Proper tours

[cyclopath]

I would love to see the stats (I am WAY to lazy to try to find them) on the win / loss ratio comparing NH teams coming south, and SH teams heading north over the last, say 5 -10 years.
And people in glass houses are gardeners.

 

[PaarlBok]

Forget the gardeners and glass houses and understrength teams, the Bokke future fixture list is out, when will the ARU give the Wallabies list?

 

[cyclopath]

Forget the gardeners and glass houses and understrength teams, the Bokke future fixture list is out, when will the ARU give the Wallabies list?

Have you got a link, Oom?

 

[PaarlBok]

Forget the gardeners and glass houses and understrength teams, the Bokke future fixture list is out, when will the ARU give the Wallabies list?

Have you got a link, Oom?

Each country Rugby Unions will release their own future fixtures

http://www.irb.com/newsmedia/mediazone/pressrelease/newsid=2037367.html

Specific Test Series and Tours will be announced by the respective participating Unions in due course as per usual commercial practice.

 

[chief]

The Springboks inbound (June) Test schedule:
2011: No inbound Tests - World Cup
2012: England - Three Tests
2013: Italy - One Test; Scotland - One Test; Tier 2 nation - One Test
2014: Wales - Two Tests; Scotland - One Test
2015: No inbound Tests - World Cup
2016: Ireland - Three Tests
2017: France - Three Tests
2018: England - Three Tests

In 2013- the Boks play Scotland. Don't Scotland have players in the Lions side? That just sounds like a piss poor excuse for a test match IMO

 

[Thomond78]

"the SH sends up openly under-strength teams in November"

and

"People in glass houses should be wary of reaching for the stone pile"

Two opinions from the same author :frans and both within this thread.

Now, tell me how I'm from the SH, if you'd be so kind...?

Or tell me when Ireland have sent down understrength teams?

Or, indeed, look at the injury lists (which those whinging never ever ever seem to do) and then look at teams sent down. They're the best available; but come May, after having the living shit pounded out of them for eighteen months, there's a hell of a lot of people not available.

DPK; SA did it in 2006, and made no bones about it. The ABs have done it with rotation on more than one occasion, not playing full-strength teams and then whinging if the few names that ever register with The Most Knowledgeable Rugby Public On Earth - : - aren't there due to injury. I'll give the ARU this, they tend not to be offenders in this regard, but the general awareness of the injured lists isn't great, put it that way.

 

[Biffo]

"the SH sends up openly under-strength teams in November"

and

"People in glass houses should be wary of reaching for the stone pile"

Two opinions from the same author :frans and both within this thread.

Now, tell me how I'm from the SH, if you'd be so kind...?

Or tell me when Ireland have sent down understrength teams?

Or, indeed, look at the injury lists (which those whinging never ever ever seem to do) and then look at teams sent down. They're the best available; but come May, after having the living shit pounded out of them for eighteen months, there's a hell of a lot of people not available.

DPK; SA did it in 2006, and made no bones about it. The ABs have done it with rotation on more than one occasion, not playing full-strength teams and then whinging if the few names that ever register with The Most Knowledgeable Rugby Public On Earth - : - aren't there due to injury. I'll give the ARU this, they tend not to be offenders in this regard, but the general awareness of the injured lists isn't great, put it that way.

:lmao: :lmao:

But WTF does the bolded bit mean? Are you suggesting the Wallaby selectors don't know whom they put in the squads?

 

[Thomond78]

Given that they picked Wendell Sailor as an international winger, one sometimes has to wonder...

But it's the injury lists of the opponents. I have regularly heard moaning from south of the line about, "Oh, it's a weakened squad, where are X, Y and Z, whine, moan..." - when five minutes would have told them that X, Y and Z are injured.

I'm sorry to say this, gentlemen, but with a few honourable your rugby press are lazy bastards whose standard modus operandi is to learn one or two names, assume that they'll be playing all the time for ever more and who, by and large, couldn't be bothered to find out whether those players have even been playing in the 6N previous to the tour - but then proceed to moan about it being a weakened squad when those players aren't there.

 

[cyclopath]

I take your point, Thomo, and it is well made, but I think it is a bit disingenuous to say injuries are the sole reason why sub-par teams tour up or down. FFS we had France C one year. Did they really have 30 players out?
I know in the past select Wallaby and All Black players have been "rested", uninjured, and in small numbers this is OK with me. Same works both ways. The occasional wholesale withdrawal of players sounds more like "tired out" rather than injured, although the line between the two may be blurred.

 

[Thomond78]

I take your point, Thomo, and it is well made, but I think it is a bit disingenuous to say injuries are the sole reason why sub-par teams tour up or down. FFS we had France C one year. Did they really have 30 players out?
I know in the past select Wallaby and All Black players have been "rested", uninjured, and in small numbers this is OK with me. Same works both ways. The occasional wholesale withdrawal of players sounds more like "tired out" rather than injured, although the line between the two may be blurred.

And that's a position I'd agree with, Cyclo. There's no point whipping the same old guys to death; you've got to have a chance for new kids to come through, and neither the 6N nor the 3N is the place to do it. So, it's tours; always has been, always will, and that's fair enough.

France did play silly buggers, but no more than SA the same season (2006-7), so call it quits.

It also has to be appreciated that the players in countries eligible for the Lions have effectively not stopped for the last eighteen months, given stand-by, etc. The injury and exhaustion lists are always catastrophic, post-Lions, and that has to be factored in.

 

[PaarlBok]

Hey Boet, the Aussies dont have a CC or NPC, so they have a big break mid season. Watch them when this new S15 gets going.

 

[Lindommer]

To be fair to you and your countrymen, Thomo, Ireland haven't been transgressors in this regard. Some here in Oz tar the IRFU with the same brush as England, we haven't forgotten the D side they sent here in 1998 which got done 76-0. And for those of us with longer memories Wales had a very poorly selected side tour here in 1991; they started fighting among themselves at the post-match function after getting dusted 63-6 in Brisbane. A lot of us recall these unsatisfactory events without quite remembering which country it was.

 

[Thomond78]

Even on that side in 1998, it was the best team available to England at the time. There was, quite literally, a players' strike; they were in a massive fight with the RFU at the time, and refused en masse to go on the tour. The RFU sent the best they could get who'd go. They effectively went on strike again in 2000, btw.

The Welsh team was also the best they had at the time, but was just at its absolute nadir in just about every aspect. They were shipping cricket scores in the 6N at the time, quite apart from vicious in-fighting - and when the Welsh turn on each other, it makes South African rugby politics look tame.

The early years of professionalism up here were torrid, to say the least of it.