There have been a few tasty quotes in the 2015 Rugby World Cup.
Some suited my weird sense of humour, some were right on the money—and one wasn’t even said.
They were Not Set Pieces.
Commentators
France v Romania
The Oaks’ flanker has a good run but is tackled by his French counterpart:
Andy Gomarsall: “It was Le Roux who saved France’s bacon.”
Simon Ward: “Francis Bacon? I don’t think he played rugby, did he?”
Argentina v Georgia
A lineout was forming but referee JP Doyle went running back to the other side where the play had come from, and was looking around.
Co-commentator Quinlan wondered why because there didn’t seem to be an infringement in that area. Then the penny dropped: Doyle had lost a boot.
Alan Quinlan: “I thought he’d lost his wallet for a minute there.”
England v Wales
Greg Martin – there were miracles happening all over the joint.
Wallabies v Uruguay
Greg Clark mentions that the crowd are singing “Sweet Chariot”.
Greg Martin: “A traditional Uruguayan ballad?”
Scotland v USA
The USA 9 passes to his no. 8 from a ruck:
Simon Ward: “…trying to release that thunderbolt that is Manu Samoa—Samu Manoa—I knew I was going to do that some day.”
The pronunciation of the no.8’s name has tricked a few commentators in the English Premiership when he played for the Northampton Saints.
One harks back to when the incomparable Mark Robson was calling a game the big fella was playing in and said: “Samu Manoa—just one vowel away from being a country.”
Michael Cheika – tells porky pies
Porky pies
Michael Cheika – when asked after the Fiji game if he rued not earning the bonus point, he indicated that he didn’t know about them at first:
I had to ask if they were in it at the start — I didn’t know if the Northern Hemisphere had ’em
Anybody who has been at press conferences with Cheika saying he didn’t know where the Waratahs were on the Super Rugby ladder would realise that his comment was a porky pie.
Dan Coles didn’t say this in England v Wales:
At 14 minutes referee Jerome Garces pings the England prop for putting his hands in front of the ball before trying to rock back and rip the ball to his side.
Coles didn’t say, “I’ve been doing it for years,” — it’s a porky pie, but if he had, we all would have agreed with him.
Jaco Peyper – had no idea
Referees
Romania v France
Jaco Peyper – compare Cheika’s porky above with Peyper’s honest remark to the TMO when a Romanian player may have gone over against France.
No idea
He also pinged the Romanians for illegally wheeling the scrum too often.
“There was a clear change of angle from no. 1 … we’ve got to get the whole front row going forward or you cannot [be allowed to] dominate.”
Good comments those Jaco.
Wayne Barnes – wants players to go down harder
Springboks v Samoa
When Bok JP Pietersen draped his arm around the neck of Alesana Tuilagi after the Samoan chip-kicked; Tuilagi went down like a sack of spuds. The big fella was doing a Hollywood, hoping that the referee would think “yellow”.
Wayne Barnes :
You’re getting the penalty but don’t go down that easy
Ireland v Romania
Jared Payne of Ireland tackles the Romanian fullback, swings around, falls down, and despite trying to crawl out, the Kiwi-Irishman, is pinged.
Craig Joubert:
You shouldn’t have been there in the first place
Long may this continue: making players responsible for where they end up is one of the keys to tidying up the breakdown.
Big Packs
Size does matter in general play if players play big with it. At scrum time a smaller pack need not worry too much if their technique is sound. And if smaller front rowers are shorter also, they can present problems to taller, heavier opponents to negate the effect of their weight.
The weights of starting packs vary from year to year: France has had some small scrums in the last decade and when they played in Melbourne in 2014 they weighed in at only 847 kgs.
But take those remarks with a grain of salt.
France bulked up for the 2015 Six Nations, and produced 925 kgs of prime beef against Romania in their first game of the RWC.
When the Wallabies played Uruguay their starting pack was 104 kgs heavier at 915 kgs compared to the Los Teros scrum of only 811 kgs—which is reportedly 19 kgs less than that of the 2015 Newington College 1st XV in the NSW GPS.*
That meant that however technically astute they were at scrum time, Uruguay had no chance holding ground against the Wallabies.
Will Skelton – was a big boy
* Not quite to the point – but has a link to the Wallabies at the RWC. In 2010 the Hills Sports High School in Sydney weighed in at 923 kgs which was 30 kgs heavier than the Waratahs’ starting pack at the time, and would have been one of the bigger units of the 2015 RWC.
Hills had a particularly big player that year: 17-year-old Will Skelton, at 142 kgs.
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