Wallabies vs Ireland - 3rd test - Saturday 23rd June 2018 - Sydney Football Stadium

[Tomikin]

Id start Samu at 6.. His no less a lineout option the Timu and is an awesome llayer who knows how to win. Samu Poey Hooper..Tiny backrow but I think dynamic ..

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[Derpus]

Id start Samu at 6.. His no less a lineout option the Timu and is an awesome llayer who knows how to win. Samu Poey Hooper..Tiny backrow but I think dynamic ..

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He flies under the radar a bit but seems to do a lot of work, and carries the ball quite strongly. He's okay over the ball too. Seems like what you want from a 6.

 

[wamberal]

Id start Samu at 6.. His no less a lineout option the Timu and is an awesome llayer who knows how to win. Samu Poey Hooper..Tiny backrow but I think dynamic ..

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We had two thirds of that "dynamic" back row last week. They got blown away by a bigger and cleverer back row. And you want to persist with midgets?????


Frankly, I would start with Pocock at 7. Tui at 6, Timu at 8. Meet the buggers head on.

 

[Joe Blow]

He flies under the radar a bit but seems to do a lot of work, and carries the ball quite strongly. He's okay over the ball too. Seems like what you want from a 6.

I’d say he’s a good bench option to cover Pocock and Hooper. Start them with Tui at 6 and Samu or Timu on the bench.

 

[Derpus]

We had two thirds of that "dynamic" back row last week. They got blown away by a bigger and cleverer back row. And you want to persist with midgets?????


Frankly, I would start with Pocock at 7. Tui at 6, Timu at 8. Meet the buggers head on.

Pocock's impact was pretty minimal last match. Got a couple of neat steals but didn't manage to slow down the pill at all. Timu in particular doesn't seem to bring any more physicality than Hooper. But, i suspect you'll be saying this till the day Hooper runs out as the youngest ever centurian in international rugby.

 

[Ignoto]

Timu should be replaced in the starting side for this one as well. He has been OK but Tui has shown a lot more both times he has come in.
It would be good to revert to a 5/3 bench and include Maddocks or Banks to add some spark at the end.

Tui I don't think has the engine right now to last a full 80 minutes at test match level and have a similar impact as we've recently. You can have Timu or Samu on the bench to cover him, BUT if Pocock or Hooper go down early you're going to have to carry Tui from the 50th minute onwards.

So, we either stick with the 6/2 bench option and start Tui. OR we revert to 5/3 and Timu or Samu start. I don't think you can have it both ways, just yet.

 

[Joe Blow]

That’s Ok. He played a full half last week and looked good right through. I think he is right.
I would actually prefer Timu on the bench than Samu.

 

[RedsHappy]

What do you call teir 2 losing to the second best team in the world..? We are teir 1 and will stay there. We are 1 - 1 with the best NH team..We beat all teir 2 teams with ease unless teir 2 means anyone but the black..

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I guess I didn't desire to get into hair-splits re what is a Tier 1 nation and what is a Tier 2 rugby nation.

Maybe WR (World Rugby) classes Australia forever as a Tier 1 until a cataclysmic collapse unfolds. If so, you are technically correct and I'll readily concede the literal point.

Whatever WR (World Rugby)'s odd ranking schematics (and what can be odder than their moment-by-moment highly volatile global rankings scheme), for me if Australia

- cannot win a home series of 3 Tests vs England and Ireland in a row (recall, the latter's population 4.7m)
- is now being sequentially beaten home and away by Scotland (population 5.7m)
- cannot win a Bled for 15 years
- has an HC whose last two seasons 2016-17 Test w-l % is under 50%
- nearly loses to Italy at home

then we cannot objectively be considered - in our present guise - in the upper reaches of the global game.

 

[Braveheart81]

Whatever WR (World Rugby)'s odd ranking schematics (and what can be odder than their moment-by-moment highly volatile global rankings scheme), for me if Australia

- cannot win a home series of 3 Tests vs England and Ireland in a row (recall, the latter's population 4.7m)
- is now being sequentially beaten home and away by Scotland (population 5.7m)
- cannot win a Bled for 15 years
- has an HC whose last two seasons 2016-17 Test w-l % is under 50%
- nearly loses to Italy at home

then we cannot objectively be considered - in our present guise - in the upper reaches of the global game.

I don't think there's anything odd about the way the rankings work. It shows that there isn't a lot of difference between the teams below NZ. It's an objective system.

England has just lost 5 tests in a row.

Scotland just lost to the USA. They have been a bogey team for the Wallabies but their results elsewhere have often sucked.

We didn't lose to Italy at home. We've never lost to them. It would be a strange ranking system to punish teams for not winning by enough.

Ireland have been the big improvers and prior to losing the first test had won 12 in a row. Prior to that though their results put them firmly in the 5-8 bracket of the rankings.

The Wallabies have been inconsistent over a lot of years but so to have every team outside of NZ.

 

[Rebels3]

I guess I didn't desire to get into hair-splits re what is a Tier 1 nation and what is a Tier 2 rugby nation.

Maybe WR (World Rugby) classes Australia forever as a Tier 1 until a cataclysmic collapse unfolds. If so, you are technically correct and I'll readily concede the literal point.

Whatever WR (World Rugby)'s odd ranking schematics (and what can be odder than their moment-by-moment highly volatile global rankings scheme), for me if Australia

- cannot win a home series of 3 Tests vs England and Ireland in a row (recall, the latter's population 4.7m)
- is now being sequentially beaten home and away by Scotland (population 5.7m)
- cannot win a Bled for 15 years
- has an HC whose last two seasons 2016-17 Test w-l % is under 50%
- nearly loses to Italy at home

then we cannot objectively be considered - in our present guise - in the upper reaches of the global game.

But you can easily refute these claims with

- Australia is the only team (minus the Lions) to beat NZ in almost 2 years
- Australia is the only team to beat no.2 Ireland in over a year
- Australia is on a 10 game winning streak against no.3 Wales
- Australia beat Argentina home and away
- Didn't lose to SAF in SAF

Minus Ireland and NZ we are the only team to have beaten the top 3 teams in the world in the past year.

There have been some shit results, infact too many but the others between 3-10 in the world have been equally terrible

- Argentina can't win a game
- SAF minus the recent series have been worse than us, lost to Wales recently
- England have been shocking this year and on a 5 game losing streak
- Scotland lost to the US
- France have been shit for 10 years
- Fiji are easily behind Australia in terms of quality
- Italy haven't won a game against a tier 1 side in almost 18months
- Wales haven't beaten Australia in a decade, plus were unanimously maligned as the worst performing (based on talent) NH team leading into this year

Australian rugby is in a very ordinary spot, but purely on results and at a national level there are other countries equally as terrible.

 

[Derpus]

I guess I didn't desire to get into hair-splits re what is a Tier 1 nation and what is a Tier 2 rugby nation.

Maybe WR (World Rugby) classes Australia forever as a Tier 1 until a cataclysmic collapse unfolds. If so, you are technically correct and I'll readily concede the literal point.

Whatever WR (World Rugby)'s odd ranking schematics (and what can be odder than their moment-by-moment highly volatile global rankings scheme), for me if Australia

- cannot win a home series of 3 Tests vs England and Ireland in a row (recall, the latter's population 4.7m)
- is now being sequentially beaten home and away by Scotland (population 5.7m)
- cannot win a Bled for 15 years
- has an HC whose last two seasons 2016-17 Test w-l % is under 50%
- nearly loses to Italy at home

then we cannot objectively be considered - in our present guise - in the upper reaches of the global game.

I guess if you decide to ignore the last World Cup and victories against the best and second best teams in the world within the last year then sure.

If you choose not to conveniently ignore the positive results in favour of the negative then we probably are in the top 'echelons' of rugby. It's actually quite nice that the top 2-7 teams are all within touching distance of each other.

 

[RedsHappy]

I don't think there's anything odd about the way the rankings work. It shows that there isn't a lot of difference between the teams below NZ. It's an objective system.

England has just lost 5 tests in a row.

Scotland just lost to the USA. They have been a bogey team for the Wallabies but their results elsewhere have often sucked.

We didn't lose to Italy at home. We've never lost to them. It would be a strange ranking system to punish teams for not winning by enough.

Ireland have been the big improvers and prior to losing the first test had won 12 in a row. Prior to that though their results put them firmly in the 5-8 bracket of the rankings.

The Wallabies have been inconsistent over a lot of years but so to have every team outside of NZ.

It's a 'spontaneous on-the-fly' system that IMO is riddled with eccentricities arising from the fact that it is heavily weighted to the most recent attained Test results, can change significantly just on one latest global Test Round, does not routinely reward consistency of elite results over defined time periods (as many global team or player ranking systems do and are intended to do).

I get that you personally like it as a system, I believe it is seriously flawed in what it is supposed to do and just as importantly as to what most people would understand global elite team ranking systems are there for.

A mere example: just today, Wales has moved to #3 in the world ahead of Australia and whereby Australia has more or less thrashed Wales home and away for years now. Can we say that Wales has in recent periods been consistently beating better teams than Australia and when Australia beat the ABs last October and Ireland just this month? England has had a (relative to many) outstanding w-l% over post RWC period yet it today is ranked 6th in the world vs Wales at 3rd.

And depending upon how you want to weight this WR (World Rugby) rankings system's scales, there is a material difference between the teams below NZ, eg Scotland is on 81.83 points today, Wales is on 85.94; England is now on 84.35 and Ireland on 89.20.

 

[Derpus]

It's a 'spontaneous on-the-fly' system that IMO is riddled with eccentricities arising from the fact that it is heavily weighted to the most recent attained Test results, can change significantly just on one latest global Test Round, does not routinely reward consistency of elite results over defined time periods (as many global team or player ranking systems do and are intended to do).

I get that you personally like it as I system, I believe it is seriously flawed in what it is supposed to do and just as importantly as to what most people would understand global elite team ranking systems are there for.

A mere example: just today, Wales has moved to #3 in the world ahead of Australia and whereby Australia has more or less thrashed Wales home and away for years now. Can we say that Wales has in recent periods been consistently beating better teams than Australia and when Australia beat the ABs last October and Ireland just this month? England has had a (relative to many) outstanding w-l% over post RWC period yet it today is ranked 6th in the world vs Wales at 3rd.

And depending upon how you want to weight this WR (World Rugby) rankings system's scales, there is a material difference between the teams below NZ, eg Scotland is on 81.83 points today, Wales is on 85.94; England is now on 84.35 and Ireland on 89.20.

But the system is attempting to rank teams in reference to all other teams at once. In that situation it makes perfect sense to rank Wales higher than Australia, assuming Wales beat enough other teams, even though they never beat Australia.

Hypothetical example: Imagine a team that always beats the All Blacks but loses every other test they play. So they win 2/10 tests a year. In this scenario they would be 'better' than the All Blacks on a head to head assessment but much worse holistically.

Obviously, ranking systems aren't perfect but it's a useful guide.

 

[RedsHappy]

I guess if you decide to ignore the last World Cup and victories against the best and second best teams in the world within the last year then sure.

If you choose not to conveniently ignore the positive results in favour of the negative then we probably are in the top 'echelons' of rugby. It's actually quite nice that the top 2-7 teams are all within touching distance of each other.

My whole piece was about trends and key meets (like 3 Test home series vs good teams), BC status and starting to lose against teams from way smaller countries and that, for the most part, historically we were unanimously assumed to be able to defeat.

Maybe not for you, I respect that, but for me for the Wallabies to lose 0-3 to England at home, keep losing to them away, and, God-forbid-I'll-now-wash-my-mouth-out, perhaps also lose 1-2 to Ireland at home, IMO that's a shocker of a statement (if it eventuates) re the state of the Wallabies in terms of trend and continuity of performance.

Like many here, I'll feel much better if we win in Sydney on Saturday .

 

[Derpus]

Yeah i think it's more indicative of improvement in others. I remember a time when we would regularly put England to the sword and whilst it might feel kinda nice it's not actually very good for the game.

Besides the Eales era, which was really pretty short, we've never had a perfect side.

Winning a series against world number 2 would be huge.

 

[Braveheart81]

It's a 'spontaneous on-the-fly' system that IMO is riddled with eccentricities arising from the fact that it is heavily weighted to the most recent attained Test results, can change significantly just on one latest global Test Round, does not routinely reward consistency of elite results over defined time periods (as many global team or player ranking systems do and are intended to do).

I get that you personally like it as a system, I believe it is seriously flawed in what it is supposed to do and just as importantly as to what most people would understand global elite team ranking systems are there for.

A mere example: just today, Wales has moved to #3 in the world ahead of Australia and whereby Australia has more or less thrashed Wales home and away for years now. Can we say that Wales has in recent periods been consistently beating better teams than Australia and when Australia beat the ABs last October and Ireland just this month? England has had a (relative to many) outstanding w-l% over post RWC period yet it today is ranked 6th in the world vs Wales at 3rd.

And depending upon how you want to weight this WR (World Rugby) rankings system's scales, there is a material difference between the teams below NZ, eg Scotland is on 81.83 points today, Wales is on 85.94; England is now on 84.35 and Ireland on 89.20.

I get what you're saying and certainly some systems like cricket work on a specified period of time and then drop those old results off altogether each year but they have other problems. It doesn't reward teams for winning away from home which is far more difficult (particularly in cricket).

Wales haven't beaten Australia for ages but they have beaten a bunch of other teams and have won five games in a row.

England came from a low base at the end of the 2015 RWC, flew up the rankings with a lot of wins in a row and then have slipped recently from losing 5 matches in a row.

From 3rd - Wales to 6th - England there is a gap of 1.59 points. That is very little and if 6th was playing 3rd and 6th won (and 4th and 5th weren't playing) those two teams would swap places.

Teams have different bogey teams so you can't just say that Wales shouldn't be above Australia because they never beat them or Scotland should be closer to Australia because they keep beating us.

It is a relatively simple system in that the points swap is fairly easy to calculate and is based on the current points. It definitely rewards more recent form because ratings can swing a lot in a period of a few matches but I'm not sure that's a bad thing.

Clearly people have subjective opinions of where the teams sit. From the sounds of things you'd have Ireland 2nd, England 3rd, Australia 4th, South Africa 5th and Wales 6th or something similar.

I think currently NZ are clearly number 1, Ireland number 2 and then there's a logjam amongst the next four teams. Broadly I think the ratings system provides a pretty correct outcome.

 

[Rebels3]

The rankings are about right on i believe.

England have lost 5 games in a row, that isn't the hallmark of a 3rd ranked team in the world.

The revolving/volatile nature of the 3-7 spots indicates exactly how the teams are playing

Scotland beat england and australia but can't beat SA and Wales, lose massive points for a loss to US
Wales can't beat England and Australia but can beat SA and Scotland
Australia can't beat Scotland and England but can beat Wales, drawn against SA the past few times and beat the world no.2 and no.1
SA can't beat Wales but beat Scotland and England, fairly even against Australia.
England can't beat SAF and lost to Scotland but beat Aus and Wales

Wales probably slightly higher as they most recently beat SAF who beat England, with Australia nestled in with wins recently over the higher ranked teams

 

[Up the Guts]

Wouldn’t read too much into the rankings. NZ is 1, 2-7 are basically even.

 

[USARugger]

RWC pools are already chosen, who gives a fuck about the IRB rankings?

 

[KOB1987]

I know K974 will say 'I told you so', but I still don't see how losing the series and winning one tight game against a team that didn't play very well 'proves a point'.

https://www.rugby.com.au/news/2018/06/19/wallabies-ireland-easterby-stander