Freedom of speech in its purest form. He was free to say it but not free of the consequences of saying it.
If he didn't share the same values of the ARU then he had every opportunity to not sign that contract but he signed it so tough shit. Now hes hiding from his boss like a little bitch. If I were his agent, I would be sooo pissed right now.
Been on the phone all morning trying to make sure everyone is safe. I only know one Muslim back home. Lets be honest its Christchurch after all. He is safe.
Spoke to my mum who works in the hospital she says they will be doing what they can. But there are only twelve operating theatres in the hospital and she doubts many surgeons have any experience with gunshot wounds. But everyone is just rolling their sleeves up and doing what they can to save as many as they can. I know we think of those surgeon guys as porsche driving flash harrys. But on days like this those guys step up.
Personally I am just angry. You want a war, go to Syria you fuckwad. There is more then enough people for you to go toe to toe with. You won't do that though because you are all chickenshit cowards.
I hope these losers names are wiped from existence. I hope the guy who tried to take him down unarmed is hailed as a hero to all Cantabs for all time, his name should never go away.
Finally as I have said on here before, I work with a big group of Muslim guys. They have all come to see me in the office this morning to say they will be praying for everyone in Christchurch today. Paris is with you today! All be it a small part of a shitty suburb in Paris.
Fucked if I feel like talking about sport now.
I wrote this post once already but realised that 90% of the debate is of literally no interest to you guys on here. All you probably whan to know is what was said about Europe and what was said about terrorism, maybe the economy as well I'm not sure on that? But if I am wrong and there are other topics that were touched on that you are interested in I can try and provide a synopsis of what was said. It was pretty diverse and covered a lot of stuff some of it very low level and detailed.
There were two very different approaches taken to the debate. Macron came to talk policy and to talk down to Le Pen.
Le Pen came to interrogate Macron on his policies and try and paint him as part of the previous government.
First some background, It got ugly and the moderators had no real control the whole debate. A lot of interruptions and a lot of talking over the top of each other. The format of French debates is the 2 candidates face each other at a desk with moderators there is no live audience just the cameras and the prepared questions which they both are aware of. Le Pen showed up with piles of folders and was constantly shuffling them and looking for things but only produced about two things that I can remember from them. Macron came with a notepad and a pen. Because of the format, the zingy one liners and what not that you get in the US debates, tend to fall pretty flat when you don't have an audience to reveal in you sick burn. Not to say there weren't a few good ones they just don't score you points like they would if you had someone there to actually laugh at them. Le Pens about a woman being in charge of France was funny, as was Macron thanking Le Pen on behalf of the gay community in France for all she had done for them. It did get personal though Le Pen denied she was a racist. Macron denied he was an elitist.
Le Pen tried to paint Macron as complicit in the failings of the last government. But she didn't come well prepared to this discussion, and economics is not something you want to spar with Macron about. He repeatedly corrected her figures and had to explain to her some basic principles to her. This is when he started using his quiet big boy voice. He also started pushing her for her policies but she just went back on the attack. This continued throughout the debate. So he asked if this was an interview or a debate.
On Europe Le Pen got herself a bit stuck she is now thinking of having 2 currencies for France. Macron tore this idea to bits. Rumor has it her party came up with this idea over the weekend and it showed as she couldn't even answer basic questions about how it would work. Macron wants to reform the EU but never got into how or what he wanted to actually do with this. Annoyingly he was never pressed on this either. Le Pen wants out of the Schengen treaty. Thinks an extra 10000 customs officers should be able to secure the border. Accused Macron of not believing they did a good job, when he said that it may be more difficult then that to secure all the French borders.
Terrorism.
This was interesting. Macron said something which apparently will have lost him a few points. He said that France needs to take some responsibility for the terror attacks carried out by French nationals. Le Pen was outraged by this. I'm not sure why. He also said he would dismantle any organisation that promoted hate.
Le Pen had waited all debate for this. She hoed in with a lot of prepared rhetoric but never gave very much detail about her plans other then closing the border, and restricting immigration. She mentioned closing mosques, youth groups, sports teams or anything that was being used as a cover for radicalisation. She did mention removing the nationality of people involved in terror attacks. Macron asked her how concerned did she honestly think suicide attackers would be by their loss of French Nationality.
If Le Pens tactic was to get under Macrons skin and try and get him to react angrily. It failed, he never took the bait. It was not a knock out for Macron though, Le Pen gave so little detail that he couldn't really attack her policies too much and he left a lot of stuff very vague himself.
Where this matters is with the far left voters of Melanchon. He is refusing to back either candidate, (Though he has stated he would never vote for Le Pen) He had 19% of the first round. That is who they needed to try and win over last night. I had a wee look on reddit and twitter and it seems Macron may have just seemed more presidential to these people. Though I never no if you can trust when someone on the internet says they were an undecided voter, so take that with a grain of salt.
As I said earlier Le Pen constantly interrupting and trying to be funny and trying to talk over Macron looked like a calculated tactic, for me it didn't work she came off as a petulant child. It also gave him room For Macron to shoosh her then talk down to her. As you may be aware being condescending is almost a national pastime here.
Finally. I have tried to write this as factually as I could but as I said earlier I have a dog in the fight and have a preference. So if you want to reply just to smugly point out all the places my bias is showing you can save yourself the 1s and 0s. But if you have any real questions or are interested in my opinions I will be happy to offer them.
Took my eldest to his first Top 14 game on the weekend. Awesome dad experience. He was so excited the whole game and the Racing people really put on a show with the pre match intros. Racing won by a point and it was a great atmosphere. Already planning the next game to go to.
Went to check him last night before going to bed, and he had snuck into his rugby kit to sleep in.
He is a decent person. I know from personal experience. When I worked at the Linwood Warehouse, he would come in just before Xmas and personally buy 1000's of dollars worth of kids toys, all to give away to kids who parents can't afford them.
Like the dude literally pushes trolley after trolley to the checkouts. When I saw what he was doing I got the boss down to talk to him. He said he didn't want to make a big deal of it and didn't want it in the papers, but the boss would swing him 10% off the lot anyway.
He gave us shit for not having his radio station on. I gave him shit for playing rugby for Sumner. All round decent bloke.
Having had the weekend to absorb the loss I thought I would throw in my 2 cents.
Firstly well done the Lions you got there in the end. Plenty of teams would not have gotten over the line but you found a way to win ugly.
For the ABs I have to say even down to 14 I thought we would still win it. Mostly due to what I thought was tactical brilliance from Hanson. Subbing a forward was clearly something they had planned for as it happened almost immediately. It sucks for Kaino but our 7 man pack was more then competitive against the Lions 8 and that is purely down to conditioning. Every one of those blokes put in a shift and they got so close. I suspect if Cruden had passed that balls to the forwards and asked them to hold it for 5 minutes they would have.
But thats not us we play to win not to draw, was still a shitty option.
I can understand people are frustrated with SBW for what happened but I think people need a little perspective. He is not even close to being a serial offender wasn't his last card in 2011 that was 6 years ago. If you balance it up against the good stuff hes done I think hes still the kind of player you want around. So this talk of him never wearing Black again or people booing him needs to be put to bed. Its over no one will regret it more then him.
Vunipola on the other hand should count himself very lucky, in my view that was a straight up targeted shot. He saw it was Barrett and he went hard in on him. It was cheap as well as Barrett was rolling out of the ruck, and there was no other defender so he had no need to even enter the ruck, the ball was available. I think if the contact was any heavier we could have been down a fly half. I would be surprised if he was selected for the 3rd test, he didn't really bend the line and his discipline sucked.
For the SOB incident, it makes me really wonder if the way the Refs are implementing the head high rules needs some adjustment. One thing in common with a lot of the rulings that have been very inconsistent is that its not normally the tackler that is at fault, but more often the tackler assist. We see it here with Sean, with Sonny and even the Cane incident in Ireland. He was coming in as the assist but Henshaws spin caught him. I think as the assister there is a much greater risk of these sorts of accidents. For one you have a player who is in the process of being tackled that will normally be lowering there head as they move toward the ground. This puts it right in the tackle zone for anyone attempting the assist. Then you have huge amounts of force in the collision and the way that acts on the players is not easy to predict, making any assisted tackles a lot messier. The inverse is also true in a one on one tackle with two players colliding both have a good idea of where their bodies should be, to effect a safe tackle at impact.
I really don't know how to deal with that. I would like to see slow motion replays used less as I think reducing the time gives the impression that the players have a choice in their actions and for a lot of cases in the assist I don't think they have much of one. What they committed to 2 steps away is what they have to go through with.
I was happy with Laumape, thought he was good considering the circumstances. Reiko needed to be busier. He can't afford to run hot cold like that and needs to go looking for the ball a bit more rather then wait for it.
One final thing all of the international French Refs are totally fluent in English, please don't give them this excuse as a crutch for a poor performance. They don't need it if they are not communicating with their team properly its not down to language skills.
Well a big bunch of you seem to hate what the PM said. But I can tell you over here in France , its making news and its been really well received. It was a 1 minute clip for gods sake.
I don't know what the issue with what she said is. She said we pride ourselves on our hospitality. Which we do or we did when I lived there. She said the government will support the police in anything they need to close the case. And she said she should have been safe here and she wasn't.
I share some of her sentiment, Is it the use of the word shame? I feel embarrassed or ashamed it happened in New Zealand. I tell loads of people to go visit, you'll love it. There is a big difference between that and feeling responsible!
Whether its reality or not, people internationally perceive NZ as being a very safe place. If this had happened in Mexico I highly doubt it would have got the same level of attention.
She didn't say its all white dudes fault, she didn't say its the fault of all kiwis. She apologised to a parent that their child won't be coming home. Seems like a really human thing to do and really the least she can do under the circumstances.
Imagine it flipped a young kiwi backpacker dies in Paris. She's pretty and white so the media give a shit about it and ask the French president to comment. How would you feel if he said "Well the police are looking into that, nothing to do with me" That would be pretty cold.
You may not like the PM, I am hardly a super fan myself, but to get your panties in a bunch because she apologised to a grieving family, that the media were bound to ask about, that's what is triggering you? Really.
@Salacious-Crumb said in Aussie Rugby in general:
Folau targetted eight groups, including atheists and adulterers, as going to Hell. I haven’t repented yet. I guess that means I should be twice as outraged and incensed and offended as LGBTQers.
It's not a competition. He tweeted his views on a subject his employer contractually forbid him from tweeting on. He got fired. Stupid is as stupid does
I am not surprised by this reaction at all. You never beat the Irish they are always the victims of some injustice it seems. But if they beat you, oh you better be a good loser take it in your stride and accept it or you will never hear the end of it.
Source: Wife is Irish.
[edit - split from another topic]
Whatever happens in this game I would like to see this 2 Haka thing put to bed. I have never been okay with it. It smacks of us picking and choosing who is worthy of the special one and who is going to get the contractually obligated one.
Will they do Kapo Pango this week because they are hurt from their loss and have departing players. Or will they do Ka Mate because who honestly cares about a 3rd place play off and Wales are losers as well.
We look like total cocks pulling out our special haka, and then getting spanked.
Choose one or the other. Or one for home and on for away.
But this special haka thing just gets on my nerves.
I've never felt more pessimistic before a test match in my life.
Any physical edge we had in the past seems gone. Same for our conditioning, if anything we seem behind a few teams now.
The only thing left is skills and they seem to have deserted us as well. We don't currently do anything better then anyone else in the world.
Without the boks having a shocker. I can't see where we can find an edge.
Please someone give me some hope.
@ACT-Crusader said in All Blacks squad - The Rugby Championship:
@mooshld said in All Blacks squad - The Rugby Championship:
Harmon, Christie, Kirifi The players are there but we don't seem interested in that style of play.
Christie and Kirifi get blown off the ball (and their feet) far too often in my view.
But they at least get on it. Even getting blown off the ball requires the other team to commit. We need balance in our back row not 3 6's thats my point.
@Stargazer Agree with this. But if they are injured we should look at the next cab off the rank not try to shoe horn someone in.
hahah hey Tom Christie was in a winning team. If they are the best then yeah we should pick from them. Enough with out of position players.
You can't tell me there isn't a better 6 in New Zealand then a lock that sometimes plays 6 and there isn't a better 7 then an out of form guy that doesn't get turnovers and plays more like a 6 then a 7 anyway.
@reprobate My point is they are all genuine 7's if we want to change the way we play they are our best options, and if they are the best we have then I would rather we tried that, then picked 5 6's and filled the 3 loose forward roles with them.
Harmon, Christie, Kirifi The players are there but we don't seem interested in that style of play.
I have said it in the other thread but will say it again. If the outcome of a rugby match is being decided by a super slow motion capture of the weight balance of a 130KG man 1/10th of a second before impact. Then the game is fucked, we will never get consistency.
World Rugby need to give up on red cards and handle rugby related discipline issues with yellows and injury and foul play with the judiciary. At least then we will have fewer matches that are total write offs after an accident 15 minutes into the game.
Ireland were better then us in this series but lets not forget we stuffed them in the first test by playing 15 minutes of rugby. The northern hemisphere want to talk up what a great Irish team this is fine. But they seem to have forgotten that first test. We are not a million miles away here we need to look at that period of play and find a way to bottle that. If we can even play like that for 30 minutes no one will be able to touch us.
I would quite like a genuine fetcher at 7 bring to balance the loose forwards and maybe secure us a bit more ball. If you have big ball runners at 6 and 8 you can afford a smaller 7 who just makes their tackles and pilfers ball. Our current style feels like our 7's are more like 6 and a halfs.
Also RTS may be the future but based on super rugby he did not stand out. Give him a year of provincial rugby and come back to it and see how he looks. If he doesn't dominate there we have our answer.
So Porter has been cleared.
I don't understand this game any more.
@nostrildamus said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Crucial said in The Current State of Rugby:
@JC said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Crucial It’s a legitimate point. When we hear Peyper saying that the tackler has the greater responsibility isn’t that presuming that the team in possession isn’t manufacturing the environment where uncontrolled collisions are more likely?
It's a bit like the old Brumbies Larkham days. Larkham would 'trick' players into having to decide if he had passed or not by turning his back.
I remember the ref telling him once, after being flattened from behind without the ball, 'you created that, you take it'Good ref.
My all time favourite was Andre Watson.
"Wrong side roll away"
"Roll away"
"Roll away!!!"
"Alright boys spit him out"
At which point the player disappeared under a hail of boots.