The Rugby World cup starts tomorrow, 7 September 2007. Current holders England have very little chance of retaining the cup. The tournament is being held in France.
4 Pools
Pool A:
England
South Africa
Samoa
Tonga
USA
Pool B:
Australia
Wales
Fiji
Canada
Japan
Pool C:
NZ
Scotland
Italy
Romania
Portugal
Pool D:
France
Ireland
Argentina
Georgia
Namibia
The official website is:
So who is going to win the world cup:
My prediction New Zealand.
At the moment they dominate Rugby like Australia do in cricket.
They have won 25 of their last 27 matches and have beaten all of their possible rivals.
englqand will have an interesting one against south africa this week, with el capitano vickery out, and wilkinson still out, hey would need to look elsewhere for inspiration, and i hate to say it, its not going to come with making stupid picks like ashton. what exactly has he done since he joined union from league to warrant a place?
The England-South Africa game will be good. I believe SA has the beating of England.
Final will be between South Africa and N-Zeeland. It will be a monster af a match. Presently the only team that can match NZ man-on-man is South Africa.
Anyone wanting to win this world cup will need to beat RSA and NZ.
An outside chance for AUS.
What do you think of Brayn Habana? I understand his father was a soccer supporter and named his son after Bryan Robson. Sure his dad is proud of his son now...
wow that was some ass kicking received by england, outclassed in every aspect of the game. springboks are way too strong this time around. honestl speaking, even if england did not have its few players injured they would have lost.
wow that was some ass kicking received by england, outclassed in every aspect of the game. springboks are way too strong this time around. honestl speaking, even if england did not have its few players injured they would have lost.
The irony is that the Sppringboks did not have their best centre (Jean de Villiers) or best loose forward (Schalk Burger) for the match, and they have an avarage flyhalf.
The opne player that I would have liked to see with the Springboks is one they left at home after medical advice, namely Pierre Spies. A young bloke of about 21 who used to play wing (still one of the fastest in the squad) who now plays loose forward (Jake White thought of maybe again playing him at wing). A fenomenal player that took the Wallabies and All Blacks by storm during the three nations cup earlier this year. Some people already rate him as the best in his field.
BTW, what you think of the "old man" in the squad, Os du Randt (prop)? At 35 still good enough to chase the ball with the young one's, hey? :)
b/w NZ and SA.
the english team was just too complacent over the last couple of years just resting ontheir title, they needed a reality check like this.
A comment I heard recently is that the reason why the 4 "British" unions are not doing so good at this World Cup is because of too many foreigns playing in the lucrative home club leagues. Too few chances for the locals to grew and become experienced. Some clubs play up to 8 foreigns at a time.
thats the same thing with premier league in football. while the clubs are profitable and attract good foriegn players, it does little for national squad, I agree to a point, but I think if good english players were playing in french, italian, spanish leagues for example but were available fr national squad u will still have good players and a good team, kinda like France which had many of its key players actually play in England,..especially arsenal :)
plus the 4 teams thing cuts the talent pool down by 4.
plus the 4 teams thing cuts the talent pool down by 4.
What is this "4 teams thing"?
Poor Namibia suffered because of one block having a rush of blood to his head and being send off.
I am extremely afraid it can happen to South Africa in a crucial game. The present flyhalf, Butch James, frequently don't use his arms in a tackle and has been send off many times. A potential game loser like him should not be at the World Cup.
What's it with no Guppies interested in Rugby? Too physical? Even in South Africa we battle to get the "indian-pakistani" segment to be interested. We do have a young flyhalf Ismael Dolly who is doing quite good. Played for the Junior Boks.
I mean instead of having a UK team if you will have england, wales, scotland and northern ireland it will break up the talent pool. I see it in football, and have seen it goign as far back and when Ian Rush and Robson, Linekar etc played but Rush who was a fantastic player could never play.
I played rugby for my college club during grad school, but it was the rugby 7's club so a little different. we had a regular rugby club too, but I just got hooked on the 7s.
Yeh, I think they should make a bigger deal of 7's in school. Only problem is that, where rugby normally have a position for any person big or slow or small or fat, 7's in a way cut the versatality factor.
Among all the sports, I believe rugby cater for all types of physiques. One reason being the set pieces such as scrums and lineouts. Locks and props can play soccer and few small scrumhalfs will be able to play grid-iron.
Myself played rugby till my second year out of high-school when I had a bad injury and stopped.
Your comment about the 4 home leaques: how big is N-Zeeland for that matter....and for years under Apartheid, South Africa only had 10% of the country making up the Springbok squad.
I believe it is the amount of passion and success and available money and good administration that drives youngsters to take up the game.
