England got there by not playing rugby either.
Suffocating rugby.

Curious, you have been on the other side of this argument previously.
“The franchises keep 1 or 2 spots open” just in case.
Are you using an edge case to argue the point?

In your Banks example, he was already contracted to the Reds when he played for Qld Country.
Again, I am not saying NRC isn’t working, just that it isn’t responsible for the talent spotting, it is more of a test environment for prospects.
There are great players that would have been otherwise invisible, making their bones in the comp.

The Force players that have been poached to Super rugby this year were on the radar long before this years NRC – It may be the first time the the East coast public would have seen them but they have developed in the main team or come through the Force academy.

The modern model has the players being contracted into the academies at school age. It is what has to be done to stop our Locks playing Basketball and AFL and our Centers going to League.

I was curious to know how my local school state was able to offer 11 year old boys and girls “Gifted and talented” AFL spots straight out of primary school. It turns out that it is co-funded by the AFL.
So, the AFL model is: promote and subsidize clubs from u5’s, Start elite Programs in Highschools, pipeline the kids into the Academies and premier clubs then onto the franchises.

RA’s approach is to pay a select number of high profile players Millions on long contracts and hope the kids who’s parents are paying many $100’s in fees every year will keep playing because they idolize players.

I understand that the franchises and RA actually do a bit more but it is invisible to the public and is no where as effective as the competition.

Do players really graduate from NRC into Super?
My understanding is that the Super contracts are all but finalized before a single ball is dropped onto boot in the NRC competition.
A lot of the players in NRC are already contracted and are in the academies/development programs with their parent Franchises.
The “cream” you speak of is already in the process of being Homogenized before they run on.
Don’t get me wrong, I think this is how it should be but I am reluctant to credit NRC for identifying the players. It is an environment for conditioning them for elite level competition and keeping second string SR players Fit for internationals though.

That said, I believe that it would be valuable to keep this comp running on a fortnightly basis during the regular super season. It could Focus on getting the best club players to play against each other regularly.

When the defense is setup with a perfect line and the 2 Toll Booths
are adjusting their position and pointing where the FB should run it takes some serious weasel arguments to convince anyone that it wasn’t planned that way.

Ned got his caps because he was the best locking 6 in the country.
Chieka’s game plan left him no choice.
There were plenty of Hardman 6’s about, Some went overseas, some injured, but none fit Chieka’s 1-Dimensinal plan.

If the French want to get angry with Jaco, it should be about the Welsh asking him not to let the French slow the game down, and then, after scoring, turning the last 6 minutes of the game into a snore fest of scrum resets doing exactly what they had asked Jaco to stop and what they had done to the Wobblies weeks before.

The sad part is that a lot of us were hoping the Wallabies would lose,
just so we could get rid of him.

I don’t have too much of a problem in principle with Chieka’s revolving door Policy on fringe players.

One of the criticisms of players is that they don’t have enough international experience.
But not this way. Give A guy 10 Minute stint at the end of a game that they are already losing and then give them the boot for not being able to perform under pressure, this isn’t helpful unless you are trying to crush their availability to play for other nations.

There is a photoshop where he has a fist full of 20 pound notes in his hand, that one is even funnier.

Well done the welsh fans and Jaco, this is hilarious.
The French need to take a concrete pill and harden up.
They should be directing their venom at their player for his action.
Vahaamahina’s choice cost France a semi final position.

The only mitigating factor would be if Wainwright had a hold of his plums.

Easy, if the Tackler is obstructed by a player in an offside position, they become offside. It is no Different to crossing.

Beale’s Text started it, The players backed Beale and not the Coach, Hoops in particular. Coach Fell not long after…
I am sure there is more to it, but this was the public facing parts of it.

Castles Hands were tied,
The cupboards bare with Cheika on one of those million dollar, 4 year, contracts with no performance clauses.
What would you have done?
Paid out the 1.5 Mil and found someone that would work for you for $100k?
Maybe Hoops and Beale could hand back some of their fat pay packets to fund it. They were, after all, instrumental in putting him there in the first place and were first picked every time.

It is an emotive issue that divides opinion.

I am tolerant of the “accidental” stuff.
For example if the off side was triggered by almost a play fake from the halfback. Or the grey areas where the ball may or may not be out of the ruck.
Some of those baffle me. There is a distinction between being in an offside position and being offside.
A player can be in an offside position provided they take no part in the game. It gets squidgy sometimes on false starts, I am ok with it provided the player corrects.
The practice of “Toll Boothing” where a fullback returning from the deep runs between 2 of his offside players preventing the defending team from making a tackle does not fit my interpretation of “no part in the game. Some say it is skill, I say it is shifty.

So it isn’t true? Ritchie wrote a book on it FFS!
My opinion is based on my real world observations, the attitude is by no means universal but it is not trivial either, that is why I used the term “leaked” and not engulfed.

Check out this forum, members are divided on whether it is OK to push the margins, and you had better believe it, the loudest and most passionate supporters of it have their origins across the ditch. These are the guys that won’t pay for parking until the inspector shows up, or will claim that they haven’t got their drinks at a restaurant even though they already have them.

I would never be jealous of a team that cheats, that is you telling porkies about my views.

I follow the Highlanders because I like the way they play and they tend to be more honest in the way they approach the game. It clearly isn’t a recipe for success but I have made my peace with it, atop the moral high ground.

In my example, the tackle was still legal, but the offside was not, the player still gets his head rattled. The illegal action resulted in injury.
Stuff happens but the old insurance addage that there is always someone at fault still holds. There is no distinction between intent and negligence. The lesson we can take away is that blame can be apportioned. He ran a red light, you were speeding, You were high and he ducked into it …… this is where the grey areas might reside.

In my world, it is not the referees job to decide which rules are OK to break/bend, none of them are. – It is a Morals issue.
There is even a clause in the game that reads something like “no player shall intentionally break……”

Oh, No….

So speeding is OK
What about Illegal Parking?
What about shoplifting?
Where does your moral compass stop?

Which Rugby Laws can you push and Which shouldn’t you Push?
Player safety?
The usual response is no
What if some of the laws have an indirect safety impact? Yes/No
What if some of the laws improve the game for spectators?

Through Ritchie, the AB’s “rule bending” has become the norm and has leaked into the population as a whole.

Administrators sanction players for antisocial behavior, under the guise of role being good role models for our kids. Why is this any different?

I like to use a game of UNO as a baseline for this Moral debate:
Sneak a peek at someone else’s cards?
What if it is a Kid.
Change UNO for a high stakes professional poker tournament?
Sneak a peak at your oppositions card?
Crease a card or 2 so you can ID it next hand?

Back to Rugby, An early hit on a flyhalf from an offside position that gives them a concussion.
@ $1mil a year this is high stakes too.

It would be awful to see the matches descend into a games of Uno.
I have observed quite a bit of mic chatter between the Ref and the TMO’s where they ask the question: Any mitigating circumstances?
And this is where the the grey turns to black and white.
My opinion is that a player that ducks or runs dangerously should be accountable for their own safety. “Contact with own head”…..
I don’t think we are there yet, but a rule like this would shift the balance back.

I think it will come down to the Ref.
Australia will be trying to run an upbeat game and the English have a bunch of big guys that fatigue easily that want to slow it down and grind it out, they are masters of polluting the ruck and they seem to have a large number of injuries that miraculously disappear after the forwards have had a rest.
An astute ref can tilt the game Australia’s way if they call these ruck infringements and call BS on the faux injuries.
Not saying it will win the game for the Wallabies but it would be at a pace that I would enjoy watching. Wallabies need to find their ball skills and make the hard tackles, like Japan did if they want a chance of winning.

It is a large problem to Chew on.
I have a couple of Mods, I don’t think that the top 4 Tier 1 (Tier 1a) nations should be under any obligation to play the bottom 12-16 teams (Tier 2b) – Call it the Spoils of War.
The Logic cascades, Tier 1b only plays as low as Tier 2.
Call it a sliding relegation system.
Could be done on rankings points as well. If the team can’t improve their rankings with a win against a team, then they don’t have to play. I think the gap is 10 rankings points.
Compulsory 1 low tier game per test window.

GRR might solve the Pacifica problem, but at this point, it is still Hypothetical.

The N in NPC and NRC should discourage inclusion, Pacifica should have their own comp. It comes down to geography.
Have a tri-nations with the winner of each comp playing 1 home and 1 away.

Best player has given us terrible results for the last 4 years.
May not be best for the team.

Well the opposition and referees have been voting for the last 4 years with results.
Australia Lose, over and over, and over.
If the game is centered our 2 “best” players, it doesn’t say much about how good they are.

I don’t think that the decisions have been bad, maybe a little inconsistent.
The rules have a strict protocol that the TMO’s and refs have been following.
The protocol is not new, and the teams have had all season to get used to it.
I think what we are seeing is the result of the refs are taking it a bit more seriously and the TMO given more angles and authority to scrutinize the events that should not be happening anyway.
Blame the players. or question the protocol, I think the Refs have done OK.
How do you tackle a ball carrier driving less than 1m off the ground without contacting the head or doing a chop tackle? I think the burden of responsibility for player safety includes the ball carrier. If the trend of ducking into tackles continues, we might see players go off for an HIA and Yellow at the same time.

As to rescheduling games, look at the logistics. This isn’t easy, and may not even be plausible.
The next complaint would be that teams won’t be given enough recovery time before the next match.
The best outcome would be to find another stadium to tear up, refund tickets and find a new crowd.

Typhoon season is supposed to end in September and it certainly isn’t climate change, Allan Jones tells me it is all a hoax and, as we all know, Australian rugby coaches know everything and should never be questioned, even when evidence suggests otherwise.