comment, discussion, rant .....................

Egg chasing :yawn: :lol:

I'm sure it's been explained already somewhere in the media, but I can't rememebr the reason right now, but how come there are games in Cardiff and Edinburgh? Certainly gives Wales and Scotland a slight advantage against Australia and New Zealand respectively. Although, to be fair, I doubt it will make much difference. Would have been nice for us if the South Africa game had been at Twickenham.......:rolleyes:

France were obliged to offer a quarter-final to Wales to reciprocate matches played there when Wales hosted the tournament in 1991.

bbc

Ah yes, all because the Welsh didn't have enough stadiums.....:rolleyes: :lol:

France 12 Argentina 17

France were awful in that first half. To be fair, Argentina played a very smart game, but the number of errors was fairly scandalous for a team that thinks it has realistic designs on winning the tournament.

France upped their workrate in the second half but never really looked like breaching the Argentine backline.

A good game to open, fairly entertaining, and a mild shock. Let's just hope there are no shocks on the cards tomorrow! :thumbsup:

France now have to beat Ireland to have any realistic chance of progressing. :unsure:

I expect there's at least one lapin malheureux round here ;)

:lol: just a bit <_<

well 9 of the argentian players are playing in a french team but that doesn't excuse the mistake when they lost the ball in the first half and let the argentian go until the marking point, they kinda recover but not enough to win the game. they better work on their weak points before the next game :unsure:

USA 10 England 26

Points on the board, but as performances go, a lot worse than France's last night. Absolutely woeful. No urgency, terrible execution, little communication, and generally almost no creativity going forward.

God help us against the South Africans, I think divine intervention is our only hope now.....

new zealand 76-italy 14 (easy)

australia 91-japan 3 (ouch! :lol: )

south africa 59-samoa 7 (the best match so far)

Given how rubbish England are at the moment I was quite wary of Samoa. Thankfully, it looks as though they're not as good as they were the last time around either.

On the other hand, we don't have much chance of beating South Africa, so providing we get through it looks like being Australia for us in the next round. Whoopee! Not.

Only watched the opening game as I was in Amsterdam at the weekend (and all the Dutch were supporting England in the football <_< , so nowhere showed the rugby)

Argentina played with a lot of confidence which was astonishing as they had the simplest game plan in the world, how on earth France didn't adapt their tactics, I'll never know. They deserved to lose as a result.


Thank God I didn't watch our game, the write ups were terrible. Re SA Samoa, weren't Samoa well in the game for at least the first half?

^^ Pretty much what I've since heard yes. I based my comments on the result. That'll teach me. By the sounds of it, our big game in the group won't be South Africa, who are all but guaranteed to thrash us, but Samoa, who we'll need to beat to even get through the opening group stage.

Personally, I'm more interested in seeing if Ireland can dump out France! :lol: (Sorry PG!)

let see first how ireland do against georgia (can't be that difficult) and how france do against namibia :ermm: before thinking about the Ireland vs France :lol: :unsure:

I can't see either of them losing their next game, nor Argentina for that matter. I think the key result in the group now is going to be Ireland Vs France. If Ireland win it then the final fixture between Argentina and Ireland becomes all but irrelevant other than to see who gets the misfortune of playing the All Blacks in the next round! :lol:

:rolleyes: we still have 10 days before that game :ermm:

south africa 36 - england 0 painful but quite a good match

NZ 108 - portugal 13 (ouch :lol: )

australia 32 - wales 20 (of course playing in Cardiff helped a little the welsh team :rolleyes: )

Bye bye Wales and Ireland :hibye:

France play New Zealand in Cardiff in the QFs and could end up going out of their own tournament on foreign soil. How completely ridiculous :rolleyes:

England Vs Australia looks mouth-watering, providing we actually turn up.

Argentina will fancy their chances of making the semis with a QF against Soctland, and South Africa to play Fiji.

Wales Fiji was an absolutely incredible game!!!

Ireland's fall from grace is a bit interesting, obviously complete but where on earth has it come from?

i guess there will be more NZ supporter than french in Cardiff :unsure: :ermm:

France Vs England in the SFs, who the fcuk would have predicted that just a few weeks ago?? :o

A great day for NH rugby :thumbsup:

well as long it's not Argentina vs France for the finale :lol: :unsure:

i did like laporte comment after the game to the reporter (trying to start the usual england/french flaming i suppose) when asked if it was "one more game against the rosbif" and he said "for me, it's England"

just saw the south africa vs fiji match, fiji made things difficult for south africa but was not strong enough in the end

Despite our result against SA in the group games I have to say that I'm not overly impressed with them. I'm fairly confident at this point that the France Vs England SF is pretty much a pseudo final. Both have come through tough draws. SA will coast into the final and will suffer accordingly IMO.

Obviously I would love an England win, but if it's not to be, I'll be cheering on the French in the final. Another win for NH rugby will really piss off the SH nations! :lol:

My voice hasn't recovered yet :lol:

Fantastic performance by us, hope we can raise the levels again. France look like they haven't gotten out of 3/4th gear, backline showed little going forward but the pack looked immense.

Can't believe we're in the semis, would love us to win and if we put in a performance then hopefully we can match the French and edge it again.


Huge distinction between and indication of our mindset this year vs. 2003 was that when we won QF SFs etc it was like there's nothing to celebrate 'job's not done'. This time it was like we had won the cup.

I'm not knocking it, it just shows that the team's in a different place. Hope we can make it.

Shame about Scotland, I really felt as if they should have won but they really let themselves down :(

Re: Scotland, the game was there for the taking for them wasn't it? A real shame that one. Three NH sides in the SFs would have been great!

Re: England, I think in 2003, we just expected to win. In truth we did win it without ever really getting out of second gear. We were actually that much better than everyone else, including New Zealand, who we'd already beaten on home soil earlier that year, along with Australia. Now, just getting past the group stage was an achievement, and beating Australia, especially now, when we've been at our lowest ebb in years, is well worth celebrating. I'm sure many would have thought well we've beaten Australia but we can't beat NZ so let's just celebrate knocking the Aussies out. As things stand, with the Kiwis being sent packing, the whole competition is wide open, and dare I say it, we're coming into form at exactly the right time. Are we becoming the Germany of international rugby? Great if we were! :lol: Poor old NZ though, yet again, great in between world cups, should win it, but bottle it.....4 more years! :thumbsup:

I haven't ribbed any Aussies as that would be gloating but all the Kiwi's in the office are getting it in the neck! Choke choke :thumbsup:

We've got plenty of both, all of whom must now be wishing that they'd kept their gobs shut over the past week! :lol:

First it was the Aussies with the 'we're going to give you a hammering' jibes, and then the slightly subtler Kiwis with 'We hope England win so we can get an easier semi final' quips.

Awwwwwww, looks how that turned out for all of you! :lol:

hehe, my heart bleeds :lol:

Sensational performance from England, especially in defence. Restricting the French to no tries in a semi final on home soil is a titanic achievement in itself!

Anyone else get the impression that all of this 'England playing absolutely rubbish for nearly 4 years' was all a ruse? :lol:

Bad luck to France, had they got through I'd have cheered them on in the final, but at least we've got a Northern Hemisphere team through to the final again. Can England become the first nation to retain the World Cup?

If things go as expected tomorrow, we can look forward to trying to rectify the South Africa result earlier in the tournament.

Great night for English rugby. Again :thumbsup:

How on earth did we win that? :lol: :thumbsup: :shrug:

^^ Sir Johnny finally found his kicking boots! :lol:

Roll on the final - we can do it!!!!

it started well for france but then once again our defence was not at his top, england played a bit better and then wilkinson was once again magic :rolleyes: (a bit of a repeat of the semi finale 2003 )

well done england and good luck for the finale

now we just have to have our revenge against argentina for the third place (unless there is a surprise tonight)