Rugby World Cup 2015: No haters please, I've heard it all already

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/oct/02/england-australia-rugby-world-cup-predictions

Gonna spend half-time watching Jose's monologue brb.

England being the first host nation ever to go out at the group stage is a prospect to delicious to contemplate.

13-20 w/15 mins, actually quite good as a match.

now.

But come on Aus, lets be professional about this.

There: 23-13, professional.

few sportsmen deserve to be England failure scapegoats but couldn't happen to a nicer cunt than Farrell imo

Chris Bertram ‏@crookedfootball

Prince Harry was part of the team meeting? We deserve all we get

Shit start to the Conservative party conference

Complete humiliation: another penalty.

Crowd silenced.

Beautiful.

stretch of about 40 mins where england literally didn't do one thing right

Aussies were very impressive. They totally bossed England.

yeah, that Guardian link above gets funnier by the min (apart from "More hope than expectation")

Don't watch/follow as much Rugby for years but the moment I heard Lancaster talking about this as a "Cup Final"...the start by Eng showed.

LOL did you know Eng will lose half a billion in our economy due to all this? More austerity for us all then.

Wales, Ireland & Scotland alcohol sales will shoot through the roof though

this whole england "project" has been a farcical bag of bullshit. they went from dwarf-throwing pisshead alleged shambles, in the last world cup, which really was a situation of a team of mostly crap players exiting with a coach who had no experience, to stu lancaster's four years of infuriating snake oil, during which it was all about respect and dignity and the young lads who are growing and learning, even two or three years in, at which point, relatively, joe schmidt won two six nations in a row, two more than stu has ever won.

the whole thing was just a conveyor belt of bullshit - lancaster spent two years doing press conferences about having gary neville in to speak to the lads, or dave brailsford, or chris hoy, or a soldier from afghanistan, then in time built to having an attacking side, about a year before this home world cup, which he bottled in the last few weeks.

there are more aggressive obnoxious failures than lancaster, but there are very few who are more full of shit, and a real unpleasant english brand of pious shit too. the team got so "humble" it was worse than when they were arrogant. and most of the arrogant english teams absolutely walloped their rivals on the pitch anyway - they should stick to the modus operandi that works.

i'm really into rugby that much but today...

lol. that's the word of the day. lol.

Bit of a slack first half from Ireland. Italy look well up for it

that was utter bollocks btw. worrying.

Maybe it's good to get a fright like that leading up to the France game

yeah and we have had a tendency to focus on a big game to the detriment of a previous match, eg that time we were hammered by australia before the narrow defeat to new zealand. maybe a lot of planning for france. i'd be concerned about sexton's kicking, among other things.

Teams that look best:
Australia - beat NZ comfortably recently, and thrashed England
New Zealand - not looking especially fluent, but are still winning games. No injury problems, which is good.

I'd be surprised if another team apart from those two wins, but I think Argentina aren't getting enough attention. They beat South Africa in South Africa this year. South Africa have been jittery but are still a force, and I guess Ireland are the Northern Hemisphere's best hope?

I read the other day that NZ are deliberately not playing to their game plan, and setting up obstacles for themselves, in order to keep a little bit of pressure on them during the pool games. Stuff like never kicking to the opposition in order to have to defend rushes more, etc. Given their relatively easy pool matches they didn't want to set themselves up to choke when they faced a proper challenging team in the quarter finals. It's an interesting tactic and I wonder if it'll work.

Also I may not get to see the finals games live and it's almost enough to make me shell out for TSN.

scotland - samoa is some kind of madness.

23-23 in just over 30 mins. prob jinxed it now and it'll turn to shit.

fantastic game

oh shit, it's ON now

that was an amazing game

looking forward to wales australia now - tho a little sting is gone from it with both qualified

brilliant defending there by the wallabies

Who needs England, eh?

It does seem more enjoyable without them Tom.

in all seriousness it hasn't damaged the atmosphere at all. Now they are neutrals they are getting to see some cracking rugby.

it's always better this way. Euro 2008 was infinitely superior as a viewing experience compared to yr average football tournament thanks to Steve McClaren's England failing to qualify

wrt to tonight's match, fuck wales, if you can't score with 2 men over then wtf can you do really

besides beating england at twicknham obv

one thing for sure is we wont be beating Australia next week.

Wales should have taken the 3 points the minute Genia got the yellow. Don't even mean that due to hindsight either, percentage-wise that was definitely the right call, with 22 minutes to go.

the intensity of this game is crazy

Sexton just got (legally) annihilated

^ it's brilliant.

O'Connell dead now too

amazing.

wowwowwow

always think it's one of the most impressive and exciting things in sport where deadlock intensity is turned into advantage. sheer spirit given the defensive solidity of France in the first 1/2.

damn, this is one for the ages

incredible. the number of players who have gone down for ireland, but they just got stronger and stronger.

What are the odds on all Southern Hemisphere semi-finals?

the intensity of this game is crazy

inhuman levels of intensity. ive never seen anything like it.

Southern Hemisphere teams on top this weekend

SA for me xps

Don't think the ABs will live with the Boks' pack

same i dont see nz running through against them for easy scores like they did against us

I don’t have much to say other than this has been the best tournament of my lifetime. Absolutely insane play.

its been unbelievable