Thread: 2011 Rugby World Cup

How about a little techno rave?

http://youtu.be/sfNzaYRrTHA

having played in a mens league when i was younger and living in pa, i would like to route for the american team, if were even there, but usually the AB's get my nod after that. god i love that game, even more than the NFL.

Well I'm an American so I gotta root for Team USA. However since, let's be honest, the US team will have a hard time leaving the Pool Stage (comeon boys, let's at least beat Italy!), after that I gotta root for the All Blacks. They were the team whose videos I'd watch when I was first learning the game and because of that have always been "my team." I also root for Fiji, since many of my current teammates are Fijian.

With all the AB support thought you might enjoy this little video.

Nice video, I've seen that series before. Actually one of my buddies, Guamanian dude, can hit a behind-the-back spiral pass like that, and almost as accurate.

love that video. now i am jealous, i would be dreaming to be able to do those thingss

Meh. The All Blacks might have the Rugby skills, but check out the satire skills and subtle humour of us Aussies:


Waratahs mock ABs skills ad - Australia Rugby Team - NZ Herald Videos

James.

So i checked out the rugby world cup site and saw that Canada got put into one of the easiest pools. Sure we have the NZL (Ranked 1) and France (Ranked 4), but we got lucky with Tonga (Ranked 12) and Japan (Ranked 13). So at least there are two teams we stand a good chance against.

They'll be good games, for sure. I'd watch out for Tonga, they've made pretty big improvements over the past few years which I don't believe is accurately captured in the rankings. If they can keep to their game plan for the solid 80 and not gravitate towards broken play, they'll have a good chance of leaving the pool stages.

We, however, did not fair so well with Australia, Ireland, Italy, and Russia. I watched a match a year or two ago between the USA team and "Ireland A" (rugby people will know what the A means...). We did well at first but in the end they mopped the floor with us. I'm hoping we can beat Italy, perhaps our athleticism will prevail over their skill and experience. If we lose to Russia though I'm throwing my USA jerseys in the river.

Anything can happen in the group stages, although history does suggest the usual suspects do go through. Personally, I really do not care who wins the World Cup - it's once every 4 years and thus far too coarse to really mean all that much. In the end, it boils down to a fair bit of luck (or perhaps to be more precise, bad luck) to be honest - how else do you explain arguably the world's best team (ABs) for the past decade or so having such a poor record at the Cup?

What I really enjoy about the World Cup is seeing all the other countries we do not normally get to see play - US, Japan, Canada etc. So for me the group stages are the most exciting part of the whole thing - I usually switch off for the finals and just read about it in the paper because it is generally the same old same old.

James.