6 Nations from S hemisphere

[rubaiyat]

Hi,

I'm English living in france. I've just watched 3 thrilling games, E v F being one of the best ever. There were some sad aussies in the bar giving out about N hemisphere teams not going for tries, but taking penaties etc. and being boring .......

I recall seeing a press thing not long ago where S Lancaster gave some numbers that invert this. Where can I go for statistics, these aussies are wrong I think, but I would like some stats to shove down them! I don't recall aussie being exiting since campo retired ??

Thanks

R

 

[ncurd]

It's never really been true just some rubbish from Australian press that stuck.

- - - Updated - - -

As another note not to be mean but whilst entertaining games of Rugby they were no e here near close to best games ever.

England V Wales and Ireland V Wales were better games of Rugby.

 

[William18]

I would bet that Australia would score a lot more points than most of the NH teams and they have to play New Zealand and South Africa more often.

The rugby this morning was thrilling, you cannot doubt it.

 

[The Jones Boy]

The rugby yesterday was thrilling, BUT, it's a very rare rare day you get northerns hemisphere teams playing exciting rugby.
Yes they play winning rugby, and they play territorial rugby, and they play % rugby, but it's a RARE day they play exciting rugby.
Yesterday under strange circumstances that intensified after each game as the Welsh put a marker down there was no choice for the Irish but to really go for it, and then England were forced to put the pedal to the metal in order to give themselves a chance of the great glory.
Wales and particularly England shipped WAaaaay too many points, only the Irish maintained their defence and that why they are the best in Europe again this year.

 

[Tony Manx]

The rugby yesterday was thrilling, BUT, it's a very rare rare day you get northerns hemisphere teams playing exciting rugby.
Yes they play winning rugby, and they play territorial rugby, and they play % rugby, but it's a RARE day they play exciting rugby.
Yesterday under strange circumstances that intensified after each game as the Welsh put a marker down there was no choice for the Irish but to really go for it, and then England were forced to put the pedal to the metal in order to give themselves a chance of the great glory.
Wales and particularly England shipped WAaaaay too many points, only the Irish maintained their defence and that why they are the best in Europe again this year.

+1

 

[goodNumber10]

The rugby yesterday was thrilling, BUT, it's a very rare rare day you get northerns hemisphere teams playing exciting rugby.
Yes they play winning rugby, and they play territorial rugby, and they play % rugby, but it's a RARE day they play exciting rugby.
Yesterday under strange circumstances that intensified after each game as the Welsh put a marker down there was no choice for the Irish but to really go for it, and then England were forced to put the pedal to the metal in order to give themselves a chance of the great glory.
Wales and particularly England shipped WAaaaay too many points, only the Irish maintained their defence and that why they are the best in Europe again this year.

You live in a dream world if you think every SH game is a rip roaring end to end pony parade.

 

[Shaggy]

You live in a dream world if you think every SH game is a rip roaring end to end pony parade.

Further to your comment, anybody who expects Rugby to be a running spectacle, as opposed to a safer, play the percentage type option, at the business end of any tournament, is likely to be disappointed (unless teams need to chase bonus points for tries/points differentials etc). Just watch the change in mindset at the RWC, at the knock out stages, when the number of tries you score, the points differential, and even the way you score the points becomes irrelevant.

 

[Wendigo7]

You live in a dream world if you think every SH game is a rip roaring end to end pony parade.

Quite.

There are alot of good matches in the Southern Hemisphere but there are incredible amount of dud ones too.

 

[William18]

You live in a dream world if you think every SH game is a rip roaring end to end pony parade.

But he never said that (he did not even mention the SH at all).

I would say that the SH produces better spectacles more often than the NH. Ireland, England and Wales are obviously capable of playing attacking rugby. If Wales and England knew this from the start of the tournament then they might have actually won the thing.

 

[Jaguares]

The rugby yesterday was thrilling, BUT, it's a very rare rare day you get northerns hemisphere teams playing exciting rugby.
Yes they play winning rugby, and they play territorial rugby, and they play % rugby, but it's a RARE day they play exciting rugby.
Yesterday under strange circumstances that intensified after each game as the Welsh put a marker down there was no choice for the Irish but to really go for it, and then England were forced to put the pedal to the metal in order to give themselves a chance of the great glory.
Wales and particularly England shipped WAaaaay too many points, only the Irish maintained their defence and that why they are the best in Europe again this year.

+ 2

 

[corny]

Didn't i see a statistic last year that proved NZ kick the ball more than any other team in international rugby? Certainly to my eye they never play in their own half but its forgiven because they're devastating in the right areas.

OP the reason the Aussies would stick to that opinion is because they regularly get minced by England in the set piece. Suits them to cry foul.

 

[goodNumber10]

But he never said that (he did not even mention the SH at all).

I would say that the SH produces better spectacles more often than the NH. Ireland, England and Wales are obviously capable of playing attacking rugby. If Wales and England knew this from the start of the tournament then they might have actually won the thing.

he specifies a hemisphere, hence he is alluding to the fact the SH games are better, as are you.

Define spectacle?

- - - Updated - - -

Didn't i see a statistic last year that proved NZ kick the ball more than any other team in international rugby? Certainly to my eye they never play in their own half but its forgiven because they're devastating in the right areas.

Indeed they do.

 

[HowieLO6]

Further to your comment, anybody who expects Rugby to be a running spectacle, as opposed to a safer, play the percentage type option, at the business end of any tournament, is likely to be disappointed (unless teams need to chase bonus points for tries/points differentials etc). Just watch the change in mindset at the RWC, at the knock out stages, when the number of tries you score, the points differential, and even the way you score the ponta becomes irrelevant.

This, for me, is one of the fundamental differences between the NH and SH club level games. Whereas one has relegation - with some big clubs having suffered to their detriment - the SH has consequence-free (relatively, at least) rugby. This, unfortunately, feeds through to the national game.

While the pragmatic approach suits SA, and NZ have the ability to match anyone's game, no-matter how slow, I'm not so sure that the Aussies will manage quite so well at the business end of the tournament.

 

[msf]

I think this has always been an unfair characterization of the NH, as the Lions have shown repeatedly (2001 and 2009 being recent examples, they may have lost both series but they played most of the attacking rugby). France have always (until 3 years ago) been an attacking team, so have Wales, except when they were awful, and England have also had their moments (2001 again). As for the club game, Toulouse and Leinster have been up there with the best attacking sides in the world, and now Bath have supplanted Toulouse by beating them at their own game at the Stade Toulousain.

A brief list of recent (last 10 years) attacking northern hemisphere players: Robinson, S Williams, O'Driscoll, Roberts, Davies, Sexton, Ford, North, Wade, Cipriani, Phillips, Parisse, Harinordoquy, Faletau, O'Brien, Heaslip, Croft, M Williams.

Apart from Cipriani and the French players, they are all Lions, so you would have thought that the southern hemisphere would know we have some very good attacking players (who have played for some very good attacking teams).

- - - Updated - - -

Oops, I only included one French player...Fofana, Heymans, Trinh Duc, Clerc, Medard, Mermoz, Parra, Rougerie...surely the NZ fans have noticed some of these players scoring brilliant tries against them?

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and I didn't mention Tuilagi, but I'm pretty sure the NZ fans and players remember him.

 

[ncurd]

To expand on it a bit more 'boring old England' has been something mooted about since 2001-3 era England when they dominated world rugby. Mainly due to having a 1st team jam packed of world class players they dominated up front and scored lots of penalties of the boot of world class kicker in the form of Wilkinson (I'm not entirely sure any team had a kicker of his quality before him, were talking about my early days of watching rugby here). The problem is most of those penalties were due to the amount of pressure put on by those forwards and a pretty potent backline most of the time it was better to concede a penalty and have 3 points scored rather than a potential try and conversion.

The fact that England side also scored more or equal try's to everyone else was casually forgotten during the world cup because the Australian media had to make us look bad in some way. The average age of players was another.

What compounded the problem is when the players retired we only really kept our forward dominance and decent kicking so the tag sort of stuck even though we were just as bad as other teams.

 

[TRF_heineken]

This, for me, is one of the fundamental differences between the NH and SH club level games. Whereas one has relegation - with some big clubs having suffered to their detriment - the SH has consequence-free (relatively, at least) rugby. This, unfortunately, feeds through to the national game.

While the pragmatic approach suits SA, and NZ have the ability to match anyone's game, no-matter how slow, I'm not so sure that the Aussies will manage quite so well at the business end of the tournament.

False!!

Currie Cup in South Africa have a promotion/relegation system for the clubs between the premier division and the 1st division. I think the same can be said about the ITM cup.

But you have to also look that the Super Rugby is a franchise system, where clubs are combined together into a franchise, so there is no need for promotion/relegation as they pick the best players from clubs in their region and make a squad for the franchise. South Africa has also had promotion/relegation for the 5th spot the last 3 years for Super Rugby.

 

[msf]

Yeah, if you go back and watch those games from 2003 again, you'll hear the Aussie commentators complimenting England's attacking game - if anyone has forgotten, we beat them for the first time in Oz by scoring over 30 points that year, and then we created far more chances than they did in the final too (I can't remember any Aussie chances apart from the try). We also scored 30 points against both NZ and Aus the autumn before, when we also put 50 on the Springboks. The idea that a team with players of quality of Robinson, Catt, Greenwood and Dawson relied on forward power is a joke. Yes, we did rely on it against France in the semi, but that was because it was raining. If you watch that Wales game again, we started off playing a really attacking game (our normal game) but this played into Wales's hands, so we tightened up in the second half to win comfortably. This is no different from what NZ have done on several occasions against Australia where they have noticeably tightened up their game, most notably in semi-final of the last WC.

I think our demise after 2003 was a real shame, since we could have really reinforced the impression we had made on the southern hemisphere if we had kicked on...I think the clubs/injuries/Andy Robinson will have to take the blame for that, because we still had a lot of good players in that period, as we showed in getting to the final in 2007 despite being a rabble in the group stages. I think the real dark night of the soul for English rugby was actually the Johnson period, because then I don't think we had either the players or the coaches to be competitive against the southern hemisphere. This was starting to change by 2010/11, and Lancaster built on this to make us fairly competitive against the southern hemisphere but we are still a long way off where we were in 2000-2003, when our record against the southern hemisphere was as good as their was against us during the Johnson period.

 

[Rugga-lad]

False!!

Currie Cup in South Africa have a promotion/relegation system for the clubs between the premier division and the 1st division. I think the same can be said about the ITM cup.

But you have to also look that the Super Rugby is a franchise system, where clubs are combined together into a franchise, so there is no need for promotion/relegation as they pick the best players from clubs in their region and make a squad for the franchise. South Africa has also had promotion/relegation for the 5th spot the last 3 years for Super Rugby.

I wish the franchise system would cease to exist.
Top 6 in Currie Cup qualifies for the next years Super Rugby. Simple.

 

[goodNumber10]

Yeah, if you go back and watch those games from 2003 again, you'll hear the Aussie commentators complimenting England's attacking game - if anyone has forgotten, we beat them for the first time in Oz by scoring over 30 points that year, and then we created far more chances than they did in the final too (I can't remember any Aussie chances apart from the try). We also scored 30 points against both NZ and Aus the autumn before, when we also put 50 on the Springboks. The idea that a team with players of quality of Robinson, Catt, Greenwood and Dawson relied on forward power is a joke. Yes, we did rely on it against France in the semi, but that was because it was raining. If you watch that Wales game again, we started off playing a really attacking game (our normal game) but this played into Wales's hands, so we tightened up in the second half to win comfortably. This is no different from what NZ have done on several occasions against Australia where they have noticeably tightened up their game, most notably in semi-final of the last WC.

I think our demise after 2003 was a real shame, since we could have really reinforced the impression we had made on the southern hemisphere if we had kicked on...I think the clubs/injuries/Andy Robinson will have to take the blame for that, because we still had a lot of good players in that period, as we showed in getting to the final in 2007 despite being a rabble in the group stages. I think the real dark night of the soul for English rugby was actually the Johnson period, because then I don't think we had either the players or the coaches to be competitive against the southern hemisphere. This was starting to change by 2010/11, and Lancaster built on this to make us fairly competitive against the southern hemisphere but we are still a long way off where we were in 2000-2003, when our record against the southern hemisphere was as good as their was against us during the Johnson period.

Two words for you: Brian Ashton.

England were the best attacking team in the world bar none from 2001 to 2002 because of him. They only really tightened up when he left and they hit the world cup. Sure we used our Forwards to win the semi final but would any other top nation have done differently in a semi final in the pouring rain?

People say if it had been dry that day France would have won, Woodward has always maintained if it had been dry that day England would have smashed France by a record Score. (well never know)

The demise after 2003 I think is completely the RFU's fault, they completely wasted what could have been a brilliant legacy by hounding Woodward out the door and scuppering any chances of us building on that success ahead of 2007 - i think if Woodward had stayed in charge until 2005/2006 we'd be a very different team now.

As for boring England, i suggest people go back watch the likes of Dave Duckham, Clive Woodward in the 80's, or Carling, Guscott, Underwood from 1991 - 1995. Even then England all through the rebuilding period post 1995 played open attractive rugby.

 

[TRF_stormer2010]

I just wanted to point out people writing off Aussie in a RWC due to a percieved lack of nouse at the set piece should not count them out just yet since RWC games are indeed pressure games and this means there is pressure on the referees as well and just look at how Aus beat SA in the 2011 S/F despite not being in the game off the back of the referee failing to penalize in a pressure game. I fully expect Aus to go through alongside England.

I wish the franchise system would cease to exist.
Top 6 in Currie Cup qualifies for the next years Super Rugby. Simple.

I like the idea though I can't see it happen! It might give the rest incentive to actually retain their best and spend some money adding value to the CC. But I can't see it happen as the bigger unions have too firm a hold on SR and it'd actually be a tad unfair to use the CC as a promotion platform while the bigger unions' test players are unavailable due to Bok duties.
Also, I can see our teams doing more poorly in SR then on the back of having less consistency year too year.