How do people think Ireland will get on in the tournament?Just a general query as they seem to do well in the six nations and look to have a relatively easy group.I say this as someone who knows feck all about Rugby, mind
Have Sky got their greasy paws all over this ? It don't appear to be on BBC tonite ?
Quote from: silhillvilla on September 18, 2015, 04:32:41 PMHave Sky got their greasy paws all over this ? It don't appear to be on BBC tonite ?It's on ITV.
Ireland will get out of their group but I wouldn't bet on it being in first place, which would mean a QF against the all blacks. The Ireland vs France game is going to be the only game outside Pool A that's got real consequences and could genuinely go either way (except maybe Scotland vs Samoa).Not sure where Jon is getting his ranking from, they're 6th, which is much closer to reality, they were second a couple of years ago but they've been dropping for a while. A good aussie performance in the championship has changed things a little in the official rankings but for me there's an eyelash between England, Australia and SA in 2-4 and then a similarly close battle between Ireland, Wales and France for 5-7. After that the rankings get unreliable because argetina, italy and, to an extent scotland are whipping boys in their regular international tournament so it'as hard to judge them agianst each other or against sides like Tonga, Samoa or Fiji.All the other games that I wouldn't want to call are amongst the sides that you don't really expect to see qualify, Tonga vs Georgia tomorrow for example could be a superb game, I suspect Tonga will be too strong, but Georgia are a better side than they're given credit for and probably aren't far off questioning why Italy get a 6N place ahead of them.
Quote from: paul_e on September 18, 2015, 04:16:42 PMIreland will get out of their group but I wouldn't bet on it being in first place, which would mean a QF against the all blacks. The Ireland vs France game is going to be the only game outside Pool A that's got real consequences and could genuinely go either way (except maybe Scotland vs Samoa).Not sure where Jon is getting his ranking from, they're 6th, which is much closer to reality, they were second a couple of years ago but they've been dropping for a while. A good aussie performance in the championship has changed things a little in the official rankings but for me there's an eyelash between England, Australia and SA in 2-4 and then a similarly close battle between Ireland, Wales and France for 5-7. After that the rankings get unreliable because argetina, italy and, to an extent scotland are whipping boys in their regular international tournament so it'as hard to judge them agianst each other or against sides like Tonga, Samoa or Fiji.All the other games that I wouldn't want to call are amongst the sides that you don't really expect to see qualify, Tonga vs Georgia tomorrow for example could be a superb game, I suspect Tonga will be too strong, but Georgia are a better side than they're given credit for and probably aren't far off questioning why Italy get a 6N place ahead of them.But aren't Georgia just an updated version of Romania? The Italians have shown some consistency and improvement whereas Georgia are likely to come and go, as did the Romanians. of course it could be argues that the extra revenue from playing 6 Nations rugby would enable them to reinvest in grass roots rugby ensuring a deeper legacy.