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My read was that it was because they're coming up against NZ, so they're probably going to play a blinder this weekend.

Yep, I agree with that. Cheika seems to be an excellent man-manager, Ledesma is a miracle worker, Nathan Grey is obviously doing his job. Hansen on the other hand fell out of the lucky-tree and hit every branch on the way down, so who knows if he's actually any good? The one really excellent...

True story - I'd rather have the Australian front row in its entirety, particularly Scott Sio, and I'd sub Pocock into 7 with McCaw pushing to 6. Otherwise I'm happy to keep our team. Folau is obviously great, but I'm a real Ben Smith cheerleader.

Excellent, I came to this thread hoping someone had put up something like this. Cheers. It feels like Ireland have infinite backrowers these days, so no need to worry.

Welcome to the forum mate. How good is this - the team has had a name for two days and we've already got a representative.

This is the big one. Get a few rugby-heads in a room today and ask them what's exciting about the Wallabies, and they'll talk about the scrum and the Pooper's breakdown dominance. Quality backline play is still essential for an entertaining style of rugby (see the Waratahs of a few years ago...

Over 400,000 (not including regional FTA) watching live at 6am (body-clock 5am) is pretty decent. Going off the 70% attrition rate guesstimated above, that's equivalent to a favourable time audience of ~1.3 million, which is solid.

I agree with all of that, and it was well said, I just think that you'd like the Grand Final specifically. It was great in the way that a really tense game of literally any sport can be great - from snooker to soccer to tennis to darts. A lot of league fans loved the Tahs v Crusaders grand final...

Back when it was in vogue to respond to the haka with Waltzing Matilda, I remember someone pointing out the absurdity of responding to what is effectively a death threat with a song that says "Not if we kill ourselves first". Having said that, I always like it when home fans sing before/during...

There are two edges to the bias sword guys - the NRL grand final was great, you've got to be able to admit that. The one thing that really gets my goat is the use of the word 'superstar' to describe players I've never heard of (and I keep a reasonably close eye on league). Everyone can't be a...

There seems to be something called 'Kicca' that is getting a whole slew of past and present rugby players to post short videos of their thoughts. Tindall, Tuqiri, Cipriani and O'Connor have all been doing them, among others.

Biggest beat-up ever.

That's too good.

Fair enough - I'm not trying to have a go at the guy, he seems nice enough and is obviously a very good athlete, but I think he was the wrong selection at 12. Let's leave it at that shall we, and get back to complaining about Phil Gould.

It's an opportunity cost issue. He's solid but limited at 12, and they had options like Slade and Eastmond who could have delivered the kind of edge that I think they'll need to get much further. If they had focussed on developing him as a 6 (at both club and international level) he could be a...

He's a beast at 6 - don't know why they're mucking about with this 12 nonsense.

That's one of those odd instances in which the comments under the article are eminently more reasonable than the article itself.

It's really tough to predict isn't it? 6am is a reasonable time and it's a huge game, but since it shares the weekend with the AFL and NRL grand finals it'll struggle to get much coverage. You'll probably end up with a situation where a million people watch it in New Zealand and 400,000 odd in...

A useful comparison is the RLWC in 2013. The Grand Final between Australia and NZ at 1:30am got 201K (on 7mate, with the games not screened on Foxtel). The same Aus v NZ fixture in the RL Four Nations in 2014 got 691K. Off that single point of data, we can deduce with 100% certainty that a...

Maybe this has been posted previously, but apparently 20 million people in Japan watched the Japan v Scotland game. Crazy numbers. Edit: I just clicked back a page and saw the earlier post. Ehhh it's worth hearing twice. Edit Edit: It was posted twice on the preceding page. Ehhh it's worth...