Round Three was full of excitement and correct results (see picture).
But I am not going to wear my little fingers to the bone typing a preview of this week’s matches when Deebee7 has already done it! Or, if you’re bored with the World Cup, you could look forward with him to the 2024 summer tours.
Portugal have played some really entertaining rugby, they’re just not quite physical enough to match Australia. But if they get parity and size, will it reduce their wonderfully fluid play? No idea. Would love Portugal to score a couple more after the break.
Australia made very, very hard work of that. I reckon Portugal will see that as a missed opportunity – they could have had that, but for some slightly panicky play and butter-finger passing.
Refit, absolutely. Portugal played some beautiful rugby. Lost out a bit on the physical side and organisation on defence, but they were excellent. Hope they get a lot more top tier matches.
What I saw of it was really good fun. They’re very good at what they do, at least up to the point where they have to finish things off. Nice try in the first half though. On the downside they might have picked up a red card.
The other thing is that if they played like that against NZ they would very likely end up with a similar scoreline to the one Italy got and lots of people would say they shouldn’t be there.
That is the very definition of high BMI-ing it over the line – what was the guy’s name who coined that? The chicken and chorizo omelette guy,
Dubliner I think.
Ticht – Curry drove into and upwards in his contact. While Etzebeth was moving forwards, it wasn’t with a huge amount of force and it was also horizontal.
Blimey, that was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests. Thought the Boks were lucky with at least three headshots in the first twenty, and got the massive rub of the green all game at the breakdown. Esterhuizen was good.
Looks like Mapimps is out with a fractured cheek, don’t think he’ll be back. Will the Boks call up Lukanyo Am in his place, or an actual, real hooker instead of relying on two quickly retreaded loose forwards?
Happy enough with the win, would have liked a few more points on the board, but my understanding is that we’re pretty much through unless Scotland beat Ireland by 21+ points, with both teams getting a four try bonus point (Scotland thus having to score a minimum of 41, assuming no Ireland conversions or penalty attempts succeed).
So, do I hope that Ireland win, just to take those permutations out, or hope for a miracle that sees Scotland win by 8 points, with neither side getting the bonus point, which would then put us top of the table and Ireland on the standing room only section of Ryan Air back to Dublin?
I for one, would not find it funny. Rassie implosion or not. Scotland 8-0 Ireland may get a small grin from me though. Try from a forward pass after an illegal turnover and a shonky drop goal that may or may not have gone under the bar, but the replays are unavailable, would be worth watching.
I realise that my views above may be a minority view – if only just – on here, but I’m willing to weather the storm. Maybe Pierre Schoeman ‘doing a Dunning’ and floating over a drop goal when Scotland need a final try in the 82nd minute would be funny too:
The rankings don’t really lie, there is a gap of over ten points between us in fifth and Ireland in 1st.
There is a fag paper between us, England and Wales, but a full ten and bit points takes you down to Samoa in 14th.
What I’m saying is that there is a very big gap between the top four and the rest, not only in terms of points on the ranking table, but in ability on the park too.
Scotland beating Ireland this coming weekend would count as one of the major upsets in the history of the tournament, as big as Japan v SA here in Brighton.
I’m not underdogging, I’m talking about how good Irealand are, I would be confident about Scotland facing anyone below us and I would have a degree of hope about playing New Zealand or France, at least in a neutral venue or in Edinburgh, but not Ireland or South Africa.
Ireland are just too well drilled, they don’t do a lot wrong and they don’t make many wrong decisions. If Scotland get a 4-0 match point result it will be a bloody miracle, but we are due one after such a long trail of crap that we’ve behind us on the road to professionalism.
The guy who made the table of possible outcomes in pool B is the guy I’ve referred to here as The Glasgow Stats Guy
His fame is now ensured having had a retweet and thanks from Rassie himself :-)
Someone has point out that if Scotland are leading 36 – 20 with five minutes to go, both teams having already scored four tries, Ireland would qualify by conceding a try but would go out if they didn’t.
I wouldn’t. That said, I can’t see Scotland beating Ireland by 21+ points, if at all. It’ll still be a nervy, quesy, squeaky bum time for the rest of the week though. Nerves will be on edge until it’s all over and the dust has settled.
Lukanyo Am recalled to the Bok side, but is it too late for him to get up to speed by the quarters? Before his injury, he was struggling with form anyway, but on form is the key outside back in the Bok side, both in organising the defence as well as being a much more attacking threat than Jesse Kriel. It does look like we’re inching back towards almost the entire backline that won in 2019, bar Mapimps, with Faf, Pollard, De Allende, Am, Kolbe and Willemse/Le Roux all in the starting line up, with probably Kurt Lee Arendse on the other wing. Still think that the injury to Marx is a much bigger blow to our chances than the Bok brains trust is letting on, though.
I think the in the event of a three-way tie it’s points difference for first then head-to-head for second is a bit bizarre. If it was down to me I think I’d just go for points difference but only from the games between the three tied teams.
Then again I don’t really like bonus points in the first place (at least not for competitions of so few games) and would probably just go straight to the above if they had the same number of wins.
CMW, I don’t think there’s a way that makes everyone happy, to be honest. Group B in this World Cup is a bit of an anomaly, even with England lumped in with Aus and Wales in 2015. Not sure all three were top five sides? Bonus points were introduced to try to encourage more attacking (for the tries) and competing to the end (for the LBP), although in this group so far, there has only been the one BP between the three big sides (our LBP). I, for one, will welcome our new Celtic overlords if that is how it pans out.*
* Without skullduggery.**
** I’m not Rassie, or Jaco Johan either.***
*** By 9pm our time on Saturday, I’ll either be in bed or hiding behind the couch, so probably won’t see the massive conspiratorial cheating effort match anyway.****
**** Assuming I’m not just a bit pissed.
@Deebee – Not sure why you think you need to tell me what Bonus Points are supposed to be for? I just don’t think they make much sense in short competitions where the vagaries of conditions and the order teams play each other have too much potential effect (PD also suffers from this, but you have to have some way of sorting out ties and that’s what I prefer).
Also I don’t see that the best way of sorting out a three-way tie has anything to do with how strong/weak/whatever the teams in the group are. There have been tight groups before and there will be again. I don’t particularly like including the points difference gained from games against the weakest team(s) in the group as I don’t find it very meaningful and if anything it just favours deep squads i.e. generally the usual suspects for doing well in the world cup who don’t really need that assistance.
In 2015 if Wiki is right then Aus, England, Wales and Fiji were ranked 2,4,5 & 9 though as I say I don’t see what difference that makes. I also don’t think there’s anything special about the notion of a ‘top 5’ anyway – at the moment we have a pretty clear ‘top 4’ and in 2015 we had a pretty clear ‘top 1’!
CMW, was just trying to contextualise it – sorry, have to constantly do this for work. My post was more musing on the difficulty of finding a ‘perfect’ way of deciding who goes through in the event of same points, and it doesn’t really matter about the rankings either. I suppose the only thing you can say is that all the sides are aware of the rules before the tournament, so only themselves to blame if they miscalculate. Let’s not go mention the Proteas and Duckworth-Lewis.
@Deebee – I don’t think there’s any great injustice going on, just find it strange that when head-to-heads can’t sort out three teams they go back to it again having hived one off due to points difference. Seems very arbitrary (and more so than is necessary). And I don’t like using full points difference for that first bit as it involves the no-contest games.
In my system the Boks would already be through. A Scotland win by 11 would put them through and Ireland out. Scotland would have to win by 26 to top the group, Ireland would just have to win to do the same (obviously).
This would be on the basis that I don’t really care (other than aesthetically) how you score your points and I’m not interested in how many you got against the teams that aren’t really there to compete (surprisingly the Boks have been the least ruthless on this front!) .
A good draw in the past often meant one that didn’t involve playing NZ until the final (at least not in a knock-out game) if other things went as expected. Things have got so much more complicated now though Scotland used to get shit draws on that basis too.
Of course the Boks have been the least ruthless! They’re a completely lovable bunch of softies. Can’t believe we have to wait another 30-odd hours for another match.
Ovally Balls 
Oh, and the try scorer is going into the bin and getting a review for a shoulder to the head.
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Booo, Aus have started playing and now have tries by Arnold, Poreki and Bell.
Only a yellow for the Portugal player.
24-7 27mins
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Portugal have played some really entertaining rugby, they’re just not quite physical enough to match Australia. But if they get parity and size, will it reduce their wonderfully fluid play? No idea. Would love Portugal to score a couple more after the break.
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Awww, Portugal drop the ball twice, trying to maul over the Aus line. Aus do get a yellow from one of them though.
And it looks like Kerevi is in trouble now – forearm to the face of a Portugal player, as he’s carrying the ball. Aus down to 13, 19mins to play.
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A good Portuguese scrum* drives Aus back and the 8 dives over to score.
29-14. 70mins
*Aided by the pitch peeling like a carpet.
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Aus win 34-14.
Australia made very, very hard work of that. I reckon Portugal will see that as a missed opportunity – they could have had that, but for some slightly panicky play and butter-finger passing.
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Refit, absolutely. Portugal played some beautiful rugby. Lost out a bit on the physical side and organisation on defence, but they were excellent. Hope they get a lot more top tier matches.
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Missed all but the last 5 minutes or so, but they looked like they’d come to play!
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What I saw of it was really good fun. They’re very good at what they do, at least up to the point where they have to finish things off. Nice try in the first half though. On the downside they might have picked up a red card.
The other thing is that if they played like that against NZ they would very likely end up with a similar scoreline to the one Italy got and lots of people would say they shouldn’t be there.
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Damn, I missed Siya Kolisi singing int he tunnel, I assume he did?
I love that
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That was a lovely lineout move by Tonga.
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Yay! Tonga score a try!
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That is the very definition of high BMI-ing it over the line – what was the guy’s name who coined that? The chicken and chorizo omelette guy,
Dubliner I think.
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Crashball, I think
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Boks not looking great, but I think we’ll do enough in the second half to secure a QF
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Speaking of the old days
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Test, test, testicles.
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Yep, it’s testicles.
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Ignore this.
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Etzebeth was pretty much the same as Curry wasn’t he?
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Ticht – Curry drove into and upwards in his contact. While Etzebeth was moving forwards, it wasn’t with a huge amount of force and it was also horizontal.
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Refit, I don’t think it should have been a red in this case, but it was worthy of a yellow, imo.
The decisions seem to have changed significantly since Curry was sent off.
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Oh, that was a wonderful try by Pellgrini.
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Blimey, that was a lot closer than the scoreline suggests. Thought the Boks were lucky with at least three headshots in the first twenty, and got the massive rub of the green all game at the breakdown. Esterhuizen was good.
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Hawick has a population of 13k-ish, it is the largest settlement for miles around.
Hawick has produced 61 male Scottish international players and 13 British & Irish Lions plus 6 women internationals.
Three of Scotland’s top four try scorers are from Hawick, Stuart Hogg on 27, Darcy Graham on 24 (alongside Ian Smith) and Tony Stanger is on 23.
Two of the women, Lisa Thompson and Rhona Lloyd, show up in Scotland’s top ten try scorers,
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Mistake – Lana Skeldon, not Rhona Lloyd
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Looks like Mapimps is out with a fractured cheek, don’t think he’ll be back. Will the Boks call up Lukanyo Am in his place, or an actual, real hooker instead of relying on two quickly retreaded loose forwards?
Happy enough with the win, would have liked a few more points on the board, but my understanding is that we’re pretty much through unless Scotland beat Ireland by 21+ points, with both teams getting a four try bonus point (Scotland thus having to score a minimum of 41, assuming no Ireland conversions or penalty attempts succeed).
So, do I hope that Ireland win, just to take those permutations out, or hope for a miracle that sees Scotland win by 8 points, with neither side getting the bonus point, which would then put us top of the table and Ireland on the standing room only section of Ryan Air back to Dublin?
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Deebee, all the permutations are here
https://x.com/topofthemoongw/status/1708597232616808456?s=46&t=GxzJ3kftZevfbo–SA_xzQAnd
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These x links don’t load as well as tweets used to
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Anywa, the only result that puts SA out is the one you mentioned Scotland taking for ve match points to Ireland’s one and us winning by 21 or more
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Ticht – change the ‘x’ in the URL to ‘twitter’ and they work again.
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Testicle
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Excellent, thanks Refit
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It would be quite funny if we did beat Ireland by loads and it ended up 5-1 match points, the Rassie videos would be epic.
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I for one, would not find it funny. Rassie implosion or not. Scotland 8-0 Ireland may get a small grin from me though. Try from a forward pass after an illegal turnover and a shonky drop goal that may or may not have gone under the bar, but the replays are unavailable, would be worth watching.
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I realise that my views above may be a minority view – if only just – on here, but I’m willing to weather the storm. Maybe Pierre Schoeman ‘doing a Dunning’ and floating over a drop goal when Scotland need a final try in the 82nd minute would be funny too:
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Sounding a bit desperate there DeeBee.
The rankings don’t really lie, there is a gap of over ten points between us in fifth and Ireland in 1st.
There is a fag paper between us, England and Wales, but a full ten and bit points takes you down to Samoa in 14th.
What I’m saying is that there is a very big gap between the top four and the rest, not only in terms of points on the ranking table, but in ability on the park too.
Scotland beating Ireland this coming weekend would count as one of the major upsets in the history of the tournament, as big as Japan v SA here in Brighton.
I’m not underdogging, I’m talking about how good Irealand are, I would be confident about Scotland facing anyone below us and I would have a degree of hope about playing New Zealand or France, at least in a neutral venue or in Edinburgh, but not Ireland or South Africa.
Ireland are just too well drilled, they don’t do a lot wrong and they don’t make many wrong decisions. If Scotland get a 4-0 match point result it will be a bloody miracle, but we are due one after such a long trail of crap that we’ve behind us on the road to professionalism.
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The guy who made the table of possible outcomes in pool B is the guy I’ve referred to here as The Glasgow Stats Guy
His fame is now ensured having had a retweet and thanks from Rassie himself :-)
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Someone has point out that if Scotland are leading 36 – 20 with five minutes to go, both teams having already scored four tries, Ireland would qualify by conceding a try but would go out if they didn’t.
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I’d be quite happy for Scotland to win the pool and us come second.
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I wouldn’t. That said, I can’t see Scotland beating Ireland by 21+ points, if at all. It’ll still be a nervy, quesy, squeaky bum time for the rest of the week though. Nerves will be on edge until it’s all over and the dust has settled.
Lukanyo Am recalled to the Bok side, but is it too late for him to get up to speed by the quarters? Before his injury, he was struggling with form anyway, but on form is the key outside back in the Bok side, both in organising the defence as well as being a much more attacking threat than Jesse Kriel. It does look like we’re inching back towards almost the entire backline that won in 2019, bar Mapimps, with Faf, Pollard, De Allende, Am, Kolbe and Willemse/Le Roux all in the starting line up, with probably Kurt Lee Arendse on the other wing. Still think that the injury to Marx is a much bigger blow to our chances than the Bok brains trust is letting on, though.
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I think the in the event of a three-way tie it’s points difference for first then head-to-head for second is a bit bizarre. If it was down to me I think I’d just go for points difference but only from the games between the three tied teams.
Then again I don’t really like bonus points in the first place (at least not for competitions of so few games) and would probably just go straight to the above if they had the same number of wins.
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CMW, I don’t think there’s a way that makes everyone happy, to be honest. Group B in this World Cup is a bit of an anomaly, even with England lumped in with Aus and Wales in 2015. Not sure all three were top five sides? Bonus points were introduced to try to encourage more attacking (for the tries) and competing to the end (for the LBP), although in this group so far, there has only been the one BP between the three big sides (our LBP). I, for one, will welcome our new Celtic overlords if that is how it pans out.*
* Without skullduggery.**
** I’m not Rassie, or Jaco Johan either.***
*** By 9pm our time on Saturday, I’ll either be in bed or hiding behind the couch, so probably won’t see the
massive conspiratorial cheating effortmatch anyway.******** Assuming I’m not just a bit pissed.
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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/oct/03/scottish-hawick-youth-under-18-unprecedented-rugby-own-goal
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HA! I was just about to post that! Yet another good thing* coming from Hawick….
*Apart from the A7 out of it.
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@Deebee – Not sure why you think you need to tell me what Bonus Points are supposed to be for? I just don’t think they make much sense in short competitions where the vagaries of conditions and the order teams play each other have too much potential effect (PD also suffers from this, but you have to have some way of sorting out ties and that’s what I prefer).
Also I don’t see that the best way of sorting out a three-way tie has anything to do with how strong/weak/whatever the teams in the group are. There have been tight groups before and there will be again. I don’t particularly like including the points difference gained from games against the weakest team(s) in the group as I don’t find it very meaningful and if anything it just favours deep squads i.e. generally the usual suspects for doing well in the world cup who don’t really need that assistance.
In 2015 if Wiki is right then Aus, England, Wales and Fiji were ranked 2,4,5 & 9 though as I say I don’t see what difference that makes. I also don’t think there’s anything special about the notion of a ‘top 5’ anyway – at the moment we have a pretty clear ‘top 4’ and in 2015 we had a pretty clear ‘top 1’!
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CMW, was just trying to contextualise it – sorry, have to constantly do this for work. My post was more musing on the difficulty of finding a ‘perfect’ way of deciding who goes through in the event of same points, and it doesn’t really matter about the rankings either. I suppose the only thing you can say is that all the sides are aware of the rules before the tournament, so only themselves to blame if they miscalculate. Let’s not go mention the Proteas and Duckworth-Lewis.
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@Deebee – I don’t think there’s any great injustice going on, just find it strange that when head-to-heads can’t sort out three teams they go back to it again having hived one off due to points difference. Seems very arbitrary (and more so than is necessary). And I don’t like using full points difference for that first bit as it involves the no-contest games.
In my system the Boks would already be through. A Scotland win by 11 would put them through and Ireland out. Scotland would have to win by 26 to top the group, Ireland would just have to win to do the same (obviously).
This would be on the basis that I don’t really care (other than aesthetically) how you score your points and I’m not interested in how many you got against the teams that aren’t really there to compete (surprisingly the Boks have been the least ruthless on this front!) .
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A good draw in the past often meant one that didn’t involve playing NZ until the final (at least not in a knock-out game) if other things went as expected. Things have got so much more complicated now though Scotland used to get shit draws on that basis too.
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Of course the Boks have been the least ruthless! They’re a completely lovable bunch of softies. Can’t believe we have to wait another 30-odd hours for another match.
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