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Wales v. South Africa in DC

Wins a win, at the end of the day.
Not one for the ages but will put Wales ahead of SA in the rankings now.

They'll be concerned about some of those injuries though - Evans looks out for the summer, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Moriarty and Prydie miss out on the next game as the extent of the knocks they picked up are realised.

Ellis and Tomos were the pick of the Welsh.
 
Now Wales can say "Well at least we beat the Springboks!" When England loses the test series vs South Africa 3-0
 
unrated said:
I stayed up for an intense match and got the opposite. Too much handling errors. Ivan van zyl threw the game for us, don't understand why we would kick the ball on the 50 meter line. In our own half sure but not on the halfway line where especially in the USA we need to run it a bit not only for tactical reasons but to entertain the crowd which i thought filled up nicely as the game went on.

Cant really blame du Preez too much, a lot of South Africans are solely blaming the loss on him but he only came on with like 7 mins to go so wont really call him out. Actually Janties surely must have also lost some reputation points.
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Yeah Rassie threw him into the deep end and the guys who made mistakes for the previous 70 minutes contributed to the cluster F of us leaving it to the last moment to get ahead on the scoreboard. First he came on straight into a high pressure penalty kick (which he got) but then he could not get us out of our 22 under pressure. I've seen him get charged down before with the Sharks so I wasn't that surprised the first time however I was baffled to see the second sortly after.
I thought Jantjies did okay. Van Zyl's service wasn't always great and he took all his kicks. I would have kept him on because we were under pressure but Rassie chose to blood another debutant. Wrong call that cost us the match.
 
Most MLS stadiums are in the 20k region.
There's even one in DC*, but they must have felt optimistic at their chances to use the 45k one (at least they didn't go balls to the wall and go for the 80k stadium)




Edit:
*on closer inspection this stadium isn't open for a couple more weeks, could've made for an interesting curtain opener!
 
The standard was generally pretty awful but at least it became more watchable in the second half. And northern hemisphere beating southern hemisphere is always noteworthy, even if it was essentially Wales A v South Africa A.

If it was impossible to find on TV over there & most of the crowd were Welsh & South African expats, I'm not really sure what the point is in taking games like this to America though?
 
Even after a solid good night sleep, my eyes are still sore. Painful to watch.
 
Well this was disappointing.

The weather certainly had an impact on the match, according to our commentators the conditions were worse than any rain-drenched and humid day in Durban, so the handling errors were expected, but man what a shambles.

Wales went in to the game with the idea of we don't want the ball, let SA do everything and we'll feed of their mistakes, and it worked. But man the only problem with this, especially when having this game as an exhibition game in a rugby developing country, is that it's not attractive and appears to be very negative style of play.

Wales didn't seem to want to scrum. That first half was awful, so many scrum resets, so much waiting for something to happen. So many scrum free kicks. yet no penalty.

But congrats Wales, you played the conditions the best.

As for SA, well if it wasn't for Esterhuizen and Jenkins, there wouldn't have been a lot of positives for this game. Oupa Mohoje shouldn't be allowed to get on a plane, he should swim back in shark infested waters! He alone was the cause for 80% of our penalties. Here's a thought, if the referee is pinging you for sealing off in the tackle area, then don't F***ing do it again!!! Man he was poor! And he was supposed to be one of our more experienced players on the field, especially when we have 13 debutants.

The injuries in the second half also didn't aid us. Mapimpi going off and then being replaced by Embrose Papier, as Bosch (again so frail) was off in the first half and Gelant at 15. And then Ishmaiel dislocated his shoulder for that attempted try and wasn't the same after that.

At least Rassie managed to blood 13 new guys, while keeping his main stock wrapped in cotton back in SA and getting ready for England.
 
If they were trying to put on a good advertisement for the 15 man game in the USA with the intension of holding the RWC there in the future then this wasn't the best game to really attract new American fans.
 
TRF_heineken said:
If anything they put off a lot of fans worldwide.
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The most entertaining thing about that entire game was the twitter feed, honestly the only thing keeping me entertained, some of my favourites:

Footage related related:
"The camera man is hammered drunk."
"Can the camera people be subbed at half time? My god"
"**** me, that conversion kick actually disappeared off my screen"
"Nice to see the USA recycling more by using TV graphics off the 80s"
"I like the rainbow screen. Keep that on please" (Referencing the consistent cut of footage)

Game related:
"All neutral fans should be supporting Wales as frankly no one with Elton Jantjies haircut should be allowed to win a test match"
"We reckon the Springboks have kicked the ball more in this stadium more than DC United did in a season"
"I managed to capture a picture of the highlight of the game so far" (Attached with a picture of the "apologise for loss of pictures" screen)

The only two on the Bok side that enhanced their reputations were Esterhuizen and Kitshoff. Our scrumhalf spent half the game aligning his forwards in the perfect formation for box kicks. Elton Jantjies was meant to be an experienced player and I think just put more pressure on the rest of his backs. Our scrums were average in the first half and our only effective attacking option was give ball to Esterhuizen > Esterhuizen run straight.

On the referee, I think he was fine in terms of no bias and being fair, but I think he had a negative impact on the game if the aim was to give a spectacle in the US. I put quite a bit of the failure of the first half in terms of entertainment lacking on him. He let the scrum reset about five times every time, seemed scared to make free kick or penalty calls on it until near half time. Really should have been at most one reset and then from that point free kick and penalising the team at fault. He lacked control and as a result both teams I think stuffed around in the scrums when they felt they didn't have the dominance.
 
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@saulan spot on about the referee! Thought he was ok on the not being biased front, but he was atrocious at letting a game flow! As you said, game was struggling to get going in the first half with the conditions, but he refereeing at the scrum just slowed things down to a snails pace...

Talking of scrums, I really hope Gatland finally realises now that Rhodri Jones is NOT a tighthead... We went from being able to at least get parity at the scrum to being shoved backwards with ease when he came on in the 2nd half.
 
Game played out as expected really, two thrown together teams struggling to gain some momentum in the match. Tomos Williams and Ellis Jenkins were decent but there wasn't much else to shout about in the Wales team to be honest. Prydie was decent to be fair but North and Watkins in the centre didn't really do much at all although it doesn't help with Anscombe at 10 which I'm still not convinced at, I think he would be much better at 15. Watkins only seems to get chances in games where half the team is changed, I would like to see him get at least one start against Argentina in a full strength team with Parkes. As for the forwards, still not convinced with Moriaty at 8, I think he is a 6 that can cover 8 during a game not start an test match there. As predicted by everyone Seb Davies is not a 6, I forget he was on the pitch to be honest. Quite disappointed that Wainwright didn't get on, I don't get why they kept Davies on at 6 even though it wasn't really working.

SA in the same boat as Wales, a few positives but a lot of questions after that as well. What do you guys think of Jantjies? When I watch him play for SA more often than not he is poor yet still get chances? Is it a case of there just being no one else?
 
It was painful to watch, in places, but to be fair that was the second painful match to watch if you take the England Ba Ba's match a few days before into consideration. Shocking!
 
MikeTheNative said:
SA in the same boat as Wales, a few positives but a lot of questions after that as well. What do you guys think of Jantjies? When I watch him play for SA more often than not he is poor yet still get chances? Is it a case of there just being no one else?
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Hasn't had a great season with the Lions as well. Ackermann got a lot out of him, but no one else has been able to do that. I think it was also telling that he was sent through for these matches and that Pollard was left in SA with the other core players. I don't think Jantjies will be starting this weekend.
 
noah_jo said:
England game was low quality, but at least it was exciting
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Oh for sure - two entirely different games for entirely different reasons. But still games that use only negative superlatives to describe them basically. I thought the Ba Ba's were pretty good for a scratch team. Who says we should lose the Ba Ba's from fixtures?
 
I defended the ref at the start because most of the stopping was awful handling from the players, but I agree, he handled the scrum terribly. If it was both players and he couldn't give a clear penalty either way then card them both, get the subs on. Still doesn't work? Card them again until we get to uncontested scrums, because it was pathetic. If you are having to reset that often for the same reasons, the players clearly aren't listening and it needed to be dealt with.
 
Interesting to see everyone here thinking the performance was terrible. I thought it was really interesting. Watching from the upper deck provided a whole new perspective to see how the play develops and how all the athletes are working together. The handful of times I've watched on tv that was definitely missing so it was hard to understand fully what was going on. It's probably similar to someone who didn't grow up playing / watching American football seeing it from that perspective for the first time. Will definitely try to keep an eye out for other "big" rugby events that may happen around me in the future.
 
Well one positive I guess is that Americans will have no difficulty understanding the scrum anymore
 

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