals in French languidly join in. Nothing really changes, but from about 4:10 mins onwards there’s a a chord change and a switch to English vocals. That last segment is one of my earworms.
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4 mins onwards…
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And a bit unfortunate that the song is called Love, French, Better!
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This is admirable in its own deeply corrupt way:
“Peter Navarro, the former economics professor currently serving the Assistant to the President and Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy for the White House is one of President Donald Trump’s most strident defenders, particularly when it comes to the current trade war with China, which Navarro has zealously championed. Alarmed by his heated rhetoric toward China, an Australian professor began studying Navarro’s past work and discovered that for decades he’s been publishing quotes from a man named “Ron Vara” — who is entirely fabricated. Ron Vara is an anagram of Navarro.”
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ooh, them last to are very chilled.
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@Flair. I hope Big Dan Biggar is as right as he appears to be.
He did that very talismanic thing against Fiji after getting knocked cold by leaving the field on his legs and then with a jog, and not on the hospital cart. Wales were on the ropes and I think that was meant to be an inspirational gesture from him.
He’s been in the wars, but he really seems to be as tough as old boots and difficult to rule out through injury. I hope he has genuinely passed all the checks and protocols and is judged as fit as it is possible to be for the next game. And it shouldn’t be a decision that’s ultimately in his own hands, rather a proper neutral assessment of his condition.
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On the B-word, I suspect that the brokered deal will be that there is a referendum in NI for consent rather than a Stormont vote … not least because Stormont’s not sitting, and it is indeed a ridiculous proposition to give the DUP a veto.
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Here’s a slightly less chilled one that still has a lovely Irish lilt in pre-celebration of our glorious victory this weekend.
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Here’s a question for the rugby statisticians amongst you:
I know that no team that’s lost a match in the group stages has ever gone on to win the Cup, but has a team that’s knocked out the Blackness ever gone on to lose?
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“has a team that’s knocked out the Blackness ever gone on to lose?”
France in ’99 and ’07 (‘O7 they lost to England who lost to South Africa)
Australia in ’03.
You don’t have to beat New Zealand to win the title. It’s also not too bad an idea to let them get knocked by another side.
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Only in ’91 and ’95 has the team that’s beaten the Blacks gone on to win the title – Aus won in semi-final in ’91, Suzy won at the buffet in ’95.
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France have knocked out the ABs twice. No trophies. Oz knocked them out in 2003, lost in the final to the Be-roided White Orcs.
On the five occasions they’ve been dunted out (always in the knock outs), only twice has the victorious side gone on to take the pot. Oz beat them in the semis in 91. SA in that final in 95.
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There’s a neat little theory put around by some South African fans that it was better to lose to NZ in the group stages. The only other time they could meet would be in the final and it’s much easier to beat the All Blacks once in two games than it is to beat them both times.
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