comment by The Guvnor IV -Iron sharpens iron--- 49-0 (U12889)
posted 1 hour, 6 minutes ago
I honestly think JJ could play wing. He has pace and he always beats his man and he is a good finisher. Put him on the left instead of May. Start Burgess and Manu in centre
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GUV! u mention Burgess and manu and then use these two symbols... Priceless! Is it manu running away from some cops
ANd burgess smiling after dropping a yet another pass

Mind you, it would be an interesting center partnership all jokes aside. Lacking in brains and creativity, but it could work!

Yeah I've been impressed by Argentina too, they have some decent backs at last. I'm looking forward to that QF.
Burgess will never play centre for England again.

comment by Aristodemus (U3765)
posted 54 minutes ago
Yeah I've been impressed by Argentina too, they have some decent backs at last. I'm looking forward to that QF.
Burgess will never play centre for England again.
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Really!?? You don't think he'll play for England again?
I wouldn't be so sure. If he gets the correct time to adjust and and learn how to play Union I don't doubt he might well be quality. I don't think it's really his fault either. he was selects, and jumped at the chance to play for his country, anyone would. It's the selectors' fault. Ultimately I guess that means Lancaster. And Sam turned out to be lees than average but not a disaster as many (me included) had predicted.

Never at centre no.

I think he did OK. Nothing brilliant but fine, I think if they had said he was a 6 and given him more game time he would have been much better. He certainly played very well for Bath there (compared to IC).
I think he can be world class too, but he is a forward.

comment by Aristodemus (U3765)
posted 53 minutes ago
Never at centre no.

I think he did OK. Nothing brilliant but fine, I think if they had said he was a 6 and given him more game time he would have been much better. He certainly played very well for Bath there (compared to IC).
I think he can be world class too, but he is a forward.
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I tend to agree with you. Center is just too complicated from a defensive point of view. And no matter what way you cut it, union is far more complicated than league. Given time you never know, he could grow into the position, but by all accounts and indeed your own opinion he's been very good at 6 and certainly his current skill set suggests is the only position for him.

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comment by The Guvnor IV -Iron sharpens iron--- 49-0 (U12889)
posted 31 minutes ago
Ding
Speaking of criminals,what do you make of obriens punch?
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Like i said the day of the "punch" it was an open handed slap, albeit with power. Adjudged to be at the lower end of the scale, 2 week ban reduced to 1 week due to the fact he admitted it immediately and freely, apologized and it's his first offence.

I wouldn't have argued if he got a longer ban to be honest. But I gave up worrying about what the way the citing commission do their business ages ago. It's just ridiculous sometimes. Pocock got off with a warning for what looked like an equally sever infringement. It just never seems to make sense with the citing commission. The only consistency seems to be the more well known you are i.e. important to a team(a good team!) the more lenient they seem to be. Pfff i just don't get this part of our sport.

As for that paring. Ye, it would be interesting to see them. but you need a distributor. 2 big ball carriers in the center would not work in union. that's just the problem. ANd for the sake of that argument, he can't be a 12. Traditionally a 12 is a distributor with the 13 being the bash-em guy. That said, D'Arcy was never a distributor and he and O'Driscoll had a great partnership. Indeed Jamie Roberts is a great 12 and you never see him passing beyond 3 feet. So i suppose there are exceptions.

When will he find out about his ban or has it already been said?

Never mind O'Brien, well be missing Ford and Gray.

Guess what, the citing commissioner was an Aussie. Just saying

Ah just seen its for the Argentina game

Ye 1 week RKW. We lose him for that game. Big blow but such is life. With the way the games are so heavily monitored by tv at this world cup, frankly O'Brian was down right stupid to do what he did. It's idiotic.

Ding

I've got another rant brewing about the priorities of the game at the moment. Things like how miniscule stuff gets you a yellow card, how stuff that was always regarded as 'heat of the battle' is now a major crime requiring technology that Interpol would be happy with, how refs have neutered their own authority by their abject failure to make a decision, ever, for fear of making the odd wrong decision.

Yet players are limping out of the game's pinnacle elite competition and bodies are being carted off on stretchers or strewn all over the place simply because of the sheer physicality of the game.

We have all the concussion debate going on, and at grass roots level, some parents are beginning to watch and wonder if this is a game they really want their kids to be playing. You may think that is a bit of hyperbole on my part, but I do hear it and I do observe the drop off in participation between junior and senior.

I don't seem to hear an awful lot about how we reduce physicality and the risk of injury. I did hear someone suggest creating more room by making the pitch bigger. Don't know if that would work or not, probably wouldn't have any big effect, but I do know that pitch size has been reduced so we can squeeze games into round ball stadia to get bigger crowds and more money.

Aaah, money. Now there's the priority.

Show, It's got so physical that I can see a day when there will be pads like am football.

Ding

I can see the same, but that is precisely what we need to avoid. We need to get the game to something like when backs with dancing feet, like Phil Bennett and Mike Gibson could, and did, flourish; where scrum technicians like Ian McLauchlan were valued more than today's brute force; where a French back line could, and frequently did, manufacture a try out of absolutely nothing from under their own posts.

In short, I think in the modern game guile, genius and an outrageous ability to amaze have been replaced by sheer pace, raw power and brutal energy. I'm not saying that this is entirely wrong, but such is the desire to get folk through the turnstiles and generate cash that we may have forgotten some of the old values that gave these marketing money guys the platform on which they build their fortunes.

comment by theresgonnaebeashow - Ron Deila IS Ragnar Lodb... (U5686)
posted 58 minutes ago
Ding

I can see the same, but that is precisely what we need to avoid. We need to get the game to something like when backs with dancing feet, like Phil Bennett and Mike Gibson could, and did, flourish; where scrum technicians like Ian McLauchlan were valued more than today's brute force; where a French back line could, and frequently did, manufacture a try out of absolutely nothing from under their own posts.

In short, I think in the modern game guile, genius and an outrageous ability to amaze have been replaced by sheer pace, raw power and brutal energy. I'm not saying that this is entirely wrong, but such is the desire to get folk through the turnstiles and generate cash that we may have forgotten some of the old values that gave these marketing money guys the platform on which they build their fortunes.


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Mate in truth the blaim is with the turn to professionalism. The day when lads could give up their day job and train professionally was the very day that we began to lose those types of players. There were some great crossover players from the amateur to professional era. O'Driscoll is a prime example. Mazy agile stepping center when he started to a guy who became best know for his defensive work and pinching ball like a 7. But O'Driscoll made that decision to become something different, to reinvent himself so he could be the best.

Bottom line is out lads these days are bulking up because they feel it gives them the advantage, hell they feel they need to just to compete with the opposition who are no doubt thinking the exact same thing.

Show is right, money caused it, but was it just the money men? i don't think so. The players are doing the extra work to get there also and making conscious decision to do this in order to compete.

This is an irreversible change in rugby mentality on the whole.

Gone and forgotten are the positions for the fat slow guys who were not fast enough for football. or the usually tall lads who were too big to play football or the little fellas (me) who were too angry for football.
Replaced with monumental athletes we see today.

But if i had been paid 150,000 a year to do nothing but train my a$$ off and build muscle i would have done it too.

There is no room for Peter stringer types, Mal O'Kelly types... Props have six packs these days, and hookers don't bloody hook!!! Well with the exception of Rory best, but from what i can see Ireland are the only team in the world cup who are not feeding the scrum crooked and have a hooker who hooks! Are we too honest or just stupid!

I digress.

Didn't see Japan Ding?.... and don't set me off on Tom Youngs!

It's Darwinian show, simple as that. If a time comes when those type of players can and do flourish, we will see more. Look at Christian Wade, devastating with ball in hand, slight liability in defence and for that reason will struggle to get caps. Should set the Olympics on fire though ^^

Tbf that's the one good thing about football, despite it being a lot more fitness orientated than it used to be it still allows for all types to make it.

Basketball, rugby, American football etc are all down to genetics.

comment by Aristodemus (U3765)
posted 1 hour, 3 minutes ago
Didn't see Japan Ding?.... and don't set me off on Tom Youngs!

It's Darwinian show, simple as that. If a time comes when those type of players can and do flourish, we will see more. Look at Christian Wade, devastating with ball in hand, slight liability in defence and for that reason will struggle to get caps. Should set the Olympics on fire though ^^
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Demus

Agree with some of that, but no way is it Darwinian. It is a man-made development using every bit sports science available.

Where is Wade these days? Not at the RWC, that's for sure, and if he was he would be the exception. Remember, in 1995 Lomu was a freak. 12 years later it's Shane Williams who was the freak.

I'm just saying we need to be aware of all the consequences of the change the game has already undergone and is still undergoing, both physical and psychological, and we need to keep an eye on priorities. The current focus seems to me to be on using technology to penalise guys for stuff that for years was sorted out in other 'on-field cultural' ways. OK the premeditated spear tackle by Mealamu and Umaga to put BOD out of that Lions tour was disgraceful and warranted enormous punishment, but what happened afterwards. Those two had no case to answer and between them went on to amass 203 AB caps. But these days every incident where the tackled player comes off the ground is studied in minute detail to see if he was momentarily beyond the horizontal. If he was, then the circumstances don't come into it, the "offender" is banned for weeks.

There is a parallel to be drawn with the concussion debate. The authorities were so incompetent in the high profile George North case that there will now be a mad scramble to be seen to be doing, and every touch near the head will be scrutinised to the same level. Another reason for parents who may know no better to prevent a keen young lad taking up the game.

Yet while this is going on, players are suffering far more injuries from legal tackles and the general cut and thrust of a game. The physicality of rugby seems to have exceeded the body's capacity to withstand the blows, regardless of how trained or conditioned that body is.

Sure the game has changed/is changing. In fact it is rapidly becoming a very different game, at least at the elite level. The gap between the elite and the grass roots gets larger, but the aspiration of youngsters to be like the behemoths of international rugby is increasing. When they find that trundling around in the mud at your local club is not so attractive when your head is turned by the telly, they just give up. Now that is a big worry to me, who watches most of his live rugby at the lower levels.

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comment by The Guvnor IV -Iron sharpens iron--- 49-0 (U12889)
posted 1 hour, 25 minutes ago
Show has been having a few rants lately. Guess it's that time of the month for him
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Mate, I'm just passionate about the game and what it can do for the development of young people and community spirit. I just hate the widening gap between the elite and the grass roots game I know and love.

It might not be natural selection but it is certainly survival of the fittest mate. Smaller players do exist, they are just rarer now. Parra for example is very small (in relative terms).
Wade is still at Wasps, didn't make the squad, wouldn't have made my squad. Even Billy Whizz was exposed back in the 03 final, his size being a target for Australia and key to their try.

Wade played in a club 7s tournament fairly recently and was unbelievable. Try every time he touched the ball pretty much.