Italy vs Argentina
Two sides struggling to make an impact in recent times. Well, for Italy, pretty much forever despite one win over the Boks at our lowest ebb, for the pedants and pot stirrers who like to keep dredging that up. Argentina seemed to be on the up when they pasted the All Blacks last year (funny how competitive they were not having been beasted by the Boks beforehand), but have reverted to the mean (in a marshmallowy sort of way) this year. Can Italy use home ground advantage to eke out a win, or will the superior talent available to Argentina tell in the end? Tricky one this, but I’ll go for a Pumas win by about 9 as the Azzurri Fade to Grey.
Scotland vs South Africa
A fabulous match in store in this Currie Cup Clash, as Ticht called it. Much spoken about the four Saffas in the Scotland side, but in all honesty there’s plenty more for the Boks to worry about than a couple of down the pecking order forwards and backs who sought lucre over homeland. Scotland showed just how dangerous they can be ball in hand against the Aussies last weekend (one just past, keep up at the back), but couldn’t quite put it together as a complete package. The Scots forwards were excellent and showed some real grunt, which they’ll need on Saturday if they’re to get decent ball to Finn and Co. The Boks will surely try to batter them like a lonely Mars Bar on a Saturday night though and with a more settled back division, will probably squeak it in the end. The bench to do the job again, Boks by a score or thereabouts as they say it in Broken English.
Ireland vs New Zealand
The respective unsmiling sides of the two hemispheres go toe to toe, both having eased into the contest with little in the way of stern opposition: usually the Kiwis use this as an excuse for World Cup exits (along with Suzi, norovirus, referees, time zones, grass type and anything else rather than decent oppo), but both sides have had lopsided wins in the last week, with Ireland’s dismantling of Japan possibly slightly better than the Kiwis mangling of Italy with a reserve-ish side. Ireland will have a real go at the Kiwi pack at set pieces, where they were vulnerable against the Boks in both 4N matches this year and have been for a while now. The Kiwis will look to decimate Ireland out wide and in broken play and it should be a huge match. Kiwis are pretty confident at the moment, so I’m picking them (against the heart) to win by 4. Either way, it’ll be a Crowded House in Dublin, weather permitting.
Portugal vs Japan
Can Japan be as bad as they were against Ireland? I’ve no idea and writing this on the hoof not having seen the line-up for either side (not that that would make much difference, let’s be honest), it remains to be seen if they can bounce back. They’ve still got good players and should have too much nous for Portugal, despite the Iberians’ recent decent form at Tier Two level. Japan by 15. The House of the Rising Sun will once again shine. Tenuous link if ever!
England vs Australia
Keep feeling tempted to just write ‘looks weak’ and leave it at that. England have stormed out of the blocks with a hammering of hapless Tonga, which probably means little in reality, whilst the Wobblies duly wobbled after a five-match winning streak against stubborn Scotland last weekend. However, the result would probably have been very different but for the discipline issues they suffered from, that potentially cost them 14 points. They’re still a decent side, even without the J-League party-poopers and love nothing more than a crack at the Poms. But they’ll possibly be without Allan Alaalatoa and Taniela Tupou, leaving their improving front row in tatters. Dave Rennie will need to crack the discipline whip harder than a dominatrix at a Tory dinner party to keep them in the game. England, with a very good pack, Owen ‘Venus de Milo’ Farrell cleared of Covid and some good gas out wide should have too much for this now more disjointed Wallaby side. It’ll be tight and feisty, as always, but in the end, it’s England by 12. And as the man who sold the world, Eddie Jones will be smiling.
France vs Georgia
Doesn’t matter which France pitches up, Georgia are no match for them or as replacements for Italy in the 6N. That’s the Boks’ next target, ahem. A brutal mismatch that will put Georgia firmly back in their box. France may be distracted by the looming challenge of the All Blacks the following weekend, but even that shouldn’t see this being anything other than a training ground run for Les Bleus. Georgia’s last outing was a 40-9 thumping by a very rusty Bok side in July, although they’d be doing okay in the Tier 2 stuff before that. France by 35. You know I’m gonna say it, it’ll be a rainy night for Georgia, Randy Crawford to the fore.
Wales vs Fiji
Another mismatch in store, with Wales looking to bounce back from their narrow defeat against the Boks last weekend. Fiji, as everyone knows, have some superb individuals in their side, but haven’t been able to put it all together into a coherent package for a long while. Wales have had to re-jig their side a bit, with the Horse back on the wing and Adams moving into midfield, but you sense that won’t make much difference in the end. It’s Wales’ match to win by pretty much whatever score they’d like to, especially after Fiji struggled to subdue Spain last weekend. Fitness, structure, technique and a stronger bench will see Wales home comfortably in the end. Wales by 28. And as every Manic Street Preacher in Cardiff’ll tell you – if you tolerate this, your children will be next. You’ve been warned, Fiji.
Preview by the incomparable Deebee7
Onna telly this week
Friday 12th November
| Gloucester v Bath | 19:45 | BT Sport 2 |
Saturday 13th November
| Wales v South Africa (women) | 12:15 | BBC2 Wales |
| Italy v Argentina | 13:00 | Prime |
| Scotland v South Africa | 13:00 | Prime |
| Ireland v New Zealand | 15:15 | Channel 4 / RTÉ2 |
| England v Australia | 17:30 | Prime |
Sunday 14th November
| England v Canada (women) | 14:30 | BBC2 / iPlayer | ||
| Wales v Fiji | 15:15 | Prime | ||
| Scotland v Japan (women) | 16:10 | BBC Alba / iPlayer |
Ovally Balls 
It’s a good thing Scotland have an easy world cup pool in 2023
South Africa
Ireland
Scotland
Asia/Pacific 1
Europe 2
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Get out of that and you find France or New Zealand in the quarter finals.
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The other half sounds like it might be the place to be.
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England’s title to lost I’m sad to say.
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lose
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I wanted to say that the Irish #9, Gibson-Park, had a very good game.
He looked like Sexton’s pet dog – doing his bidding at speed and receiving pats on the head!
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If I was… I’d close the bloody bars at the Aviva during the match…. jeez…. €125 for a ticket and people are up and down all match….
It goes like this – buy 4 pints for self and pal, bring back to seat. Drink 2 pints, realise need for the jacks, head off to jacks – buy 4 more pints on way back . Repeat at half time. Repeat in 2nd half.
Those of you who’ve met me – know I like a pint or seven but this was ridiculous.
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Slade, I thought that was vintage Sexton at the weekend, top ringmastering all round from him.
–
I wonder who we’ll play in the semis when we get past either France or New Zealand?
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If the seedings were done this morning rather than four years out from the world cup, they would look like this, of course this can change at any point in the year.
Pool 1 South Africa, New Zealand, England, Ireland
Pool 2 Australia, France, Scotland, Argentina
Pool 3 Wales, Japan, Fiji, Georgia
Pool 4 onwards is where they have the Asia/Pacifics, Europe 2s/ Americas etc
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@slade
Well, Gibson Park hasn’t been without criticism up to now but he was good on Sat. One wonders if Murray has much road left… by 2023 I’d be expecting the 9s to be GP and Casey(with Blade as fallback) if we intend to play in that “hurry up ” mode and minimal box kicking
And the lad who has been the unexpected discovery – in the last year – is Keenan. Capped at RW vs Italy a year ago – now he’s nailed on at a full-back.
We were in the ground early, and watched Keenan walk around the pitch – ball in hand – he walked along the 5 metre lines then along the 22s…. almost as if he was trying to visualise where he was on the pitch by looking at the visual markers in the stands rather than having to look down at the white lines.
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Almost right, ticht. Italy qualified automatically, Georgia didn’t.
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Keenan was great. Stepped in very well at first receiver and his run and timing of the pass for the Lowe try compares very favourably to what happened v France earlier this year involving the same two players. Am off out now but will try and put the videos up against each other later.
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“Italy qualified automatically, Georgia didn’t.”
True, Italy qualified by dint of a top 12 finish at the last world cup, but that rather misses the point – that the seedings are done so far out from the next world cup as to be nothing to do with form.
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Has anyone ever seen any rationale from the powers that be as to why the draw is done so early? Is it because they want it to be weighted towards performance at the previous World Cup?
If it was down to me it would probably be after next year’s Rugby Championship, not that it would affect who Wales get to play as we always get pretty much the same teams.
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No idea CMW, but the seedings were taken from the top 12 rankings as at Jan 1st 2020 – and there were no Autumn internationals that year due to the world cup.
Japan had performed well at their own world cup and were rewarded with an 8th place seeding (world cup games carry double the weighting exchange too, iirc)
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Found this;
Acknowledging the global COVID-19 impact on international rugby in 2020 and to be fair to all qualified teams, the Rugby World Cup Board has decided that the World Rugby rankings as of 1 January 2020 will be used to determine the five bands of the Rugby World Cup 2023 Draw.
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@Ticht – Yes I thought it was done even sooner than normal, but I think ‘normal’ is three years out from the thing which is just as daft.
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(I’m on my lunch here)
I suppose they didn’t know what would happen regarding games, but then neither did football and they haven’t seeded for next year’s Fifa world cup yet
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@CMW, the conspiracy theory is that it conveniently stitched up Scotland after the bother with Mark Dodson in Japan.
I think that is stretching it, but they don’t like to be told they have made mistakes or are in the wrong
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Whenever it’s done the main thing I look for is ‘who are we likely to get in the QF if we come second in the pool?’ as that’s what I’m conditioned to feel we are playing for.
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Of course there can’t really be a definitively ‘right’ time to do the seedings. Exactly when you play any given side has quite a big effect on ranking points for starters. There must be a lot of movement between the top two pools for some teams, a lot of movement between pools 2 and 3 for some others and movement all over the shop between the top three pools for Wales.
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Pool A has New Zealand, France and Italy – that must only be about the top two there
Pool B South Africa, Ireland and Scotland
Pool C Wales Australia Fiji
Pool D England Japan Argentina
Wales could well top the group, you’d think England were favourites to top D, with Argentina coming second.
Scotland will have to find a way to work around the physical challenge of South Africa and the big game mentality of Ireland, I’m not too optimistic to be honest, we’re still very flaky
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@Ticht – It’s a truly horrible group. I remember in 2015 when Wales had England and Australia one of the big things about it was the thought that even if we were to beat one of them the result between the others would go the wrong way and there would be a three way tie. And there was no way Wales were going to rack up more bonus points or points difference against the remaining teams than those two.
I reckon Scotland’s best chance has to be beating Ireland as I can imagine them also losing to SA if that happened. Lose to Ireland and beat the Saffers and they’ll just beat Ireland and knock you out anyway, that’s the way the world goes round.
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Match order might be significant here – in last RWC, Scotland lost first day out to Ireland and – despite Ireland’s defeat by Japan – you were always chasing results. You play SA first day, and Ireland play qualifiers in matches 2 and 2. Then we play SA and finish up against Scotland.
On the brightside, you might have beaten SA and we’re chasing a huge win in the final match – or pessimistically (well, not for us) might have lost to SA and face into an unbeaten Ireland team…..
Bit like England in RWC2015, messed up vs Wales first day out and that created so much pressure that they imploded vs Oz.
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@Trisk – That looks like it’s set up to be really upsetting for Scotland as a glorious opening day victory over SA and hope-building victories against the others all turn to dust at the last.
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(I’m on my lunch here)
Interesting technique. Sort of like a high pressure dry sous vide?
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I think 2015 we faced the same task – after losing to Japan on day one, we had to win our remaining matches to get through and faced Scotland last up (from memory). Then played our Final against Wales before losing to the Kiwis in the semi.
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Ireland look to be in a good place to become the first team to top their group and still end up facing NZ in a quarter-final.
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aye, that all sounds familiar to a Scottish sports fan
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“Then played our Final against Wales”
We’d definitely have beaten NZ if you hadn’t got that late try…
Really we should have been playing Scotland if it wasn’t for our struggles against the 13 or 14 men of Australia. Thankfully we’ve put those kind of problems behind us now and when we’re a man up we put away all comers with consummate ease.
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The excuse for why they draw it so early was so teams/unions could organise hotels and training bases. The date’s always going to be arbitary, as CMW says, but perhaps should be made closer to the time. However, adds a bit of frisson to the inter-hemisphere games. France v New Zealand this week’s a big game already but even bigger as we know they’re meeting in the World Cup opener in a couple of years time.
The 2015 example is good by the time the tournament started Australia, England and Wales were 2,4 and 5 respectively in the world according to the rankings.
For the 2019 RWC Scotland were ranked 8th when the draw was made but still found themselves in pot 3.
The football comparison doesn’t quite as qualification is such a different process.
That’s not to say Scotland wasn’t a hot ball in Pot 3.
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“For the 2019 RWC Scotland were ranked 8th when the draw was made but still found themselves in pot 3.”
I got this wrong. Had been checking on my phone and Scotland were 8th this May. In May 2017 they were 6th so were definitely in Pot 2. Japan were in Pot 3. So they did very well to qualify. Unfortunately, they weren’t quite South Africa’s final.
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We’ve managed to draw Australia 4 times in the last 5 tournaments and Fiji 5 times in a row.
I think this’ll be the first time Ireland have ever played SA at a World Cup.
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If the reason for making the draw so early is to give teams the time to organise hotels and training bases then it is directly comparable to football – they have to do exactly the same thing, then there are the fans too, it’s a much bigger event with a lot more people involved.
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3 years of fact-finding 5-star hotels is a good sell.
I meant the qualification for football is different. Only 1 team guaranteed to play in their finals. 12 qualify automatically for the rugby.
This time the football draw’s taking place before all the qualified teams are known.
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Yes, but if 32 football teams can organise hotels and training centres in a few months, so can their rugby counterparts, the point being there is no need to make the seedings so early.
some news, apparently Sexton is out for up to six weeks with a sprained ankle
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Glad he’s out with a sprained ankle rather than a knock from the late shots he took.
In SA we oranised the IPL in six weeks after the Mumbai attacks back then. The RC this year and last was also cobbled together at the last minute.
However, point taken above about only the host guaranteed a spot in the football. Still, if you don’t want to introduce qualifying for the Tier One sides, you can still call the groups at say, 18 months before the event and have specific slots available for WC Qualifiers to take place for those not guaranteed a spot. Surely space in the AIs and June schedules?
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Yep, used to be we played Australia in every tournament, then that shifted to Argentina….
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Ireland were supposed to play SA last time really but stuffed it up.
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“Still, if you don’t want to introduce qualifying for the Tier One sides”
Happened before the 1999 World Cup. Italy ran England quite close in Huddersfield. Australia had to qualify as did Scotland and Ireland.
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That was the World Cup with play-offs for the quarter-finals. Rugby officialdom covering itself in yet more glory.
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Farrell OUT. George OUT. All the cards falling in place for the Boks.
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I’m just reading about the England front row “crisis”
Something that has been a bit annoying with the Amazon prime producers is that they obviously are not rugby fans, there have been no good angles of the scrummaging – despite there being a spider cam a the games too.
I wanted to see how Ox dominated Zander Fagerson so comprehensively, but we never got any angles on it
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I’ve just seen this
What the Clyde said, after COP26
by Kathleen Jamie
I keep the heid. I’m cool.
If asked – but you never ask –
I’d answer in tongues
hinting of linns, of Leven,
Nethan, Kelvin, Cart –
but neutral, balancing
both banks equally as I flow…
Do I judge? I mind the hammer-swing,
the welders’ flash, the heavy
steel-built hulls I bore downstream
from my city, and maybe
I was a blether-skite then,
a wee bit full of myself,
when we seemed gey near unstoppable…
But how can I stomach any more
of these storm rains? How can I
slip quietly away to meet my lover,
the wide-armed Ocean, knowing
I’m a poisoned chalice
she must drain, drinking
everything you chuck away…
So these days, I’m a listener, aye.
Think of me as a long level
liquid ear gliding slowly by.
I heard the world’s words,
the pleas of peoples born
where my ships once sailed,
I heard the beautiful promises…
and, sure, I’m a river,
but I can take a side.
From this day, I’d rather keep afloat,
like wee folded paper boats,
the hopes of the young folk
chanting at my bank,
fear in their spring-bright eyes
so hear this:
fail them, and I will rise.
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The only good thing about COP26 was watching Alok Sharma pretend to cry. Someone on his team obviously advised him it was a good idea.
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Tomp – we’re fecked.
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Finally Eddie can throw off the shackles of conservatism and pick Smith at 10 to unleash Manu at 12 and Slade at 13. Mayhem! All with the quicksilver service of Youngs at 9.
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OT, fingers crossed he gets a book deal out of it like the last government minister to fake cry on our screens has.
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@deebee
Manu played centre at the weekend. Slade was often at second receiver as well, despite defending at full back.
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@tomp
From what I gather this is now a full time globe trotting job for him, so he’s likely to get filthy rich a la Blair.
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