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Wales seem afraid to run the ball at the moment. Not doing themselves many favours in the 2nd half!

I think South Africa had easily secured possession each time. Will have to watch again, but I don't think any of them had much effect on the play.

2 or 3 of the penalties were for the tackler not rolling away. But they've been blown incredibly quickly and without the ball being noticeably slowed down. It's inevitable that tacklers will sometimes end up on the other side of the ball, and the Welsh guys have made efforts to get away, but...

I think some of these penalties from Barnes against Wales have been incredibly pedantic. Wales have played all the rugby in this game and are behind. It's ridiculous.

You could say that about so many players. Japan's best front row is good, clearly dominating Samoa for example. It's a product of both coaching and their talent / physical capabilities. You can't perform at world cup level without both. Horie in particular has been one of the top 2 or 3 hookers...

I guess we should start hearing more news from the Sunwolves over the coming weeks now that Japan's world cup is over. I just hope whoever they pick as coach will continue Eddie Jones 'Japan way' philosophy of playing. Japan will go backwards if their new coach implements a more orthodox style...

I don't think it would be much different even if mauls didn't exist at all. And it's not like you score from a maul every attempt anyway. It's just a risk v reward thing. You'd have to kick 5 penalty goals to beat 1 converted try. By taking the kicks you're giving up your best chances to score...

They also have to do something a bit unusual when facing the haka. The flying V last time was pretty cool but not quite as good as when they got up close in 2007 and Chabal looked like he was going to kill someone. They could do that again (and cop the fine), or maybe try a human pyramid or...

Think of the Highlanders this year. Arguably the best forward pack in the competition and none of them made the All Blacks. They beat teams full of All Blacks and Wallabies. A number of teams will be capable of beating them. It'll be tough though, no doubt about that. It'd actually be really...

Pretty good article on a possible citing bias against tier 2 teams during the tournament: http://rugbywrapup.com/2015/10/rugby-world-cup-is-there-a-citing-bias-against-rwc-minnows

Only some of the older Argentinian guys haven't signed for the Super Rugby team. The guys who will be missing would have only had an extra year or two with the Pumas anyway. Pretty much everyone that has another 4+ years in them, and a few others (like Hernandez) have signed for super rugby...

£5m each for the 10 tier 2 teams. And £28m shared by the remaining member unions and regional associations. That was for the last 4 year cycle ending this year. Guessing the numbers will be higher for the next 4.

The tier 1 teams get £8.5m each just for showing up to the RWC. In addition to that every team gets a participation fee of £150,000, and a further £75,000 if they reach the quarter-finals and then a further £100,000 if they reach the semis.

There are already annual regional tournaments in every part of the world. I think there just needs to be 2 extra tournaments every 4 years: a genuine European Championship (12 or 16 teams) and a Confederations Cup (16 teams) for everyone else. Maybe eventually you could split the latter into 2...

It's no where near as likely. Hong Kong is already the 24th ranked team in the world and its union generates millions every year through the always sold out HK Sevens. It has existing commercial relationships and a pretty decent rugby stadium for a team to play out of. If a Super Rugby team can...

I don't see how Hong Kong has no potential. It's one of the richest unions in the world, there's a lot of corporate support, and the population is over 7 million. Their playing base is bigger than some nations that are participating in the world cup and surely there's a lot of potential to grow...

It was in 2014. Those ENC divisions are on a 2 year cycle so their first year in Div1A was this year. They lost every match but got close to Romania (12-17) and Portugal (3-11).

That's awesome. You just know that Germany could be great at rugby. They'd be really fast and well structured and wouldn't lack for size. Germany actually just participated in the Noosa 7's and lost in the semi finals to the NZ Development team 17-12. That team was coached by Gordon Tietjens...

WR (World Rugby) haven't announced how it will work yet. I think 1 of the automatic European spots could transfer to Oceania given Georgia have auto qualified. I hope they'll keep an automatic spot for Asia. That'll give South Korea and Hong Kong huge incentive to improve over the next 4 years. They're...

But in the attacking half it's rugby rules - full ability to compete for the ball. And lineouts without lifting creates more competition. The league guys have plenty of new stuff to deal with! I wouldn't want to see it regularly but the rules create an even enough contest. Actually I think in...