RWC Draw
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@snowy Canada has deteriorated a lot, the last few years.
Their 2018 June Internationals results:
Canada 10 - 48 Scotland
Canada 20 - 43 Russia
Canada 17 - 42 USADuring the 2011RWC, we beat them 79 - 15 without several of our first choice players.
Current world rankings of the repechage teams:
Canada 22
Hong Kong 21
Germany 29
Kenya 28 (or Namibia 23 if Kenya manages to beat Namibia in the Africa Gold Cup) -
@stargazer That is a bit of a slide for Canada, esp the Russia and USA results. They were in the top dozen or so at one stage.
Still doubt that our "second/third stringers" would put 100 on them though. Hopefully there won't be any 145-17 type results at all.
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@machpants Of Canada, Germany, Kenya and Hong Kong, I'd guess Canada has the best team. But, as always, one of the others can surprise, because these teams probably have never played each other. For that reason, I'm not too sure whether the world rankings are a good indication, because they're not playing the same opponents either. I hope we'll be able to watch some of these repechage games; Canada v Kenya sounds interesting.
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@stargazer said in RWC Draw:
My bet's on Canada to get the final spot, but it would be great if a new country could get the RWC experience. Having said that, whoever qualifies will be destroyed in our pool and only their test against Namibia will be a "real" game.
Probably true, but I hope not.
Canada - who I expect to make it through - have punched above their weight at one or two RWC's... albeit briefly.I know nothing of German rugby. Would be quite something to have them qualify!
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@stargazer said in RWC Draw:
My bet's on Canada to get the final spot, but it would be great if a new country could get the RWC experience. Having said that, whoever qualifies will be destroyed in our pool and only their test against Namibia will be a "real" game.
My favourite non-top tier country is Canada, and has been since well before RWC existed.
So I really want them to be there.
Conversely I'd love a new qualifier to make the finals.
So go ... errr ... both teams
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@booboo It would be a disaster for Canadian rugby if they didn't qualify. The game here is actually very solid and building nicely despite being hamstrung by shortsighted, self-interested, piss poor administration.
Yeah. Although it would be nice for a new country to qualify I'd prefer it not to be at the expense of an established one that has a realistic chance of growing.
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There was an interesting article in the guardian about how German rugby was a billionaires toy
How juice drink billionaire bankrolled Germany’s Rugby World Cup charge
Hans-Peter Wild got his money from Capri Sun and spent €20m to get the country to within three games of the tournament but uncertainty now surrounds the team’s future
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@machpants Yup that's a good article that basically sums it all up, great to have a sugar daddy until he walks away
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He actually almost did earlier this year. They've had a lot of problems and the XVs players went on strike at some point. They had to call up most of their sevens players to be able to field a team in test matches.
Edit: ah, should have read the entire article first; it's in there.
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It's a bit shambolic over the first 5mins but people might find this mock rugby world cup we did a couple of weeks ago enjoyable
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Great opportunity for some countries to participate in the RWC, but we've only one tough opponent in our pool. Seems like a shit preparation for the finals. The game against Italy will still have value for our prep, but geezus, Canada is weak and Namibia has already been smashed by Russia and Spain in the past two weeks. Nothing more than opposed training runs with pathetic scorelines.
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