His stats will be bad because I can’t imagine any of their’s will be even passable. I’d suspect they’ll be better than most, if not all, of his fellow pack

Skelton went off and immediately the Boks mauled their way over for the penalty try. Every maul after that walked up the pitch too. He was arguably the best forward the Wallabies had (admittedly an extremely low bar), but I suspect Skelton could have scored a hattrick that he converted himself and it still wouldn’t be enough for you

NZ, definitely. Ireland have only beaten France once in their last four games, and haven’t beaten them in France this entire cycle, last away win was back in 2018! That’s not me saying France are considerably stronger than NZ, but I think it’s more that styles make fights and Ireland struggle with the way a team like France play more than they do with NZ.

But he is a lineout option though. La Rochelle use him in most of their lineouts, just as a lifter, not a jumper. Think of Skelton throwing up Hooper or McReight, and that’s your lineout option right there. La Rochelle sometimes even place him at second or second last in the line because he can lift the solo guy, or spin and help in the middle.

Because several different collective class actions been already reported against the various rugby governing bodies (mostly national ones like the RFU but only a matter of time before there’s one against WR themselves, and even before that I suspect WR would have those unions begging for help paying any settlements), are you genuinely unaware of that fact? And given the historical settlements from the likes of the NFL, WR can clearly see examples of the outcomes of those kind of cases.

And why I care is however much you think red cards ruin games (and I disagree with that, a lot of times people say that because they’ve already made their mind up and will refuse to admit a good game was still good, like England-Ireland last year wasn’t a ‘ruined game’, but that’s a different argument), surely what will ruin the game more is World Rugby having to take a chunk of funds they use for growing grassroots/supporting T3 and further down countries, paying refs, admin, and all the other costs of an international sporting body and diverting them into a legal and settlement pot.

Yes, because obviously one of Ireland’s most important players, probably one of their top 2 players across the tournament and as far as I know has played more minutes than anyone else under Farrell, would decide to deliberately injure himself, makes
perfect sense……

I assume you’ll be sending those powers that be a few cheques to put in their legal payout funds then? Because WR cannot survive the lawsuits that are already starting without being able to present evidence that they’re making changes.

Honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see him start to sharpen the knife for Borthwick. The thing to remember about Woodward is he’s still bitter about leaving back in 2004 and that his primary motivation as a pundit is he feels he would do better than whoever the incumbent is, even though his “analysis” (using that term loosely) is still stuck in how the game was in 2003.

I thought Murphy had a poor game, he gave Italy a hard time and none of the 50/50s, but the biggest factor was Italy (who were the better team in the 90% of the pitch that doesn’t matter) just seemed to lose their minds every time they got close to the red zone, whereas Wales created less but had a return of that old Gatland steeliness/confidence and finished when they had to.

BO’K was very good though, let the game flow and it was a joy to see the French in that sort of mood.

Good point about perfomance vs result, I think (privately, he couldn’t dare admit it to the press) Borthwick would take a well-fought 38-32 loss in which the attack starts firing and his pack goes toe-to-toe with the big French boys, over a dreadful 6-5 win that just raises questions about the French instead of answers any of his own

If you actually want to know what you’re missing, I’d suggest you take a look at NH club rugby and ask Leinster (arguably the best club team in Europe, possibly even the world) what they think Skelton’s value was, firstly at Saracens and then La Rochelle

So I have two big issues with this type of article.

Firstly, my problem with complaints about the TMO and refereeing is it always ignores the biggest factor, and the reason they were implemented in the first place: the spectators and the media, most of whom are the very same as those complaining now. You have more faith in people than I do if you think that if we binned all technology and went back to “The ref is the sole arbiter and it’s whatever their judgement at the time happens to be is correct” people would be happy. Look at social media, Rassie, media channels like TAS, professional whiners pundits, etc, and how they react now when there’s even one incident over 80 minutes, and imagine the furore if there was 10 incidents in a game.

For example, look at how many people whinged about Foley being penalised in the RC and that was the correct decision, imagine the meltdown if a ref missed an English forward knocking it on at the base of a ruck before bundling over for the decisive try that directly lead to Australia getting knocked out of the WC! I don’t really think everyone will just go “Yeah, fair enough, that’s great, good luck to the English in the SF”

My other big issue is articles with the premise that rugby is in a terrible state are always myopic and biased imo, it may be in a terrible state in Australia/NZ/England (the three who always seem to produce those articles, but that doesn’t fairly reflect the global standings overall. Wales is a basket case but that’s entirely unrelated to anything WR have done, England has a few issues but aren’t nearly as bad as the above, and Canada is in freefall, but elsewhere things are a lot more rosy. France are doing great and has more professional clubs than ever (I believe they now have three fully pro tiers in their competition structure?), Ireland speaks for itself, Scotland are in a better state than ever financially and doing ok on the pitch, SA seem to have embraced the URC, Italy are starting to see real results at youth level and that translating to the mens team, the USA may have missed out on the WC but the MLR is growing every year, the rise of Portugal and Spain mean the T2 in Europe is now more than Georgia + some others, speaking of Georgia they’ve gone from never winning to beating 2 different T1 countries in the past year, either themselves of Fiji should be looking to make the QF later this year, Japanese club rugby is gaining more and more top players, T3 is growing in Europe too in the likes of Poland and Germany, and the perfomances in WC qualification of Uruguay and Chile is showing South American Rugby is fine too. Yes there’s definitely issues surrounding the game as a whole (player welfare, for example), but it’s never as bad as what the article implies.

The problem with that mindset is all runs come to and at some point, and if we going off your logic Ireland would still never have beaten NZ!

One correction, Tuipulotu qualified through Scottish grandparents, not residency!

The Welsh troubles are pretty complex but they aren’t really related to the SH. The WRU reportedly has a similar income to the IRFU (who have the same number of professional clubs and aren’t in trouble at all), very few “big” SH names, but is a basket case behind the scenes. To oversimplify (because otherwise you’d be writing a full book on the issue), the WRU board that oversee the professional game is majority run by representatives of the amateur game (who appear to despise the professional game and wish to be transported back to 1970), who are a jobs-for-the-lads Old Boys Club, and funds that should be used to keep the regions running are diverted into commercial interests, nice little jaunts to Italy for the families of higher-ups, and making sure Aberfythnowhere RFC has their shiny new clubhouse even though they barely have enough players for a Firsts team.

They played for most of the second half without Sexton (and Beirne, Gibson-Park, Furlong, Henshaw, Sheehan and Herring) and seemed to handle that one just fine

Sexton, probably, but they were missing 2 of the other 3 last weekend (and will be at least this weekend too, maybe longer).

I don’t think you know what the word “arbitrary” means. The system is set up with a clear algorithm that means anyone could accurately know and reproduce what the points (and from that, the ranking) will become based on a given score in a game. Meanwhile, you think NZ are #1 based on what, your gut feeling? Which is a definition of an arbitrary ranking right there!
For example, since the end of the 2019 RWC, NZ’s W/L/D against the other countries in the Top 5 is:
Ireland – 1/3/0
France – 0/1/0
South Africa – 2/2/0
England – 0/0/1
So while I think NZ are a very good side (and clearly in the top 4 in the world), that’s two negative and two neutral ratios, hardly befitting the #1 spot.
Also, you ignored the previous time I asked but I’d genuinely like to know, what factors aren’t taken into account?

Except the system is not that at all, what’s arbitrary or inaccurate about it? The rankings are composed of two numbers, the placement themselves and the points total (the more important one, just the one that gets ignored by the media because it’s not as flashy), which are clearly defnied by WR, to the point that you can work out the possible changes in rankings from a game before a ball is even kicked by plugging a prediction for the result into the algorithm.

If the SA teams were kicked out Jones would be the first one to then be whinging it’s unfair because the “Irish teams are in the URC and they have no competition there so they can rest for Europe and blah blah blah” which is exactly the kind of complaints the English/French had previously, before they pushed for the changed format to the new one that everyone thinks is crap. In the last two seasons alone, Leinster have won 57-0 (Gloucester) and 89-7 (Montpellier), and Montpellier still qualified, and Gloucester may well do so

Welsh rugby is dying because the board is controlled by the amateur clubs who have majority votes and occupy most of the important decision-making positions, and who despise the regions for cutting into what they see as “real” rugby. So not at all relevant in this discussion.

Minor correction, Arundell wasn’t actually nominated for World Player of the Year ahead of either of the two you mentioned, he was nominated for Breakthrough Player, a completely separate category. Savea and Etzebeth both have many wonderful qualities but you can’t really classify either of them as up-and-coming or fresh to the scene.And while I don’t really know why he was nominated for that, it didn’t really matter as it was always going to be a two-horse race between the winner Ange Capuozzo and Ireland’s Dan Sheehan

To only have one player (and coach) from the 10/12, NZ-series winning current #1 seems a bit odd, particularly if you’re excluding players in favour of those out of position.

The important result from the Irish perspective won’t be to beat SA, it will be to match it with France’s result against NZ (and also win every other group game). If NZ beat France, I’m sure the Irish wouldn’t be too disappointed to finish second in their group either, the stylistic matchup against NZ is a lot more in their favour than an angry France at home.

I’d be a Skelton defender having seen what he’s done in Europe and how he’s progressed, but this is the worst possible choice. If you’re going to pick him, pick him, otherwise just leave him out completely. Such a waste of an overseas slot to use one on a guy who you’ll give 5 minutes off the bench, absolutely pointless.