[spidermonkey09]

Steward will start at 15 for sure. Agree re scrum half, both Reinach and De Klerk (who incidentally should have got a yellow for blatantly passing the ball into the French player lying on the ground in an attempt to win a penalty vs France) are light years ahead of Mitchell. I'd be inclined to start with Care as I think he is more street smart and better able to deal with De Klerk annoying him around the scrum.

[gme]

They are, and Dupont a level above them. His kicking was incredible, league above any other 9 i have ever seen. My 87 year old avid rugby fan dad says he is the best player hes ever seen.

I think start care as well but dont think we will.

Love and hate Faff in about equal measures. Hes a little shite but a good one.

[andy moles]

Love and hate Faff in about equal measures. Hes a little shite but a good one.

His hair is so beautiful. You want to sniff it.

You occasionally see some comment that Dupont isn't all that. I don't know if that's ignorance or bias or what, but besides the fact you kind of need to be around a bit longer than he has so far to earn such an accolade, I think 'best player ever' is not an exaggeration. He does make some mistakes like everyone else (got caught off the back of a ruck by Etzebeth in that game at the weekend, leading to the Kolbe try, which you could perhaps argue is as much the fault of whoever was supposed to be guarding the ruck), but his all-round ability is unbelievable. Passing, kicking, pace, strength, creativity, vision, leadership. Awesome to watch.

[gme]

And he is so fucking cool something that  not a lot of rugby players ever pull off. Generally left to footy.

GQ front page in a yellow bath robe.

I would have his babies if I could.

[spidermonkey09]

 Well, bit gutted after that tbh. Pretty much the perfect game from England apart from the last 10. Thought Sinckler was unlucky to be pinged on a few occasions but once the ref got the idea he was struggling that was that. Nche was the difference for SA.

Eng had chances; 5m lineout, 5m scrum on their own ball, but couldn't convert. By comparison SA only had one 5m scrum and scored from it in the second half.

Mitchell was brilliant I thought and totally outplayed both SA scrum halves. I think we'd have lost to NZ anyway but would have been nice to turn over SA...

Sounds like Mbonambi might be in trouble for racially abusing Curry which would throw SA plans into disarray given they don't have a spare hooker.

[gme]

Really quality game in line with exactly what we needed to do if we had a chance of beating them. Came close but no prize.

Great to see how different kinds of rugby can be just as entertaining. Constant push to see more flowing “entertaining”, chuck the ball about rugby, which is great but this kind of tactical kicking game can be just as good.

Last we will see if a lot of this team, time to properly re build so I hope a few of the old boys-  Marler, Cole, billy, care, May Daly Lawes manu hang up there hats. None will make another World Cup so we need to get the new wave coming through and getting experience. The earlier the better in my mind.

Shame we didn’t make the final but in fairness NZ would have beaten us anyway.

All blacks for the Cup. 

[andy moles]

Great to see how different kinds of rugby can be just as entertaining. Constant push to see more flowing “entertaining”, chuck the ball about rugby, which is great but this kind of tactical kicking game can be just as good.

You sure you would feel that way if you were neutral? It was good to watch because it was tense and surprising that England built and held the lead for so long, but I thought it was pretty limited and predictable stuff compared to the two big QFs. Definitely true that playing that way was England's only hope though, and they very nearly did a great job of it.

[gme]

You’re comparing it to one if not two of the best games in years.

I personally loved it and would have enjoyed it had  I been a non England fan.

It was pissing down with rain hence the errors. Tactically it was correct way to play and tactics are as big a part of the game as tries so I love watching it. If got right it leads to more upsets than  if teams all played the same and ran about getting tries. That’s why no one is arsed with 7s.

[andy moles]

But it's not a straight dichotomy between champage try-fests and kick-everything set-piece slug-outs. Games can be fast and intense with lots of ball-in-play time, or slow and grinding like this one. I'm biased, but I'd say Ireland v South Africa, which had little more scoring than this, was better to watch for most neutrals. You're right of course that it makes sense to play those tactics in the rain though.

[gme]

Again you’re comparing it to a classic.

26 games so far this WC and that was in top 5 or 6

SA FRA
NZ IRE
ITE SA
WAL FIJI
FIJI PORT
ENG SA

Oh and maybe FIJI AUS.

[andy moles]

I have high expectations