Official 2015 rugby world cup thread

[rhyfelwr]

So nervous. Somebody hold me nohomo

DW I am too its always a tough contest against the Springboks

[NasStan]

Something to whet the appetite for Saturday's SF, the battle of the old foes, Springboks vs All Blacks, the greatest rivalry in rugby union.

The Guardian had a good article on it

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blo...eatest-rivalry

New Zealand and South Africa prepare to renew rugby union’s greatest rivalry

Te Papa, “our place”, the national museum of New Zealand, is so big they say that if you strung out all its steel girders they would stretch from its site on the south side of the Wellington waterfront all the way to Sydney. Inside, exhibits cover almost every conceivable detail of the country’s culture, geography and history, from ancient fossils through to a collection of condom packets from the 1980s. On the fourth floor, a corner is given over to rugby. Not the whole sport, just one aspect of it: the All Blacks’ rivalry with the Springboks, judged by the curators to be such an important part of their nation’s history that you can’t understand 20th century New Zealand without learning about it.

England v Scotland is older and England v Wales more closely contested, but there is no rivalry in European rugby that is, or ever has been, as significant as the one between these two, about to be renewed again at Twickenham. From 1912, when South Africa swept all of the Five Nations teams aside on their European tour, through to 1991, when Australia won the World Cup, the Springboks and All Blacks were top of World Rugby’s retrospective rankings for 77 out of 79 years. For the vast majority of the sport’s history, this has been a contest between the world’s two best teams.

This will be the 91st match between them; New Zealand have won 52, South Africa 35, or 39%. Which is a far better record than any other country has against the All Blacks, since Australia are next with 27%. In the early years, South Africa were the better side and won nine of the first 14 Tests between the two, including six in a row split either side of the second world war. Their first series, three Tests in New Zealand in 1921, was drawn, so was the second, in South Africa in 1928. But the Springboks beat New Zealand 2-1 away in 1937, then swept them 4-0 at home in 1949. This was followed, in 1956, by New Zealand’s first series victory against South Africa, 2-1, at home. One of the most famous series in All Black history, this, and South Africa’s first defeat since 1903.

All this has long since folded into the mythology of the game, as Greg McGee, once an All Black triallist himself, puts it in his brilliant play Foreskin’s Lament: “For a whole generation god was only twice as high as the posts. We who know our history by itineraries – the cold war of the 50s you say? Oh yes, we remember it well, those front row problems, Skinner and Bekker.” Kevin Skinner, the Kiwi prop and heavyweight boxing champion, recalled to the side for the third Test, and Jaap Bekker his opposite number, their contest settled by “a wee nudge”, as Skinner called it, which left Bekker bleeding and reeling. The idea here, and one that persists today, is that the All Blacks can only best South Africa when they can match them up front in the tight five.

This is likely a legacy of those series’ defeats in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, when, as the All Black back Marcus Nicholls remembered, “they pushed our pack all over the field, and got possession from the set scrums at will”. In the deciding Test in 1937, the Springboks, inspired by a ******** sent by their old skipper Paul Roos (“skrum, skrum, skrum”) scorned lineouts and chose to scrummage instead. And in 1949, the Springboks had such an edge that their coach, Danie Craven, made the humiliating public offer of giving the All Blacks a coaching session in scrummaging. “When South Africa plays New Zealand,” said the Springbok prop Boy Louw, “consider your country at war.” And Louw had served himself, as a bombardier in the second world war.

Almost 50 years later, in 1996, John Hart’s All Blacks became the first team from New Zealand to win a series in South Africa. “My whole game plan was to take them on in the tight five,” said Hart. “If we were not good enough to win there, we were not good enough to win in South Africa.” Hart said it helped that his captain was Sean Fitzpatrick, a man who knew all about the history between the two teams, since he had heard the stories from his own father, Brian, who had played in the 50s. For Brian Fitzpatrick and the All Blacks of his and many successive generations, matches against South Africa were the ones that mattered most. “In my era, the greatest thing was to be able to play against the Springboks,” said Wayne “Buck” Shelford, their skipper in the late 80s.


“Tradition told you that you wanted to play rugby in South Africa,” said one of Shelford’s most famous predecessors, Colin Meads. Like Fitzpatrick, he knew all about it because “my old man used to talk about the Springboks and Danie Craven”. The greatest victories Meads played in, the most painful defeats, were always the ones against the Springboks. In the second Test at Cape Town in 1960, Don Clarke kicked a drop goal off his left foot from 50 yards out, though he was wearing a pair of lightweight boots he had borrowed from his team-mate Kel Tremain. In the third in Christchurch in 1965, the All Blacks blew a 16-5 lead, being cut apart in the second half by Johnny Gainsford.

But New Zealand v South Africa has always been about more than the score, as much to do with what’s happened off the pitch as well as on it. That was so from the first games, when a New Zealand Army team toured in 1919, and agreed to exclude two players, Ranji Wilson and Parekura Tureia, because they were mixed race.

As the writers Robert Archer and Antoine Bouillon put it in their 1982 book The South African Game, in the fight against apartheid in sport, “the real battle has been in rugby – and the real battlefield New Zealand”. This was the case in 1970, when New Zealand only agreed to tour after South Africa granted “honorary white” status to four of All Black players, among them the young wing Bryan Williams, so nervous about it that he had a panic attack and had to be helped off the plane. And in 1973, when the Springboks’ return tour was postponed, and again in 76, when 25 African nations boycotted the Montreal Olympics in protest at the All Blacks tour of South Africa that same year.

That battle was never more vicious than on the Springboks’ 1981 tour, when they played three Tests and, for 56 days across July, August and September, protesters fought police on streets and at rugby grounds around New Zealand. Around 150,000 people marched in 200 demonstrations spread across 28 towns and cities. And around 1,500 of them were arrested, by a police force later described by the future prime minister David Lange as being equipped “with all the regalia of certain fascist countries”. It ended with the infamous Test at Eden Park, when two men, Marx Jones and Grant Cole, pelted the players with flour bombs hurled from a Cessna light aircraft passing above the ground.

The winter of 1981 was a watershed in New Zealand’s modern history. It was a split, says the historian Jock Phillips, between “old and new New Zealand”, and it divided towns, teams, friendships, even families. The full-back Allan Hewson kicked the goal that won the third Test and the series for the All Blacks, only his wife wasn’t there to see it, because she had boycotted all the games. The dividing line is still there, and New Zealand’s current prime minister, John Key, loth to alienate any potential voters, insists that he isn’t able to remember where he was, or which side he was on during 1981.

Fitting, then, that the All Blacks were there again in 1995, when the Springboks returned and won their home World Cup. Their matches these days don’t carry such baggage but this, the biggest the teams have played against each other since, will be as fierce and hard-fought as any of the many that came before it. After all these years, it can’t but be. These teams know no other way.

[OllieSA]

The Guardian had a good article on it

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/blo...eatest-rivalry

New Zealand and South Africa prepare to renew rugby union’s greatest rivalry

If the game is clean and well reffed, it might very well be the match of RWC2015 and one for the ages.

Less than an hour till kick off.

[sawang]

From NZ and hope the Boks win, will be so many rustled jimmies around here *******s think their team is unbeatable. Bet they think Richie McCaw is natty too, just lmao.

[ShabbaLife]

Scotland fan checking in

[Achilles87]

Fuuuuark boys

[OllieSA]

[NasStan]

Scotland fan checking in

Feels brah

Going to be a sick match

[MikeGaining]

Got my money on NZ. So better win with -12.5

lols. brb prep my food and watch the match.

[Achilles87]

Cocks so hard right now no homo

[rhyfelwr]

God getting slaughtered by the penalties

[NasStan]

SA never looked like scoring a try. NZ are so ruthless in the lineouts.

[rhyfelwr]

Fuark that was close. Good game Boks.

Hope Argentina beats those *******s the Wannabies tomorrow

[Achilles87]

Fuk me that was tense

[OllieSA]

Fukking piss. Sickening. So dissapointed. This game was there for the taking.

Well done All Blacks, second half strategy sealed it. A massive arm wrestle, you were just too good.

[tehdingmeister]

Dat SA attack... fukin du Preez never gives Pollard the ball although he did just kick it away when he got it. Only saw Kriel once, De Allende and Willie LeRoux the only decent backs. Habana retracted for that stupid sin bin.

[OllieSA]

Dat SA attack... fukin du Preez never gives Pollard the ball although he did just kick it away when he got it. Only saw Kriel once, De Allende and Willie LeRoux the only decent backs. Habana retracted for that stupid sin bin.

Habana made some crucial errors, perhaps more so than any other SA player. But besides this (which should not be discounted) we had a stupid strategy. You can't hand possession back to a side that makes almost 3X the meters that your side does, when you're missing tackles. But who would be surprised? This is what SA have always done, and we keep hoping they'll snap out of it.

[OllieSA]

[Andybird]

Fuark that was close. Good game Boks.

Hope Argentina beats those *******s the Wannabies tomorrow

Location: QLD, Australia

[img]https://scontent-sea1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xft1/t31.0-8/12045343_10153188204443091_2771059777707139446_o.j pg[img]

As much as everyone hates him, there's no denying that SBW is fuarking jacked.

[Achilles87]

Manlets when will they learn

[staN_]

Holy chit boys, super keen to see a NZ/Wallabies final.

[zdream]

quads of eternal peace and infinite prosperity

[jimmyfett98]

late, but NZ brah checking in. chat my pants watching the game this morning. It was too close for my liking, but definitely what the AB's needed. Their egos must have been pretty high after last week, this was a good reminder to them (and the rest of NZ who is convinced they're unstoppable) that the other teams are looking thick solid tight. Hope the wallabies make it through, that would be a killer final

[Achilles87]

Vamos los Pumas

[tehdingmeister]

They really shot themselves in the foot in the first 10, whatever you might say about how some of the decisions went the Wallabies were utterly ruthless at exploiting opportunities. Pocock is just on a whole other level this WC, sickening backrow combo with Fardy and Hooper. Can't wait to see it go up against the 2011 repeat backrow of Kaino, McCaw, Read backrow who aren't quite as good as they were then

[mike201011]

final gonna be a cracker

[JasperBedford]

Well, I think that went well.

There is balance in the force.