Who should have contested the RWC final, on form shown?

IMO South Africa's quarterfinal and semifinal opponents, Fiji and Argentina, may have deserved to go further than they did. Sadly for them they played us...

Interesting that the finalists come from the same pool, as is the case with the teams that contested the 3/4 play-off.

No replies yet. Poms and Saffies still sleeping...

The Team that are playing, England.

True, in the end it was probably played between the right two teams.

not a great ad for union....time to change the rules to better reward running rugby....well done SA in beating the poms

Finals do tend to turn out hard rather than attractive.

true...but a final with no tries is a disappointment...the points for penalties and field goals should be reduced

horace wrote:true...but a final with no tries is a disappointment...the points for penalties and field goals should be reduced

And points should be deducted for up and unders.

I think the top two teams from each pool should have gone through to a knockout stage, with winners going on through semis and a final. Oh, wait...

Zat wrote:I think the top two teams from each pool should have gone through to a knockout stage, with winners going on through semis and a final. Oh, wait...

Eventually the system worked out fine. As for the Death Pool, it duly died...

horace wrote:not a great ad for union....time to change the rules to better reward running rugby....

Why?
Just to prettify the game so it suits nations who can't seem to produce solid forward lines (Oz for example) thus depending on a couple of cheetah like flankers to run in the tries for them?

I won't disagree with you - the Final was a bit ponderous at times ... but it was absorbing nonetheless, with SAfrica exploiting the line-outs and the mauls whilst England shut them down in the rucks and snuffed out the likes of Habana with controlled play.
The "try" when it came, was through sustained English forward pressure resulting in Tait's run through a minefield of green shirts ... rather than an interception resulting in a 90 yard lone sprint in 9 seconds.

By imposing new regulations just to 'reward running rugby' is similar IMO to likening 20/20's excitement enhancing Test match standards!

Agree with you totally. Most finals are a bit ponderous anyway.

SA deserved to win in a close one.

horace wrote:true...but a final with no tries is a disappointment...the points for penalties and field goals should be reduced

What a daft idea. You think that reducing the points for penalties will increase the number of tries? Teams will infringe MORE, not less.

It's a knockout comp.

The teams that got to the final deserved to be there, if you want to find the best of the best play a league.

Merlin wrote:
By imposing new regulations just to 'reward running rugby' is similar IMO to likening 20/20's excitement enhancing Test match standards!

Yeah, but at the moment, rugby is like watching cricket in the 50s.

Merlin wrote:
By imposing new regulations just to 'reward running rugby' is similar IMO to likening 20/20's excitement enhancing Test match standards!

JGK wrote:Yeah, but at the moment, rugby is like watching cricket in the 50s.

Right, no-one did.

JGK wrote:[quote="Merlin"
By imposing new regulations just to 'reward running rugby' is similar IMO to likening 20/20's excitement enhancing Test match standards!

Yeah, but at the moment, rugby is like watching cricket in the 50s.[/quote]

There's nothing greatly wrong with it. The suspicion is that the Australians want the Stellenbosch rules in order to weaken the part played by the forwards to make up for them being so completely bloody useless at it.

Some of the ideas make perect sense, such as preventing teams passing the ball back into the 22 and clearing direct to touch, or making the backs stand further away at the breakdown in order to create more space. Others, such as permitting the collapse of a maul, or removing penalty offences at the scrum seem to be purely and simply about neutralising forward power, a case of Australians seeing where they're weakest and wanting to change the rules. That's ridiculous.

a case of Australians seeing where they're weakest and wanting to change the rules. That's ridiculous.

More like human nature. Though sometimes things are both at the same time...

mynah wrote:

a case of Australians seeing where they're weakest and wanting to change the rules. That's ridiculous.

More like human nature. Though sometimes things are both at the same time...

Yes, but who made them the guardians of the sport? Bloody arrogant is what it is, play it their way or they'll cry and take their ball home. To read a lot of their press react to the quarter-final defeat to England by decrying England for being boring and saying bring on the rule changes was pretty pathetic. And yet most of the Australian union fans I know weren't like that at all.

Didn't the Stellenbosch rules start in South Africa? I mean, I know that some Aussies (maybe Rod McQueen) had a hand in developing them but I thought it was South African grade rugby that first trialled it.

JGK wrote:Didn't the Stellenbosch rules start in South Africa? I mean, I know that some Aussies (maybe Rod McQueen) had a hand in developing them but I thought it was South African grade rugby that first trialled it.

It was Rod McQueen. Australia are the ones who are pushing it, because it's being tried in the Australian Rugby Championship at the moment, and it's John "I hate the English" O'Neill who has been badgering the IRB to implement them. It's all about the Australians wanting to make it more "entertaining" because they fear losing people to League, which is of course so popular in Australia. The objection elsewhere is that other countries don't see why they should rip up the rulebook just because the Australians are having a hard time domestically.

Personally, I find the basketball rugby so prevalent in much of the S14 rather boring. If I wanted that, I'd watch league. The beauty of union has always been that it can encompass a variety of styles of play.

The South Africans are understandably a bit uneasy about the ideas about the breakdown, because they play as much forward orientated rugby as any of the NH sides.

I reckon it is a valid concern that defences have tightened up to the point where try scoring is looking difficult, but equally, rugby has always been an arms race between attack and defence. Australia's gifted backs never got the ball against England because their forwards were so inept, not because the rules were wrong. New Zealand just choked, they weren't hampered by rules. England just weren't good enough to play any other way at this tournament, which is why the whingeing that came their way was pathetic, really - they should have just been praised for what they achieved. As for France, their tactics were just bonkers considering where their strengths lay, but that's down to Laporte.

So I don't really agree that this World Cup was a victory for boring, forward orientated play. It just worked out like that.

As I say, some of the rule changes look quite sensible. But wholesale change is not the best solution, and too many changes in one go will make it impossible to be able to tell what is working and what isn't. Massive rule changes will doubtless appear to be a "good thing" because in the early period it's going to be chaos. Doesn't mean it's the right decision.

Allowing hands in the ruck is going to cause even more dispute over interpretation than there is now. And if there's no penalty offence for it, it'll be carnage.

Drop goals aren't part of the change, but a lot of the opposition to them is just silly. They are a highly skilful part of the game. I can understand the dislike of penalties, but as I said above, reducing their value will create MORE infringements, not fewer, as preventing a try will become more important.

Aye shoey, you've 'got it down' there.

When it boils down to it, the Aussies are an incredibly sooky 'take their ball home' lot. They should hold support groups to get over it or some sh!t.

My problem with the drop goal is when teams take pot shots when advantage is being played. If you want to kick away the advantage so be it, but with the present rules, sides are getting 2 bites at the cherry.

Shoeshine wrote:Drop goals aren't part of the change, but a lot of the opposition to them is just silly. They are a highly skilful part of the game. I can understand the dislike of penalties, but as I said above, reducing their value will create MORE infringements, not fewer, as preventing a try will become more important.

I may have this wrong Shoeshine, but the Stellenbosch rules are actually trying to correct some of the inequities that came in when the last round of rule changes were implemented in about 92 or 93. Penalties will not be reduced in value, but the number of offences punishable by penalties is cut way back under the new rules, with the side offended against given the choice of a short-arm kick or feeding a scrum. This should result in more tries, which is - apparently - supposed to be the main aim of the game.