Rugby World Cup 2015

[Ken Gargett]

I woke up at 3am this morning. Seriously it was because of a Wallabies induced Nightmare. Di asked me "what's the matter honey" and I said "effing Wallabies!"

If I never see Cooper again in Wallaby colours I couldn't care. He is a failed experiment. Ditch and move on.

I am a fan of Quade. He has more talent in his left Index finger than Foley has in his entire body. It doesn't however make you an international top 4 side five eight. Carlos Spencer anyone?

An international 5/8 of the highest caliber has to lead. Has to manage his attack, has to manage the 1%, master the mundane. That includes kickoffs which are beyond him. At international level, he has shown no glimpse that he can do it against a top 4 side.

There are options. Toomua at 5/8 is direct and safe. Has some vision. He is not a centre. He can pass, kick and defend. That is enough. Secondly, Gitteau. Third Foley. No place for Cooper in the WC.

I posted the other day that Cheika was in a no lose situation. He can now drop Cooper from the squad with not a whisper of complaint. He knows now that Palu or Will Skelton are but bench players and mid week World Cup bullies. We will play with Hooper 7 and Pockock at 8. We will play fast and direct.We will almost get there.

Performance is the only measure at this level. Take off any rose coloured glasses and see who has stepped up to battle when the chips are down. It is not all lost.

And congratulations to the All blacks. Almost a flawless performance.

safe will not win this world cup. it will not beat the all blacks. and a few other nations do 'safe' better than we can. that is not to say that safe is not essential but if that is all, we can stay home and save the airfares. we need safe plus.

toomua was anything but direct last night. he was awful. bar the mistimed tackle, he was far worse than quade.

i'd move giteau there except that then leaves a gap in the centres. i saw someone suggested keravi. spare me. but i wonder if giteau might not be the best option (and i cannot believe i am even thinking this and perhaps we really should give up), the national treasure - beale - at in centre. who else? if he does go giteau or toomua at 5/8, i'd still have cooper on the bench. you can leave him there if we are winning the game. but if we are behind and need to attack, he is our best option. can you seriously envisage a situation where foley leads a come-from-behind win? and giteau can then move to any number of other places.

i liked one comment about cooper's tackle - "no way that foley makes that mistake. he would have been flat on his face in the mud ten yards back having missed everything".

you are harsh re no success against top sides. cooper has actually been very successful against south africa over his history. caused them massive problems, scored/set up tries. a lot of the flack is simply because he has not been successful against the all blacks but he is hardly on his pat with that. and it also throws cheika's selections into even more question. he claimed not to be aware cooper had struggled against the blicks. if that is true, why is he coaching?

a lot of the other stuff i agree with but the worry is that i'm not certain that cheika does. why else were skelton and palu playing that game? makes no sense. why bench pocock and mumm?

i believe that cooper is on that plane. if he is, it gives a clue to cheika's thoughts and would also suggest that he still has no idea what he plans to do.

[ayepatz]

safe will not win this world cup. it will not beat the all blacks. and a few other nations do 'safe' better than we can. that is not to say that safe is not essential but if that is all, we can stay home and save the airfares. we need safe plus.

toomua was anything but direct last night. he was awful. bar the mistimed tackle, he was far worse than quade.

i'd move giteau there except that then leaves a gap in the centres. i saw someone suggested keravi. spare me. but i wonder if giteau might not be the best option (and i cannot believe i am even thinking this and perhaps we really should give up), the national treasure - beale - at in centre. who else? if he does go giteau or toomua at 5/8, i'd still have cooper on the bench. you can leave him there if we are winning the game. but if we are behind and need to attack, he is our best option. can you seriously envisage a situation where foley leads a come-from-behind win? and giteau can then move to any number of other places.

i liked one comment about cooper's tackle - "no way that foley makes that mistake. he would have been flat on his face in the mud ten yards back having missed everything".

you are harsh re no success against top sides. cooper has actually been very successful against south africa over his history. caused them massive problems, scored/set up tries. a lot of the flack is simply because he has not been successful against the all blacks but he is hardly on his pat with that. and it also throws cheika's selections into even more question. he claimed not to be aware cooper had struggled against the blicks. if that is true, why is he coaching?

a lot of the other stuff i agree with but the worry is that i'm not certain that cheika does. why else were skelton and palu playing that game? makes no sense. why bench pocock and mumm?

i believe that cooper is on that plane. if he is, it gives a clue to cheika's thoughts and would also suggest that he still has no idea what he plans to do.

Is it just Cheika who's to blame? From the neutral's point of view, it seems like your pack are in good shape - Pocock has particularly in pressed me - but the inside backs are in disarray. Didn't I read somewhere that Stephen Larkham was appointed backs and attack coach for the WC? Surely he must have a hand in selection and strategy? I was struck by how few times the ball made it all the way out to Folau, and the general lack of centre decoy runs to open up wide space.

[ayepatz]

Don't know if the other games have been shown elsewhere yet, but Scotland V Ireland was a very interesting match. On paper, Ireland are up there with a shout of making the World Cup Final, whereas my lot have just come off the back of yet another Six Nations Wooden Spoon season.

Ireland should have destroyed us. But they didn't. Their class edged them the victory, but it was a very close affair, nip and tuck for much of the game.

The last 20 mins of the first half showed some real light at the end of the tunnel for us Scots. The backs started finding holes in the Irish line and scored a couple of lovely tries, all to often rarities for us. Denton was simply magnificent at number 8, and if he can carry this form forward, I'd go as far as suggesting he could become a real talisman for the team, and a great choice for future captain.

[ayepatz]

As for England V France, pre-game all the focus was on Burgess and whether his Rugby League experience could bring something to the team.

Well it did, for a bit, before he got sin-binned. Lol

Thought Slade, Goode, Watson and particularly May all looked impressive.

The French pack were the better of the two for me with the new lighter Picamoles particularly impressive.

But come on, Saint-Andre needs to go. The French, at his insistence have spent the last four years eschewing flair for basic grunt work, and it simply hasn't worked. I can't remember the last time I saw a French side throwing the ball around merrily and ripping their opposition apart, and any fan of rugby has to acknowledge that is one of the great losses to the modern game.

[JohnS]

Est-il temps que Philippe Saint-André a reçu un appel téléphonique d'adieu ?

[ayepatz]

Est-il temps que Philippe Saint-André a reçu un appel téléphonique d'adieu ?

Je pense que tu as la raison, Jean! ;-)

[ayepatz]

Lovely piece about the great Aussie team of 1999, in particular Tim Horan, in today's Sunday Times.

‘The other teams trained. We drank Guinness’

Tim Horan inspired Australia to the 1999 Rugby World Cup but very nearly didn’t make it

JOHN EALES tells a story about the 1999 World Cup. It began a year before when the Wallabies visited the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme. Listed in the memorial were the 10,773 names of Australians with no known grave who were killed between 1916 and the end of the Great War.

It was a bleak November day but every player stood before the memorial, reading the names and noting the ages and birth places, and feeling the sadness and sombre gratitude that are unavoidable in the Somme’s many cemeteries. They would beat France at the Stade de France on the following Saturday but it was the memorial they would remember.

November 6, 1999, was the next time they played France. The World Cup final. Before the game, that visit to Villers-Brettoneux was on Rod Macqueen’s mind. Addressing his players before the game, the Wallaby head coach told a story about Lieutenant FP Bethune, a man of the cloth before he enlisted in the Australian army.

He had 20 soldiers in his charge and in March 1918 they had to hold a particular position against an advancing and much larger German force. “The orders went like this,” Macqueen said. “The position will be held and the section will remain here until relieved. If the section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead, but in any case it will remain.”

It is unsurprising that Eales would recall the visit to the memorial and Macqueen’s powerful message. He is that kind of man and was that kind of captain. Thoughtful, sensitive, and, once he stepped onto the pitch, a truly great lock who could also kick goals.

But there were other great players on that Wallaby team and perhaps none greater than Tim Horan. One of his fondest memories of the 1999 tournament was of a 7-iron, 167 yards, perfectly struck.

“Yeah, it was probably about the second day we were there [Dublin, their base for the pool matches]. We had a game of golf and didn’t train. We just had Guinness all afternoon, all night, all next day, and bonded. And I had my first eagle, well my only eagle playing golf on a par-4 there. I hit that 7-iron into the flag and we said ‘Where did that go?’ We walked up there and it was in the hole. We were staying out in Portmarnock, away from what was happening in the centre of Dublin, and we bonded as a team, got really close, understood where we were exactly going to go in the next six or seven weeks. Most of the other teams were out training and we were having a game of golf and drinking Guinness to get over the jet lag.

“No team would do it now but they probably should.”

Horan was named Player of the Tournament in 1999, where he performed brilliantly throughout. As a centre, he had everything. Defensively, he was rock-solid. In attack, his low centre of gravity and natural football brain allowed him to make the difficult seem straightforward.

He grew up in Toowoomba in rural Queensland, the same part of a sprawling country that Jason Little would call home. They were the same age, sporting rivals at first but they would then come together on district, county, provincial and finally Australian teams.

They would end up playing in two World Cup finals for the Wallabies, and winning both. From the beginning they were good friends, Little would stand for Horan’s son, Alex, and they remain close.

Little was a very good player. England saw him as a potential weakness in the 1991 World Cup final, believing his tackling was not up to scratch. They, and Will Carling in particular, discovered that afternoon that there was nothing weak about Little’s defence.

But Horan was still the better player, so much class he had to be seen to be appreciated. Little was once asked what it was that made him so good. “Mental toughness. Tim was a pretty good club player, very good for Queensland but outstanding when he played the All Blacks. As it got harder he got better. That is a quality shared by very few.

“His ability was summed up in that when we were together, they said we were the world’s best centre pairing. I got dropped and Daniel Herbert came in, and they said he and Tim were the world’s best. There was a common denominator there — and it was not me or Herbie.”

Horan made his debut for the Wallabies against the All Blacks and had to deal with ‘Smokin’ Joe Stanley, the hard-hitting and hard-running centre. Stanley was impressed and gave the 19-year-old his shirt which, for an All Black, is the ultimate compliment to an opponent.

Little’s point about Horan’s mental toughness is well made because without it, he wouldn’t have got to 1999 and that second World Cup final. A horrific injury in the Super 10 final, played in Durban five years before, might easily have ended his career.

“Yeah, 1994, it was my cruciate ligament, my medial ligament, sort of every ligament in my left knee severed and my knee cap dislocated. It was my 24th birthday, I’m lying in a bed at the hospital in Brisbane, Jason [Little, who was injured in the same game] in the bed alongside me, and Dr Peter Myers comes in. ‘I don’t think you will play rugby again,’ he said. That was a bit of a shock but the game was still amateur and I didn’t worry too much. I thought, ‘Well, it is a shame’ but I had a full-time job. I worked pretty hard to get myself back on the field not just to play rugby again but to have a normal life.

“We thought Jason had an injury which was just as bad but apparently his wasn’t. I remember waking up about six o’clock in the morning and Jason was hoeing into a big pizza. He’d been told he could play in four weeks’ time. I’d been told I couldn’t play again.”

Horan took leave from his job in Brisbane, went to Sydney and spent every day of the next 10 months in rehabilitation. With considerable help from Myers and the Wallaby physiotherapist Greg Craig, he returned to the game for the 1995 World Cup. “I worked pretty hard to get myself back on the field not just to play rugby again but to have a normal life. My knee is still sore and I always use it as an excuse not to sit in economy because it gets cramped up.”

Last year, 20 years to the day that Dr Myers predicted he might never play again, Horan took a bottle of champagne to the Suncorp stadium, gave it to Myers and said, “You know what day this is. Thank you.” The Wallabies were hopeless at the 1995 World Cup, beaten by South Africa in the opening match and then knocked out by Rob Andrew’s late drop goal in the quarter-final. “That was probably the biggest disappointment because we didn’t move on. We thought what was successful in 1991 would be successful four years later; all the other sides moved pretty quickly past us.”

They learnt from that and were much better in 1999. Ireland at Lansdowne was the tough match in their pool but they won that without even a scintilla of the drama they’d had against the Irish at Lansdowne Road eight years before. Then, it look a last-play try by Michael Lynagh to turn the game their way and it was a scare they wouldn’t soon forget.

“Just the memory of standing behind the goal-line with about four minutes to go thinking we are on a plane the next day heading back to Australia was scary, and we used that as a motivating factor going into the quarter-final in 1999 against Wales. “I remember speaking to the team, saying ‘Guys, you don’t realise there is no second chance, no repechage, lose this game you are gone’.”

They beat South Africa in a fiercely fought semi-final and then watched France produce arguably the greatest comeback in World Cup history to defeat the All Blacks. Australia’s players couldn’t help siding with France. “We thought we were playing the All Blacks and all of a sudden the French score those tries and we all start cheering for them. Then with about five minutes to go we stop cheering for them because we realised we were going to have to play them.”

At the end, French players walked around the pitch at Twickenham, soaking up the applause, revelling in the moment of a sensational victory but also showing that this might have been their final. “Yeah,” says Horan, “when we saw them with kids on their shoulders, we thought, ‘Oh, we have got them’.”

Little started that final on the bench but came on early in the second half when Daniel Herbert was injured. They went out in Cardiff that night, first to a bar and then back to a private room in the team hotel, and then next morning a number of the party were on a bus to Heathrow for a flight back to Australia.

Others, including Horan, stayed in London for a couple of days. Like many of his teammates he regrets they didn’t get to have a celebratory lunch in Cardiff on the following day or another evening together as a team. He remembers giving his dad the key to his room on the night of the final so he could use a bed that the younger Horan wasn’t going to need. His roommate Joe Roff got back in the early hours and jumped on the sleeping body, thinking it was Horan. “The funny thing was that it was the only time Roffy got back to a hotel room before I did,” he says.

[frenchkiwi]

Je pense que tu as la raison, Jean! ;-)

Ouais il est temps Philippe, il est temps de laisser la place a un autre. As someone who has a bit of an insider's perspective on french rugby, i have slowly developed the conviction that they would be the only team in the world best coached by a foreigner (or someone who thinks like one, mind you Bernard Laporte was a bit like that!). My pet hate is various coaches continual tinkering with the halves, never the same from one week to the next, and they wonder why they aren't consistent! They have all the personnel in the world and nobody to lead them.

The circus at the last few world cups in both football and rugby is a case in point. Reaching the final with some of the worst performances ever and the players basically mutineering against the coach is another. Anyway, hope to see some of their new young guns live up to their potential...

[Ken Gargett]

Lovely piece about the great Aussie team of 1999, in particular Tim Horan, in today's Sunday Times.

‘The other teams trained. We drank Guinness’

Tim Horan inspired Australia to the 1999 Rugby World Cup but very nearly didn’t make it

JOHN EALES tells a story about the 1999 World Cup. It began a year before when the Wallabies visited the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux in the Somme. Listed in the memorial were the 10,773 names of Australians with no known grave who were killed between 1916 and the end of the Great War.

It was a bleak November day but every player stood before the memorial, reading the names and noting the ages and birth places, and feeling the sadness and sombre gratitude that are unavoidable in the Somme’s many cemeteries. They would beat France at the Stade de France on the following Saturday but it was the memorial they would remember.

November 6, 1999, was the next time they played France. The World Cup final. Before the game, that visit to Villers-Brettoneux was on Rod Macqueen’s mind. Addressing his players before the game, the Wallaby head coach told a story about Lieutenant FP Bethune, a man of the cloth before he enlisted in the Australian army.

He had 20 soldiers in his charge and in March 1918 they had to hold a particular position against an advancing and much larger German force. “The orders went like this,” Macqueen said. “The position will be held and the section will remain here until relieved. If the section cannot remain here alive, it will remain here dead, but in any case it will remain.”

It is unsurprising that Eales would recall the visit to the memorial and Macqueen’s powerful message. He is that kind of man and was that kind of captain. Thoughtful, sensitive, and, once he stepped onto the pitch, a truly great lock who could also kick goals.

But there were other great players on that Wallaby team and perhaps none greater than Tim Horan. One of his fondest memories of the 1999 tournament was of a 7-iron, 167 yards, perfectly struck.

“Yeah, it was probably about the second day we were there [Dublin, their base for the pool matches]. We had a game of golf and didn’t train. We just had Guinness all afternoon, all night, all next day, and bonded. And I had my first eagle, well my only eagle playing golf on a par-4 there. I hit that 7-iron into the flag and we said ‘Where did that go?’ We walked up there and it was in the hole. We were staying out in Portmarnock, away from what was happening in the centre of Dublin, and we bonded as a team, got really close, understood where we were exactly going to go in the next six or seven weeks. Most of the other teams were out training and we were having a game of golf and drinking Guinness to get over the jet lag.

“No team would do it now but they probably should.”

Horan was named Player of the Tournament in 1999, where he performed brilliantly throughout. As a centre, he had everything. Defensively, he was rock-solid. In attack, his low centre of gravity and natural football brain allowed him to make the difficult seem straightforward.

He grew up in Toowoomba in rural Queensland, the same part of a sprawling country that Jason Little would call home. They were the same age, sporting rivals at first but they would then come together on district, county, provincial and finally Australian teams.

They would end up playing in two World Cup finals for the Wallabies, and winning both. From the beginning they were good friends, Little would stand for Horan’s son, Alex, and they remain close.

Little was a very good player. England saw him as a potential weakness in the 1991 World Cup final, believing his tackling was not up to scratch. They, and Will Carling in particular, discovered that afternoon that there was nothing weak about Little’s defence.

But Horan was still the better player, so much class he had to be seen to be appreciated. Little was once asked what it was that made him so good. “Mental toughness. Tim was a pretty good club player, very good for Queensland but outstanding when he played the All Blacks. As it got harder he got better. That is a quality shared by very few.

“His ability was summed up in that when we were together, they said we were the world’s best centre pairing. I got dropped and Daniel Herbert came in, and they said he and Tim were the world’s best. There was a common denominator there — and it was not me or Herbie.”

Horan made his debut for the Wallabies against the All Blacks and had to deal with ‘Smokin’ Joe Stanley, the hard-hitting and hard-running centre. Stanley was impressed and gave the 19-year-old his shirt which, for an All Black, is the ultimate compliment to an opponent.

Little’s point about Horan’s mental toughness is well made because without it, he wouldn’t have got to 1999 and that second World Cup final. A horrific injury in the Super 10 final, played in Durban five years before, might easily have ended his career.

“Yeah, 1994, it was my cruciate ligament, my medial ligament, sort of every ligament in my left knee severed and my knee cap dislocated. It was my 24th birthday, I’m lying in a bed at the hospital in Brisbane, Jason [Little, who was injured in the same game] in the bed alongside me, and Dr Peter Myers comes in. ‘I don’t think you will play rugby again,’ he said. That was a bit of a shock but the game was still amateur and I didn’t worry too much. I thought, ‘Well, it is a shame’ but I had a full-time job. I worked pretty hard to get myself back on the field not just to play rugby again but to have a normal life.

“We thought Jason had an injury which was just as bad but apparently his wasn’t. I remember waking up about six o’clock in the morning and Jason was hoeing into a big pizza. He’d been told he could play in four weeks’ time. I’d been told I couldn’t play again.”

Horan took leave from his job in Brisbane, went to Sydney and spent every day of the next 10 months in rehabilitation. With considerable help from Myers and the Wallaby physiotherapist Greg Craig, he returned to the game for the 1995 World Cup. “I worked pretty hard to get myself back on the field not just to play rugby again but to have a normal life. My knee is still sore and I always use it as an excuse not to sit in economy because it gets cramped up.”

Last year, 20 years to the day that Dr Myers predicted he might never play again, Horan took a bottle of champagne to the Suncorp stadium, gave it to Myers and said, “You know what day this is. Thank you.” The Wallabies were hopeless at the 1995 World Cup, beaten by South Africa in the opening match and then knocked out by Rob Andrew’s late drop goal in the quarter-final. “That was probably the biggest disappointment because we didn’t move on. We thought what was successful in 1991 would be successful four years later; all the other sides moved pretty quickly past us.”

They learnt from that and were much better in 1999. Ireland at Lansdowne was the tough match in their pool but they won that without even a scintilla of the drama they’d had against the Irish at Lansdowne Road eight years before. Then, it look a last-play try by Michael Lynagh to turn the game their way and it was a scare they wouldn’t soon forget.

“Just the memory of standing behind the goal-line with about four minutes to go thinking we are on a plane the next day heading back to Australia was scary, and we used that as a motivating factor going into the quarter-final in 1999 against Wales. “I remember speaking to the team, saying ‘Guys, you don’t realise there is no second chance, no repechage, lose this game you are gone’.”

They beat South Africa in a fiercely fought semi-final and then watched France produce arguably the greatest comeback in World Cup history to defeat the All Blacks. Australia’s players couldn’t help siding with France. “We thought we were playing the All Blacks and all of a sudden the French score those tries and we all start cheering for them. Then with about five minutes to go we stop cheering for them because we realised we were going to have to play them.”

At the end, French players walked around the pitch at Twickenham, soaking up the applause, revelling in the moment of a sensational victory but also showing that this might have been their final. “Yeah,” says Horan, “when we saw them with kids on their shoulders, we thought, ‘Oh, we have got them’.”

Little started that final on the bench but came on early in the second half when Daniel Herbert was injured. They went out in Cardiff that night, first to a bar and then back to a private room in the team hotel, and then next morning a number of the party were on a bus to Heathrow for a flight back to Australia.

Others, including Horan, stayed in London for a couple of days. Like many of his teammates he regrets they didn’t get to have a celebratory lunch in Cardiff on the following day or another evening together as a team. He remembers giving his dad the key to his room on the night of the final so he could use a bed that the younger Horan wasn’t going to need. His roommate Joe Roff got back in the early hours and jumped on the sleeping body, thinking it was Horan. “The funny thing was that it was the only time Roffy got back to a hotel room before I did,” he says.

terrific article. saw a great deal of horan at every level. the best back i have ever seen - alongside carter but different positions so a bit apples and oranges.

so many great memories. one, i was in the prez's box in sydney (invited by a sponsor) for reds v nsw and i'd just had a flaming row with the president because he announced that qlders would be required to sit down and keep quiet.

then with perfect timing, reds tried to run it out from near their line. ball went astray about 30-35 metres from the line. toed ahead by dowling i think - allegedly the quickest man in rugby at the time. horan had to stop, turn and had given him at least 10 metres start. still beat him to it. the prez was not happy. i stood and cheered very loudly.

[ayepatz]

Mon the Scotland!!! Great result today against the Italians. Finally, a much needed lift going into the World Cup.

Ireland v Wales was a great game yesterday. Nothing between the teams at all. Think Irish confidence might be a little bit shaken, but it shouldn't be. Welsh defence was simply superb.

[JohnS]

Scotland vs Italy...wow, what a thumping by the Scots 48-7!

The Welsh 16-10 over Ireland is significant as I think it gives them a confidence boost going into the Cup. If they can keep out the Irish with their stellar defence, surely they can keep out other similarly rated teams in the upcoming big games.

A few of us caught up in Sydney and discussed the Irish in the World Cup this year. If they can make the final, I tell you there will be a few cheering down under! (At least, they should finally make a World Cup Semi-final!)

[ayepatz]

Quite a weekend. England/Ireland was a great game, with both teams enjoying long periods of domination. But Ireland seem rocked by recent results, and never really got that incredible attack into full flow. England's defensive line looked very impressive, but Jonny May was imperious out on the wing, and is looking sharper and sharper as a finishing weapon.

Scotland did well against France, although we were ultimately disappointed, but every game has us looking stronger and stronger.

Hopefully we can take that positive attitude forward into the World Cup.

[free85]

Not exactly international news, but, the Wallabies (3rd side from the look of it) did well against the USA Eagles in Chicago this weekend. Fun game and I got to chat with Stephen Moore for about 15 minutes prior to start. Fun guy. I even managed to finally find a place state side with a good breaky in Chicago.

Really looking forward to the worlds!

I can post up some photos if anyone is interested in seeing.

[JohnS]

I think Ireland had better 'snap out of it' in the next few weeks. At least, that's what I'd be telling them if I was their coach. Also, Australia went to sleep in the first half against the USA. But the Irish and Aussies can always say they were just playing warm-up games.

[free85]

I think Ireland had better 'snap out of it' in the next few weeks. At least, that's what I'd be telling them if I was their coach. Also, Australia went to sleep in the first half against the USA. But the Irish and Aussies can always say they were just playing warm-up games.

I'd agree about the Wallabies taking a nap in the first against the US. But it wasn't like it was their 1st side playing either...

And they certainly decided to have a better second half.

I'm hoping Ireland will find whatever it is they need to find to wake up... not much time to do it in, their first game is certainly close.

[jat]

Seems Wales are losing some key player through injury early, Rhys Webb and Leigh Halfpenny.

While not a Welsh supporter, I'd like to see them do well and field the best side they can, and the same for Ireland and Scotland, basically everybody but England.

[El Presidente]

Not exactly international news, but, the Wallabies (3rd side from the look of it) did well against the USA Eagles in Chicago this weekend. Fun game and I got to chat with Stephen Moore for about 15 minutes prior to start. Fun guy. I even managed to finally find a place state side with a good breaky in Chicago.

Really looking forward to the worlds!

I can post up some photos if anyone is interested in seeing.

Show the Pics!

We sold Stephen Moore his ORIS watch ......always liked him

[free85]

As requested so delivered El Pres!

My date took a picture of Me having a chat with Stephen Moore (Good guy, was talking about where he grew up and how he feels they're going to approach the first game of the cup):

The Wallabies breaking away for a gap in the Eagles line at the start of the second:

A lineout pretty much in front of our seats:

And a pic just before a fun few minutes as the Eagles tried to hammer though for a try:

All in all an entertaining game. I wish I'd have had the thought to take a few more pictures, but I was too busy enjoying the game (especially the second).

[ayepatz]

Right, Ladies and Gentlemen, it all kicks off tomorrow with England V Fiji at 8pm GMT!

I'll be honest, I'd have posted all the regional times, but I'm in the pub and a bit confused after several pints.

Fasten your seatbelts, folks!

Accuse me of playing safe, but I'm going for an England win...

[ayepatz]

Here we go, gents! May the best team win! (If that turns out to be Scotland, I'll change my name to Mhairi and move to Skye!!)

[Bulldog4]

Please tell me everyone just saw japan upset the bokkes! holy F*ck what a match although i will say the springs looked lazy and looked like all they had to do was showup wow just wow

[ayepatz]

Un-effing-believable! True World Cup spirit from Japan! Scotland have got to be a bit nervous now...

[Ryan]

Ireland beat Canada. Fairly humdrum stuff. Nothing impressive from Ireland really. Canada did well to keep Ireland scoreless in the third quarter.

SA vs Japan on the other hand. One of the most exciting games I've ever seen. Japan's last 5 minutes, with 19 phases up to the try line, brilliant stuff. Possibly the biggest upset in rugby ever.

[free85]

It's been a good (morning in the US and evening in the UK).

And now it's time to watch France and Italy.

[JohnS]

France 32-10 over Italy but Japan 34-32 victors over South Africa...I'm in shock!