Well here it is folks. What a 2 months it’s been, I’ve enjoyed every interaction on Lemmy and want to thank you all too
Tonight it’s going for 4. The boks after back to back wins, both away unlike the All Blacks’, and NZ looking to settle scores after that abysmal world cup warm up. I wouldn’t read much into that though: SA have been through the ringer, and NZ have been building since that opening loss vs France
7-1 bench for SA again, with NZ staying pretty strongly in shape match to match, so a tale of squad management. Game management from the inspriational Rassie and his pushing the laws across the whole pitch. And I expect a tale of 80’ not unlike the 1995 final
Head, heart, and arse requested before kick off. The BBC rugby world cup daily podcast worth a listen too for a preview too
See y’all for 8pm BST
Oh absolutely, Barnes had quite a few horrible calls by the end. I feel like he kept trying to overcompensate or something. Respect to the ABs though. What a match. We couldn’t even get a try through with you guys one man down
I think the trouble is that things WR wants referee’s to focus on (at the expense of other parts of the game) inevitably mean that in games with two stalwart defenses such as the ABs clearly had (as you say, not giving up a try while playing with 14 for most of the match) that a referee decision will determine which teams gets the ascendancy.
And defense being so favored in referee decisions has resulted in the last 6 years of teams choosing to play without the ball more often than not. We really had a heyday of Rugby from the mid 90s through to the late 2000s where professional defense wasn’t up to much and teams could score lots of tries. Then once Rugby adopted League defensive systems, but without the League dictate of standing the defense back 10m from the ruck the game as a whole has become a bit crap to watch.
When you’re invested in the result its still engrossing watching to see who will crack first, but if you’re neutral games like that are pretty dire.