Heartbroken by Ireland’s tragic crash-out last week, I forgot about putting up a new post yesterday. So this is a rushed affair.
Further reading
Don’t miss Deebee’s analysis of the quarter-finals, or Utnapistm’s predictions for this weekend.
On the telly this week
Friday 25th October
| Ulster v Cardiff | 19:35 | S4C / Premier Sports 1 |
| Munster v Ospreys | 19:35 | TG4 / Premier Sports 2 |
| Bath v Exeter | 19:45 | BT Sport 1 |
Saturday 26th October
| England v New Zealand | 09:00 | ITV |
| Dragons v Glasgow | 14:45 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Gloucester v Wasps | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
| Treviso v Kings | 15:00 | FreeSports |
| Connacht v Cheetahs | 17:15 | TG4 / Premier Sports 1 |
| Zebre v Leinster | 17:15 | Premier Sports 2 |
| Edinburgh v Scarlets | 19:30 | Premier Sports 2 |
Sunday 27th October
| Wales v S Africa | 09:00 | ITV |
| Leicester v Saracens | 15:00 | BT Sport 1 |
Ovally Balls 
Come on people, why do I always have to be the ray of sunshine?
All our teams suck, and rugby is a very silly game. Unrefereeable lottery of violence.
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‘It sucks, but it’s not like getting clowned in the pool stages.’
Oof. That hurts
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It is a very silly game.
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Missed all the fun today. Tiling and putting in insulation
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@Killsy
Well yes, and, maybe, if we got there we could have dragged it down to enough of a scrap to stand a chance, even with me Iksy, Tomp, CMW, utna and Amos filling in. If our 5 best players were there they might have been able to drag us close.
But we didn’t. We had a chance and possibly could have built those phases better at 16 all and 10 minutes on the clock.
For me, it doesn’t feel like 2011 when I felt we should have made the final with 14 men. This year felt like hanging on all the time. We might not get the chance again, but the run from June last year to now has been the best I’ve ever seen from watching Wales since 1983. We’ve waded through a mountain of shit to get to this point, so although it’s disappointing I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Best ever effort from a Welsh team in a World Cup.
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Hope you put the insulation in first…..
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Different locations me old cream bun
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Hope the tiling and insulation are of decent standard.
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Glad to hear it. Wouldn’t want you to do a Craigs and tile yourself into your bathroom/kitchen/whichever room you’re tiling.
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I’m still in shock, or something.
Got nothing constructive done today.
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Good. I think Chimpie’s done enough work for everybody today.
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I wonder how much they pay. Could do with a few more readies
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“even with me Iksy, Tomp, CMW, utna and Amos filling in”
I’d pick Carol Vorderman before Iksy.
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If I could work out how to attach a picture…
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Killzy – I had my parents over after the game yesterday so I was cooking and entertaining mostly. It’s only really sunk in a few hours ago as I rewatched.
I don’t care what anyone says, that ‘knock on’ in the maul was horseshit. And Whitelock milked the obstruction too.
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“do a Craig’s”
Must be what England did yesterday.
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“I’d pick Carol Vorderman before Iksy.”
Me too.
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@Craigs I agree with both disallowed tries. Dummy runners in front of the ball is a bugbear of mine.
On another day we would look back at those as the mistakes that cost us the game.
Still, there it is what?
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Wales should blame me, I never stop slating Pollard and he was motm.
I was amazed to learn he’ll be rugby’s highest paid player next season.
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French rugby money, Killsy. If they paid Physics ladz silly money, you’d be on a good whack.
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Come on people, why do I always have to be the ray of sunshine?
Followed by:
All our teams suck, and rugby is a very silly game. Unrefereeable lottery of violence.
Makes me wonder if I understand the term ray of sunshine.
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@Dogetc you understand just fine.
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@TomP as whacks go I’m happy with the one I’m on.
Not really that bothered about driving a Porsche.
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I can still kill the blog like old times.
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@Thaum
” I see no future with us, especially without Schmidt”
Ah – that strikes me as unnecessarily pessimistic…. I’m not entirely sure that Schmidt announcing his departure after the NZ game doesn’t feed into the downturn we saw this year.
I saw – somewhere …tweet, btl comment – a comment that after 2018 Schmidt had a choice to “stick or twist..”.
If he’d been staying he might have “twisted” instead he stuck with the known quantities…leaving it to Farrell to re-build the team. Right now that seems a bigger job than it might have been a year ago but I think the obvious candidates are already around.
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I don’t get why coaches announce their leaving early. What possible motivation is that for the team?
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“I’d pick Carol Vorderman before Iksy.”
I’d pick Bonnie Tyler before all of them.
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While I agree with Yos’ best ever effort at a wWorld Cup point of view and I am all for credit to Gats I do think it’s worth remembering that the team he took over did have a lot of talented players in it and had won a Grand Slam two years previously. That Grand Slam being the kind of ‘comedy’ I could certainly live with from his successor and I’m sure the Scots and French and probably others could also cope with if it came their way in the near future.
Gats has managed to build three teams and managed to keep making Wales competitive over and again as his teams have faded and that is pretty incredible.
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I do think Wales could have won today and if South Africa got everything right then they’re a poor team as they ran a hell of a risk playing a game that they ultimately could as easily have lost in the last ten minutes. My instinct is that they will play better in the final, but of course that remains to be seen.
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“a mob that got beat by Fiji by trying to out Fiji them.”
That would be a mob that got beat by Fiji by succeeding in out Fiji-ing them. Credit where it’s due and all that….
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Thought I was sanguine and fatalist this morning and set my expectations accordingly, but I feel pretty depressed about the flooding round Worcester that diverted me to Malvern and where I had to go from there.
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Best ever effort by Wales at a World Cup? I loved it when they played Australia for third place in Rotorua in 1987.
Polite applause for them when they ran on, then a pause followed by thunderous booing for Australia as they followed. It was like the whole crowd had spontaneously decided who to support in that moment. 22-21 again would be an epic way for Gats to sign off.
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Killzy – I agree it was obstruction but I also think that Whitelock new what he was doing.
Jamie George always had the ball as the carrier imo.
You’re probably right though.
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That was nailbiter BK. I think Devereux’s handoff became folklore, and then off he went to RL.
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And the notion of beating Australia went off into folklore with him. For quite a while at least.
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I’m all for a last minute 3rd place win reprise, but only if we can have a Cardiff legend score in the corner (Choo Choo) and have a Kiwi sent off early doors.
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Feck, sat on a train facing a week of nail biting expectation. I already used up my nails last week.
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@iksy
Nowadays rugby players in pursuit of riches go to France or Japan. In those days they went to Widnes.
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On radio 4 they are discussing how the England rugby team have managed to be so successful in the RWC. Who to invite into the studio to discuss? Obviously the first choice is Alastair Campbell
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Morning all!
So I watched my first ever Rugby world cup match sober as a judge.* Quite an experience and not one to be repeated given how tense it all was. The rugby itself was pretty dire and attritional, but two hoots I do not give. Rather win ugly than lose beautifully.
That said, I’m not convinced that the ‘style’ we employed will be enough to overcome the dreaded white orcs from the shires next up, even if this Welsh side has two wins over them this year. And that we should probably have monstered England at Twickers last year, but didn’t do enough in hte first 30 when we had them under the cosh.
England must be favourites, especially if they get early scoreboard pressure going.
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* We were doing house stuff all week and my DIY skillz are lousy at the best of times, so wouldn’t have worked plastered. Although the plastering was already done.
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Fear already.
Mostly because of what happened after the semi final.
Let loose to celebrate for the first time in many a month I sensibly got home at a decent hour 10.30 ish, however no house keys. Not wanting to wake anyone up I stupidly decided to scale the garage knowing the back door is hardly ever locked. Up I went like a monkey up and over the pitched roof and contemplated the drop onto the concrete path out back. Not too bad I thought.
It was bad. Knee fecked. Sore ribs. Smashed elbow.
Don’t think anything is proper broken but man I’m sore.
What a tool.
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Shit Dova! Hope you get better soon.
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hello on a typical post-semi-finals monday morning.
some great moments to remember from the weekend for everyone in victory or defeat.
now is the classic moment for squad revolution and that will be fascinating over the next 4 years.
memory of the weekend for me is how Ford has improved his all-round game and that he can be devastating like no other behind a dominant pack.
that dominance will be harder to achieve next week but Eddie may not be able to play Farrell at 10 with his gammy leg. what changes, if any (apart from Spencer) will he make?
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Dova,
you’d have landed more safely if thoroughly pissed!
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Is May likely to be fit? And is Nowell ready to replace him?
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Wouldn’t look back at that November 2018 game too closely, Deebee.
No NH players in your team, Am out injured so the defence was lined up differently.
Ivan van Zyl starting instead of Faf meant you only kicked the ball 27 times. Completely different plan now.
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OT, I’d never heard this description of Campese before:
“A first-half of comprehensive superiority, remembered by Michael Lynagh as among the best of his time as a player, was topped off by David Campese, whose display led journalist Wanda Jamrozik to define the right-wing as “the rugby equivalent of quantum physics — he’s there, he’s not there, he’s atomic.””
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@tomp
Jamrozok nearly got there – his meaning is quite clear but his use of quantum mechanics terminology is a bit clumsy. He should have said that Campese was “the rugby equivalent of quantum physics — he’s there, he’s not there, he’s a quantum superposition”
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