Rugby Union (was 2014-15, now an ongoing thread)

[paul_e]

The table is starting to form now, saints and sarries are pulling away as expected with bath joining them, as you'd expect with their squad, and then everyone else playing for the last playoff space except newcastle and welsh who are clearly going to be fighting it out for 11th.

This weekend was another one of fantastic games, with masses of quality and a fair amount of forced errors.

[lovejoy]

My lad had an under 9s minis tournament today. They drew the first game and win the other 3. The winner of each group goes through. The tie break was pretty unbelievable. We won 9-0, 6-0 and 14-0. They won 6-4, 12-0 and 8-0. So overall we out scored them on tires (29 vs 26) and on try difference (29 vs 22). Guess who went through to the final?
Apparently there was a mercy rule that after a team went 5-0 up their score was capped at 5 so we had 15 recoded tries and they had 16. Unbelievable. We should have let the oppo score to keep them within 5. How do explain this to an 8 year old?

[Dave Summers]

Not been on here for a while but very excited about the upcoming Autumn Internationals for England.  Really enjoying the Premiership and especially Bath's style of play and there is a case for Ford, Eastmond, Joseph, Watson and Rokoduguni just been planted en bloc into the England backline for next month. I don't believe for one minute it will happen, but from a personal point of view I really hope Eastmond gets the chance to put right the mistakes that occurred in the 3rd test in NZ. 

On current form I see a choice at 12 of Eastmond or Slade and either Burrell, Manu or Joseph at 13.  Rokoduguni and Yarde I feel will be wings with Mike Brown at full back.   I want Ford to get at least one game against the big 3 to see what he can do, I think he can light up our back play in a way Farrell can only dream of.

The backs are the big issue whereas the forwards rick themselves. 

In terms of results, if we want to win the World Cup we need to win all four, simple as.

[cdbearsfan]

Wow, rugby clubs really don't give a fuck about their fans do they?

[Dave Summers]

Wow, rugby clubs really don't give a fuck about their fans do they?

Wasps?  Very similar to MK Dons isn't it?  Very sad, Wasps are a London club and nothing to do with the West Midlands.  What happens to Coventry RFC a great club down the years.  They haven't got much of a fanbase, but enough and it is very sad

[lovejoy]

Wasps sold their old ground for residential build and used the profit to fund their great European team so fuck them and their shitty fucking fan base. But most of all fuck Lawrence Dallaglio.

[bertlambshank]

Wasps sold their old ground for residential build and used the profit to fund their great European team so fuck them and their shitty fucking fan base. But most of all fuck Lawrence Dallaglio.

I blame Tesco's.They must of told them to come on promise of using the car park.

[cdbearsfan]

Wow, rugby clubs really don't give a fuck about their fans do they?

Wasps?  Very similar to MK Dons isn't it?  Very sad, Wasps are a London club and nothing to do with the West Midlands.  What happens to Coventry RFC a great club down the years.  They haven't got much of a fanbase, but enough and it is very sad

Similar to MK Dons except that the Wimbledon example seems to have been an exception, and the fuss and hard work put in by the Wimbledon fans means it is unlikely such a move would ever be sanctioned again. The league wouldn't even sanction Hull's name change when I'm sure they wouldn't have cared twenty years ago.

Has there been talk about setting up an "AFC Wasps"-type team, or any other sort of protest? It seems that fans of "London" Wasps/Irish/Welsh/Saracens just accept buggering off miles away and don't bother to do anything about it... or are the protests just not given much publicity?

Oh and will Wasps be called Coventry Wasps? They didn't mention anything about a name change on the telly.

[aev]

Coventry is to my mind very much a rugby city....not that long ago all the secondary schools played it (and probably still do) and I reckon they could quite easily get decent crowds over time.

The way the Premiership is now it is almost impossible for Coventry RFC to get promoted and stay there - it is pretty much a closed shop (look at London Welsh struggling again). Leicester and Northampton might well be against it, as a fair few recent internationals went to school in Coventry (such as Geraghty, Wood, Goode, Back, Grewcock and Wood).

From Wasps point of view it makes far more sense locating to Coventry than playing in High Wycombe.

[cdbearsfan]

Why not just move back to London? There are about a million football teams there they could groundshare with.

[paul_e]

Why not just move back to London? There are about a million football teams there they could groundshare with.

The issue is they want to own (at least in part) the ground, unfortunately the cost of land in London and the lack of suitable sites means there's really very little choice but to move out of the city for these clubs in that case, you'd probably find non-league sides with 2-3k capacity with a ground worth what they've paid for their share in the Ricoh. London Welsh went to Oxford for similar reasons (although that move is complicated by the fact the football club needed the deal and really pushed it through).

It's not great to move so far away from their traditional home but rugby clubs really are in a no win situation with things like this.

Dave S - I largely agree on Bath, they've been excellent in the backs but for me Burrell is the first back on the teamsheet right now and Manu wouldn't make my squad if I picked it today, with the others you named all ahead of him.  I like Burrell because his offloading game is above and beyond anything else we have available and I really want to see us start to build a side around that, if we can get Joseph/Eastmond/Watson/Ford running the right lines to profit from it we can become deadly.

I also want to see Ford get a start or 2, he's a class act, I'd love Dan Robson to get into the squad as well, he's been electric off the bench for glaws and been a real game changer for them this year.

[cdbearsfan]

Funny how Barnet, Leyton Orient, Brentford, Charlton, Millwall and so on all manage to find themselves a home in London but even the biggest clubs in London rugby can't.

[bertlambshank]

Wasps would of gone bump without this move.Feel really sorry for Coventry Rugby club.

[fredm]

But London Welsh don't own the Kassam do they?  I thought that was why Oxford United are looking at doing a Rotherham and building their own stadium elsewhere on the edge of the city then they could tell Kassam where to shove his stadium as Rotherham did with the old fella who owned theirs.

[paul_e]

Funny how Barnet, Leyton Orient, Brentford, Charlton, Millwall and so on all manage to find themselves a home in London but even the biggest clubs in London rugby can't.

It's really not that simple though.  Of those only the Barnet stadium is 'new' and that is part owned by the London Broncos so they clearly couldn't afford it on their own.  On top of that it has a 5000ish capacity, Wasps were looking for somewhere a lot bigger (10k is the league entry minimum, so a ground smaller than that wouldn't have been approved).

Aside from that, as mentioned above, as a club they were about a month away from liquidation last year before the takeover and the new owners have made it clear that they expect the club to break even, with a stadium asset being one of the core elements of that.

Finally, wasps have been rather nomadic for much of their existence anyway, formed in London, moved to Sudbury in Middlesex for years then back to share with QPR before moving to Wycombe and now Coventry, it's not like you could throw a net over all of their previous homes.

My only real complaint about this is, as others have mentioned, Coventry have always been an at least a decent club and this will hurt them.