It's bad enough that England's style would be too conservative even for Phil Larder. But it's all those other THINGS which added together make them about as likeable as Scorpio running up and down the school bus in [iDirty Harry[/i screaming [i"The wheels on the bus go round and round. Sing dammit!!"[/i

It's like they were created in some kind of perfect storm of villainy.

Even before they enter the field the milk in your tea has been curdled by John Inverdale's sleaze. And when the cameras do pan away for the odd bit of respite you are treated to the Windsor Chuckle Brothers who are DEFINITELY NOT NAZIS even though they like dressing up like them (oh and grandad actually WAS ONE - along with his two brothers).

England lost it after Burgess went off.......coincidence?

Thought I'd watch a Union game for the first time in a very long time. The hype and the match are a million miles apart. How the people spending upwards of 300 queens heads to sit through that is criminal.

Indeed, I can watch RU, but what an awful game it was. Commentator's were saying it 'lived up to the hype', no it didn't. Scoreline was close, that was the only reason I left it on. 2nd half, Wales backs were so much better than ours, even allowing for their injuries/players missing.

I think it didn't help. But the truth is England were practically BEGGING Wales to sucker-punch them.

From the very beginning they'd set their stall out to play the "England Way" - which means cynically exploiting any and every opportunity to exhilarate the crowd with free-flowing kicking.

England are the zen masters at the science of extracting penalties and strangling the life out of a game once they've nosed ahead.

It was EMBARRASSING listening to purported Union "experts" wax lyrical about "Head Down" Farrell's "engine", "tackling" and "bravery" whilst those piddling little attributes usually associated with the position of Fly Half worldwide ("talent", "class", "style"icon_wink.gif went completely unmentioned.

Even with England ten points ahead you just knew they were only thinking about choking the breath out of Wales like Darth Vader.

Burgess probably shouldn't have gone off. But putting Farrell into the centres was arguably an even bigger blunder - compounded by the fact that the newly arrived playmaker (George Ford) had nowhere near enough time to acclimatize to the game sufficiently whereby he became a threat.

CORRECTION - Half Brothers

Different dads.......their mums relationships, well their's another RU connection there.

Talk like that can seriously affect your car's braking performance. Besides, aren't all royal brothers half brothers?

Classy piece in [url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/rugbyunion/rugby-world-cup/11893385/England-vs-Wales-Huge-Sam-Burgess-gamble-played-to-Wales-strengths-at-Twickenham.htmlThe Telegraph[/url

The journo, Paul Hayward, is getting ripped to pieces on Twitter and fully deserved.

Saw the last 3-4 minutes of this game and that was 3-4 minutes too many. Crikey.
Why didn't England go for goal to level it? Did they not see the Leeds game last night

Especially since England are to passing and scoring what pie-eaters are to progress and human evolution.

No it's ok if their mother sleeps win other guys providing they're England RU captains......a Muslim though, that's a different matter.

Was pleased for Sam that he was picked for his first start in a full Union international. Of course, to say he is head and shoulders as a rugby player above his posh/fat boy etc mates is an understatement showing my lack of vocabulary.

As we know, the only thing we can take from Union is how they do hype and marketing. But the game itself? Don't say I didn't,t warn you in the OP.

Talking of the hype, and even though Sam was barely warmed up, he would have been quietly pleased how he smashed that Roberts (twice) and North in the three tackles he was called upon to do on them.

Then they take Sam off when winning with 20 mins to go. The defence then opens up like the Red Sea and they bottle it and lose. You got to laugh & scratch your head as to who all these people are that take in the hype and turn up at these Union matches.

Speaking for myself, I'm hoping Sam comes home soon (whether it's here or Oz) so we can stop having to watch this stuff.

I agree, plus the fact that when the Welsh were losing players left right and centre, Lancaster decided to make IMO a raft of totally unnecessary changes instead of being ruthless

Anyone would think RU was a free flowing end to end game the way it's reported. Last night's game was pretty much decided by how many penalties were given away and how many of them were kicked. In fact pretty much every International RU game is decided this way. How many sports do you know where the outcome solely relies on penalties during actual game time?

I also watched the earlier Middle 8s game between Bradford and Halifax and saw more attacking flair in that one game than what will be on show for the whole of the RU world cup. If some of those Twickers hooray Henrys saw that many tries in a game it'd blow their minds. But then are the majority really that bothered? Or is it just about being seen at an event with a royal presence? ITV made sure there was plenty of opiate for the masses with their constant panning to the young royals.

After spending the afternoon in the company of Professor Tony Collins prior to watching both of yesterday's oval ball games, I have even more disdain for the supposedly 'superior' code.

The unfortunate part of all this is how good the coverage, sponsorship and income is.
I admit to being jealous of rugby union for that.

If I was running RL, rather than get upset about it, I'd copy as much of the coverage as possible.

The best thing Sam can do is get back to League asap. What a truly dreadful game that was last night.

It was classic northern hemisphere RU, both teams doing all they could to con the ref and try and gain a penalty, so they could take a pop at goal.

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Was thinking the same thing. The RU points scoring system just doesn't really encourage open rugby. Why try to build a move for 5 points when you can con an easy penalty for 3?

Including the dwarfish presenter in sports casual?

Er, it's five points for a try in RU...

But as they've already found, giving more more points for tries doesn't encourage try-scoring. In fact, the more valuable you make tries, the more worthwhile it seems to conceded penalties to save them.

What makes me laugh is that they need a bonus point system to try to encourage teams to score tries, even when they're clearly on top.

Until 1971 union's scoring was three for a try, two for a conversion, three for a penalty kick and until 1948 it was FOUR for a drop goal
In 1992 it then changed to 5 points for a try, still really hasn't encouraged scoring tries for the negative/totally talent free sides like England.
I wasted enough time watching 8 minutes of NZ dross last week, I can't be d with watching shiote not to mention the refs deliberately ignoring certain infractions (knock ons are a fave with onion refs) whilst pulling up on minor petty incidents often giving yellow cards for them

They could do with keeping the try at 5 points and either increasing the conversion to 3 or leaving it at 2 but reducing the penalty to 2 and drop goal to 1.

A drop goal isn't supposed to be a method of accumulating lots of points. It's meant to be a way of splitting 2 evenly matched teams by nudging yourself slightly ahead.

The objective of any points system in either code of rugby should be to encourage attempts at try scoring.
Unfortunately, since England are so powerful in the Union world, those points systems won't change because England would have to totally change their style of play and what suits them best.

In Union, because there's no guarantee of possession, there has to be a significant punishment otherwise defending teams could just keep giving penalties away rather than let the attack through. But rather than encouraging attacking teams to take 3 points, Union should use the sin bin to discourage defending teams giving away penalties.

No-ones forcing you to watch it. Oh that's right, you are the bloke who hates Union so much you paid good money to subscribe to BT to watch it for several months (and probably still do)



Keep it going, only 17 more pages until you get to a century of bitterness and jealousy. It's so funny I've told some mates to have a read. Normally you have to pay for this kind of entertainment

Didn't realise you had any mates!?

keep going. 17 to go

Talking about the daft points system in RU as someone was - last night BBC kept posting "PENALTY" excitedly in Twitter everytime someone had a kick. So I replied "So William Webb-Ellis picked up the ball, put it on a plastic tee and kicked for goal did he?." A joke of a "sport."

The RU world cup is an amazing event and only something RL could dream of.

It so professional and well promoted.

The pubs were buzzing with it last night.