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This World Cup is an example of the rugby that fans are asking for

Photo by Phil Walter/Getty Images

The 2021 Rugby World Cup (played in 2022) is delivering the style of game that the men’s teams are struggling to achieve, with the ball in play more and tactical kicks less of a feature making for a fast paced style of play.

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Fans have been calling for changes to speed up the men’s game, a report from one journalist even said that the first half of game one of the Bledisloe Cup matches had only 12 minutes of ball in play.

The Springboks have faced criticism for their tactics at slowing the game down and there is concern that rugby as a product is being weakened.

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The Aotearoa Rugby Pod discussed the current World Cup and how the style of play naturally addresses those concerns.

“They are almost two different games,” Ex-Blues hooker James Parsons commented. “Yes it’s the same game of rugby but it’s played in different styles, the emotion of certain things like the anthem and the Haka is just taken differently and it’s given quite a neat perspective on how different it is.

“Even if you look throughout the game, lack of kicks in play, they were picking and going from 60 (meters) out, but earning penalties and there’s quite a big difference in the styles and I think that’s a good thing.”

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The podcasts host Ross Karl agreed the games were delivering a great spectacle for fans.

“The ball in hand aspect of it is amazing, it is literally in hand the entire time and we complain about this in the mens game, there’s not enough play, well, you don’t get the in the women’s game.”

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James Parsons added to the praise and highlighted the skillset required to play a high tempo, attacking game and how despite some early mistakes, the Black Ferns ability to execute was impressive.

“The ball in play was huge,

“I was just thinking what would Wayne Smith be thinking and probably, handling errors were quite high, I think it was eleven to one in the first half and that’s quite high in the sense that Aussie had 65 percent of the ball and territory, and they only had one turnover and we had eleven.

“So we were chancing our arms and going after it but it is a risk vs reward so I think early on in the (next) test they’ll want to sure that up because you wouldn’t want to give that many opportunities to an England side,

“Especially (with them) being able to go kick for the corner because when the Australian attackers got between two defenders, that’s when the ruck got a little but deeper and that’s when the advantages came and the penalties just snowballed, snowballed and obviously Aussie took reward of it but they probably should have scored more points.”

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While highlighting the Black Ferns, Parsons said it’s a mentality shared by all teams at the tournament.

“Because of that mindset, the ‘we’re all out attack, it doesn’t matter where we are on the field’, you wouldn’t want to kick. But all teams are looking like that every time, they just want to attack.”

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Comments

2 Comments
S
SF 1003 days ago

I remember as an u/11 player back in the 70's, that there was a law that forbid us to kick outside your own 22m line. It was immediate penalty to the opposition. That was in South Africa. Bring that law back.

M
Michael Röbbins (academic and writer extraordinair 1004 days ago

Oh the ignominy of univocal meta narratives. This kind of scat tries to prove we’re all actually monists (which any coherent metaphysics surely is) but from such a staggeringly stupid position. Monism doesn’t necessarily negate diversity. But these pseudo-magi sure stammer so.

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JW 30 minutes ago
Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

By “not a big deal”, I mostly meant financially for FFR as, contrary to many other Rugby Unions (most as broke as FFR) who are still making nearly all their money with such big events tickets sale, FFR is not. Using the Stade de France* even when it was sold out or near full capacity (something garanteed for an AB game) was only for the operator to turn on profits. Hence they would survive an AB boycott because not as much was at stake compared to other Unions who are still desperately chasing the biggest crowds as possible in order to survive.

I’m not sure what this attitude is supposed to depict. Are you saying that FFR don’t do anything for the game in France? Are the women and age teams all taken care of by the clubs too?


No, no one is going to boycott anybody. It is a matter for WR to sort out with FFR.


Nar, I’m afraid the problem is now that Galthie has come out and admitted they aren’t trying to fulfil their obligation (exclusion of a premium group), you are stuck between a rock and a hard place. If you had of just keep going the way you were you’d be able to continue (not that that was their aim, these are only short term selection policies) resting the half a dozen that look like they need it. WR have just released new player welfare initiatives, and one section looks directly related to this subject. You know how you guys are providing info on why players aren’t available, that would need to be done in detail to WR, and catch all these examples well outside of the welfare excuse.


They might allow the FFR to have their own metrics, but it’s hard to see given they’re making their own.

When you are overstretched and can’t do everything with the means at your disposal, the best way is to rank those tasks and assign your best forces following priorities:

- WC knock out game

- 6 Nations Chelem or decider game

- WC pool game

- (…)

- November International

- July International

Strongly disagree. Either 6N is at the top alone, or its at the bottom of the list. The worst thing you can do for the French game is only concentrate on beating the same 5 opponents every year. If you’re serious about being a good team you need to target those key internationals against the best teams.


I know it’s seem tough in the past, but I believe you can do it (so does HammerHead). Takata, you’ve seemed/been the one to talk the most commonsense on the issue, and I’m afraid I don’t believe you’re honestly believe what you just wrote.

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J
JW 2 hours ago
Can Les Bleus avoid a Black-wash in New Zealand?

-last season was a RWC season, which always means more games

I didn’t look at every (in fact I only looked at NZ lol) body but it actually means less games

(especially the Munster ones)

Yes quite noticeable, and that if Leinster and Toulouse are a mirror, didn’t the Toulousian stars still have higher minutes?

Could Doris’ last longer season have an impact on his injury

Good question, he had 1383 from 19 through till that point. No idea what his injury was but that’s a good amount of minutes again, his replacement had 5 more URC matches following the injury, you could predict 5-600 more minutes on top (another full load). I’d say yes it could and no it probably didn’t lol

looked at the ones that had the highest figures. The numbers in the season before and the one after are usually different.

Yes and it would be very easy to check thanks to that great site (just middle mouse every player). Certainly I noted the ones in Lions are less. Maybe that is planned as they have 5 or so more games yet but could indeed be seasonal. It just too hard to know imo and taking a basic average is enough. I suppose they have 10 more Lions games from the point of that data and if you expect them to share minutes thats 5x1200 added, making a season ending 23 likely totalling 42k minutes, much higher than the previous years.

If players are tired with no gas, get injured and miss half of the next season, that’s not a good input for a game

Yeah totally, that is a holistic season to season picture though, we are talking about a single key tour during a 4 WC cycle.

players from the C team were.. or are injured … so that quite conveniently lowers the bar, while still being unrealistic, as they would not tour anyway

Yes I have brought up that point myself too, it could have been much different, as it’s only “Unrealistic” judging by the example Galthie set in his selections. Who numbers, maybe he had some theoretical/imaginary marker where he said “if I can get enough players to cross this point, I’ll risk selecting my best available to try and win” but because too many became unavailable he decided it wasn’t worth it/couldn’t reach the quality he thought needed to win, so decide to go development instead.

352 Go to comments
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