The State of the Game
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@donsteppa said in The State of the Game:
@Rapido @nzzp I can relate. I've started to go from rugby being my favourite sport in winter and cricket my favourite sport in summer... to rugby being what I'll watch if I can't find any cricket on, regardless of the time of year.
Yeah thank god our cricket team is suddenly awesome, and all GCs to boot. There is a game that has its TMO shit together.
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@tewaio said in The State of the Game:
@rapido said in The State of the Game:
The game is stuffed, I've given up on it. Dont see this a temporary blip in rules or styles. Not much resemblance anymore to what made me love it as a kid.
Haven't watched a match for over a year.
There is no enjoyment in it for me anymore.
I'm getting close. Used to watch so much of it. Now it's the All Blacks only, and even then it's a struggle largely due to the TMO.
The turning point for me was the Poite/Garces "deal" at the end of the 3rd Lions Test in 2017. Fuck investing any time/ care factor in rugby after that.
True. Back in the day it was easy to know whether a player was worthy of an AB call up cos you’d watched him in Super Rugby all season.
Now I need to trawl through threads on here to decide if he’s any good or if ferners are simply fluffing him too much.
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@bones said in The State of the Game:
@nta said in The State of the Game:
I can tackle someone by the arm including grabbing their wrist or elbow. Perfectly legal.
Not from offside you can't, which is what I was saying. Thanks for mansplaining though sir.
Ah... I overlooked your reference to the offside line, which was....
@bones said in The State of the Game:
Knocking the ball out is knocking the ball out.
Fucking. Nowhere.
Need any more mansplaining?
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@nta said in The State of the Game:
@bones said in The State of the Game:
@nta said in The State of the Game:
I can tackle someone by the arm including grabbing their wrist or elbow. Perfectly legal.
Not from offside you can't, which is what I was saying. Thanks for mansplaining though sir.
Ah... I overlooked your reference to the offside line, which was....
@bones said in The State of the Game:
Knocking the ball out is knocking the ball out.
Fucking. Nowhere.
Need any more mansplaining?
You literally quoted it in the reply before that, you old guys are really getting into the groove of this forgetting stuff thing huh?
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@kiwiwomble said in The State of the Game:
@voodoo said in The State of the Game:
Well this thread can go and fuck itself.
This is the fucking Fern. We whine and complain and make grandiose predictions and statements. We claim higher morals, better understanding, and we reserve the right to see our teams go undefeated forever.
i must be reading a different part of the fern
He was clearly referring to the Hawt discussion thread.
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@tewaio said in The State of the Game:
@rapido said in The State of the Game:
The game is stuffed, I've given up on it. Dont see this a temporary blip in rules or styles. Not much resemblance anymore to what made me love it as a kid.
Haven't watched a match for over a year.
There is no enjoyment in it for me anymore.
I'm getting close. Used to watch so much of it. Now it's the All Blacks only, and even then it's a struggle largely due to the TMO.
The turning point for me was the Poite/Garces "deal" at the end of the 3rd Lions Test in 2017. Fuck investing any time/ care factor in rugby after that.
Same for me. Although you do suffer from the issue as me in that being UK based means that local rugby is much more about being better people (especially better than those horrible football people) than the actual sport.
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@mn5 said in The State of the Game:
@kiwiwomble said in The State of the Game:
@mn5 i think Cricket has also made a huge effort to engage with the fans, playing more games in smaller grounds all around the country including supporting the development of grounds like hagley park which is a great place to go watch
As is the Basin on a typically beautiful Wellington day.
...on a sofa you carried before the game started.
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Am I the only one old bugger who misses the fights and punches which seemed to go for minutes at a time....?
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Is there a grumpy old man thread - if not, I nominate this one to become the official grumpy old man thread.
I'm sure somebody has the stats - but I have feeling that at 37 I am one of the younger guys on the board, if not younger at least younger than the average. Boards like these are really an gen x/early millenials thing.
There are problems with the game, but there always been issues, what I think is happening is that we are all just getting older and further aways from actually playing the game. One of the great things about rugby is that most fans are former players as having experience of playing makes following a pretty chaotic game a lot easier.
The game is not more broken now than it was 10,20, or whenever years ago, we are just getting older and grumpier.
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This thread is actually the only one called Grumpy Old Man, but there are many grumpy old men threads on the Fern.
https://www.forum.thesilverfern.com/topic/4236/grumpy-old-man
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@sidbarret said in The State of the Game:
The game is not more broken now than it was 10,20, or whenever years ago, we are just getting older and grumpier.
I don't think the game itself is broken, just the officiating and constant interruptions from TMO's has become such a big pain in the arse
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@sidbarret said in The State of the Game:
Is there a grumpy old man thread - if not, I nominate this one to become the official grumpy old man thread.
I'm sure somebody has the stats - but I have feeling that at 37 I am one of the younger guys on the board, if not younger at least younger than the average. Boards like these are really an gen x/early millenials thing.
There are problems with the game, but there always been issues, what I think is happening is that we are all just getting older and further aways from actually playing the game. One of the great things about rugby is that most fans are former players as having experience of playing makes following a pretty chaotic game a lot easier.
The game is not more broken now than it was 10,20, or whenever years ago, we are just getting older and grumpier.
Are you saying 20 somethings are too cool for the fern ? No way.
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@sidbarret said in The State of the Game:
I'm sure somebody has the stats - but I have feeling that at 37 I am one of the younger guys on the board, if not younger at least younger than the average. Boards like these are really an gen x/early millenials thing.
There are problems with the game, but there always been issues, what I think is happening is that we are all just getting older and further aways from actually playing the game. One of the great things about rugby is that most fans are former players as having experience of playing makes following a pretty chaotic game a lot easier.
The game is not more broken now than it was 10,20, or whenever years ago, we are just getting older and grumpier.
I disagree.
If that were so, you'd expect a typical fan trajectory to ease as people hit their 40s. That's not happening - observationally, my father in law (who played to a fairly high level) was a good old rugby follower, loved attending AB tests and games, watched it all on TV.
He just can't be bothered any more - hardly watches world cup games; he's just lost interest. Older blokes used to be a core audience - decades of rugby watching experience; I think they are falling away from the game.
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I might buy more into the 'we're just getting older and grumpier' line of thought if I was also falling out of love with cricket. But that's definitely not the case...
I think there has been a long term trend of people stopping playing rugby earlier than they used to though, and maybe that all starts to accumulate for rugby interest over time. I can remember Colin Meads quietly lamenting that in an article around the mid-2000's. (The story had him mentioning a bloke nearby propping up the club bar 'while he should still be out there playing first')
I keep meaning to look up some of the player number stats for the various sports, especially at junior level. The growing weight of dementia-related stories like Carl Hayman's might start to bite sometime. Though participation in women's rugby seems to be growing.
Spectator numbers, at least in NZ, are also telling below Super Rugby level. Up until about three years ago I was determined that we had to (somehow) do a massive upgrade to Tauranga Domain. There are still upgrades that should be done there to facilities, lights, etc.
But, looking at last years NPC crowds in places like Waikato Stadium and Forsyth Barr... would you really want to invest tens of millions of dollars (or more, given construction prices) in substantially bigger capacity than Tauranga Domain in most places at the moment - unless you were a Super Rugby franchise base? I miss the days of massive crowds wherever the Ranfurly Shield was.
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@victor-meldrew I think the level of officiating is at what feels like an all time low, which will be in part to plenty of rules having wide interpretations, but the TMO is probably the bigger issue, and probably the easiest to fix by reducing thier scope to only speaking when asked a question or highlighting grubbery.
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@nzzp interesting - my Old Man (whose touching 70 and also played to a reasonable standard) just told me that he’s enjoying rugby as much now as he did when he was playing in the late 70s/early 80s.
But a big part of that is that scrums are a serious contest again and of course an old hooker would love that.
That’s an aside though, like others I think the TMO is largely a blight on the game. Especially as it seems largely to be driven by the home broadcaster feeding tenuous infractions to help their team.
Get rid of that nonsense, ruck goblins going offside to kick the ball to the back of a silly snake and sort the ruck out by stripping most of the rules out so that a ruck only exists when at least one player from each side ON THEIR FEET are bound over the ball. Go off your feet and you don’t count.
my club was scrambling for footage on facebook yesterday of the juniors "showing amazing respect for remembrance day" to post up. Shameless.
