The Silver Fern

Dropping Wagner for CDG&Patel would be like dropping Sam Cane for a RWC semi

Just got a late ticket through a work connection yussssss

I was bouncing my 8 month old son on my knee when that LBW review from Kane was happening...I let out such a roar when ball tracking showed it missing the stumps that the poor little guy got a hell of a fright and burst into tears #parenting

@LagerLout said in All Blacks v England:

You know what, I don't give a shit about the World Cup. I care that our mana is being damaged here every other test by Foster and co. Test matches are important. It was all lovely and fluffy to hear Richie talk about the team culture, but what the hell happened to the AB coach that put the fear of god into you that losing is just not acceptable. If you play badly, kiss your position goodbye. You're not AB material. This woke world of accepting failure is destroying the All Blacks. We will be just another team in less than 2 years if this crap keeps up.

Exactly. Fuck the World Cup. They are won by whoever gets the fluke of the draw, and next year's edition will be the worst one yet. I care about winning test matches. Those of us living in England have had to put up with so much shit since we lost to them in 2019. 4 years since we last played at Twickenham and we fucked a golden opportunity to win there. I'm fuming.

India breathe a sigh of relief

Call me a chippy kiwi, one-eyed, sore loser etc, but it really winds me up that we seem to be constantly on the wrong side of some really dubious refereeing decisions over the years.

Yes, we are the most carded international team, but (hear me out) might that be because we are just subconsciously looked at differently than other sides? Don't know why, maybe because we dominated 2004-2017?

Off the top of my head, in rough chronological ordrer:

• Poite's "deal" to decide the 2017 Lions, exact replica of the (correct) call Joubert was pilloried for in the 2015 RWC QF Scot vs Aus. Poite rules it correctly, then has an off-mike conversation with Garces, IN FRENCH, then downgrades the penalty to scrum, presumably to be less controversial. Wtf?

• Lions Test 2, after playing most of the game with 14 we lost it to a penalty at the death, where Sinckler jumped into a tackle to collect an errant pass, and we got penalized. Never seen that before or since in a rugby game. I think there's now a rule that awards a free kick to the defending side if the attacker attempts to jump clean over NFL-style?

• Jordie Barrett's red card vs Aus, where he jumped high to catch a kick and someone just ran into his foot. Not seen that before or since either?

• The stitch up last year vs the Irish, Ta'avo gets done for a red, but a near-identical shot from Porter on Rettalick gets let off with "absorbing soak tackle" - never heard that language before or since!

• Aki high shot vs the Irish not looked at.

• Scott Barrett's yellow against Argentina for batting the ball from the halfback's hands. Stupid move, but would a ref really card any other team that deep in opposition territory?

• The Final: EDG forearm to the face, not looked at. Etzebeth leading forearm to Cane's head, not looked at despite right in front of the ref. Frizzell carded for being cleaned out onto a random leg he wouldn't have even seen.

• Cane's upgraded to red, harsh for me given Kriel changed direction so suddenly, but fair enough under the current protocols. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander when Kolisi lines up Ardie from 10m back and smokes him head-to-head. Nope, stays yellow. Bad luck guys, 4 more years.

Thank you for indulging me, rant over.

And schedule games so people can watch 2 or 3 on the trot, rather than having six sequentially kick off 30 mins after each other. How anyone watches rugby in a pub without fisticuffs is beyond me.

Jumbled thoughts:

Great atmosphere, we looked totally asleep for the middle 60mins. Felt we got the worst of the ref decisions and didn't get the favorable bounce of the ball. The entire crowd thought Telea's second try wasn't grounded properly (it was) and the noise in the stadium as Jordie nailed the clutch kick to put us 8 ahead was incredible. Our defence is still so passive. Murrayfield is a great stadium, no bad views even up in the cheap seats where we were. Game really turned when Codie and TJ came on, fair play to both of them - I thought they were past it.

I think as its a one-off test we should select 6 batsmen, and back all 4 seamers (obviously Jamieson is a lock) to bowl 20+ overs in a day if required. So add in Young or Blundell at 6, drop Watling to 7. KW to bowl a few part time overs.

None of CdG/Satnav/Mitchell are really good enough to take up a spot in the #1 team in the world for a championship final! On a non-spin friendly pitch Ajaz isn't going to trouble the Indians much.

Latham
Conway
Williamson
Taylor
Nicholls
Young/Blundell
Watling
Jamieson
Wagner
Southee
Boult

@mikethesnow said in Olympics Thread:

ROC Artistic Swimming routine was magnificent and absolutely worthy of the Gold

Nice try Russian bot

@rancid-schnitzel said in Springboks v All Blacks:

In spite of the lineout debacle last time, I thought Karl Marx was pretty damn impressive. Showed it tonight. Boks pack in general was very good. Incredible defence and commitment.

He was especially strong down the left wing..

@Catogrande said in Theory about historically successful teams:

@MajorRage Don't be too downhearted mate. As long as you and Mrs MR put in a shift each week you should be able to unlearn your nipper of some of the crap that gets fed to them.

Here's a really special case at my kids' senior school (up to GCSE) from the science teacher - "There is enough energy in a ham sandwich to allow a person to climb Mt Everest"!

Said "science" teacher also put a scare into the kids about bird flu telling the class that she had bought some tamiflu on the internet and that it is running out because the Government was stockpiling it for "essential occupations".

Reminds me of this, a poster from the Carbon Trust UK, which is funded by government grant money!

Someone else crunched the numbers, but very quickly:

The photocopier in that photo (Canon 6255i) uses 0.9 W on standby mode, as per the manual.
Assuming its used 9am-5pm, that's 16 h per day on standby, or 14.4 Wh
A cup of tea is 300 mL, cold water is 5°C, tea has roughly the specific heat capacity of water, 4.184 J/g°C, and a density of 1 g/mL

Q=mc∆T, = 3004.184(100-5) = 119,244 J

1 Wh = 1 J/s * h -> 1 Wh = J*(h/s) = 119,244/3,600 = 33.123 Wh

So a photocopier left on standby overnight uses the same energy it takes to make 43% of one cup of tea, not 30. Dipshits.

@voodoo said in RWC Final: England v Springboks:

@ACT-Crusader said in RWC Final: England v Springboks:

Is it worth a watch? Only watched 10 minutes of the 2007 final after I knew the result. Is this better?

It's absolutely worth watching.

It was a great game of rugby. All the English in my office are saying it was a crap game and really dull, just smacks of sour grapes.

@Stargazer said in Exodus 2019:

Screenshot of Brodie's insta:

"know off"....."after david"

Right so the wife roped me into going to her work "team bonding day" where we'd all watch the rugby in a pub in London. Not ideal, but it's only the quarters, and I thought we'd be playing Japan/Scotland so limited stress. Until the Irish cocked it up for everyone.

Yesterday we found out that not all the wife's colleagues want to get up for the early kick off, so we're watching it 1hr delayed at someone's house, then "hopefully" catching up to live broadcast in time for the NZ kickoff at a pub nearby. Because its the morning, and London, and no one's booked anywhere, this whole plan is fraught with danger. Exacerbated by the likelihood football piston wristed gibbons will have some sort of inconsequential game on that people in pubs will insist on watching.

So I've made the executive call to watch the Eng game live with the boys over a liquid breakfast nearby, and meet the wife's work crew IF they sort their shit out and are watching the NZ game live.

Also, asking for a friend, what's the difference between a divorce and an annulment?

Anyone else have success in the ballot? Got 6 gold tickets for Day 1, so Southampton bound with @Small-Flightless-Bird and others.

Hope for better luck than the last final...

@stargazer said in Italy vs All Blacks:

I would have preferred a stronger opponent, maybe Scotland, to finish the tour.

Fuck that, they'd have probably rolled us!

Rugby has become unrefereeable and harder and harder to enjoy for me. Every big game is marred by some controversy and/or disrupted by different officials conspiring to make a mess of things. The Lions tour last year in particular, not the red card but the fact we lost both tests to terrible decisions - one technically a penalty that shouldn't have been given (Sinckler jump), and one where a penalty should've been given but wasn't (accidental offside). Every French game this year the conversation has been dominated by the refs. Always magnified by social media / clickbait journalists / talking heads (commentators!) who don't know the rules. We've become worse than soccer.

/rant

I don't mind our attack, as its clear when we play direct up the guts forward play before spinning it wide, we do well. You know, the sort of thing that has worked in test rugby for over 100 years. That, and not kicking it away aimlessly. Simple stuff.

What has consistently annoyed me since about 2016 is our defence. Every good team in the world, especially those that beat us, employs a rush defence. They kill our time and space. We let teams run at us and gain easy meters. When I watch the ABs defend, I wish that the opposition would defend like that when we had the ball, as we'd carve them up.

After following the NBA since 1999, and spending large parts of my teenage years obsessively playing the EA Sports game, I'm finally ticking off a major bucket list item by actually going to see a game.

Am in New York for a 2-day work trip this week, and seeing the Mavs play the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. Amazing historic venue, and will be Porzingis' first game back since being traded so should have some spice. Can't wait to see what a 7'3" human looks like in the flesh (we'll have seats pretty close to courtside) and, of course, watch future superstar Luka play live.

On the Knicks side, they're not as fun to watch as Brooklyn, but seeing RJ Barrett go as potential ROY will be good, and Marcus Morris / Julius Randle at least have some name recognition.

Am so excited.