The Dew Drop Inn Virtual Rugby Pub

First topic message reminder :

Welcome to the Virtual Rugby Pub - a place where you can come in for a sly beverage and discuss whatever's on your mind, or just eavesdrop on the regulars if you fancy a break from all the rugby chat.

The only rule in this pub is one of mutual respect for everyone in it, oh and no defacing the pictures of Rhys Thomas, Ben Castle, Andy Fenby and Bill McLaren above the bar!




Last Pub: https://www.606v2.com/t22602p950-the-dew-drop-inn-virtual-rugby-pub#911758

mug of coffee for me.... looks so cold at Murrayfield.
I hope they switch the lights on soon...

Glass of wine for me. I know it's only 5 o'clock but it's medicinal, for the nerves like...

I'll have a (E)

Might relieve the boredom because this hasn't started well for the neutral.

Good grief, bring back Phil Godman - Parks is poo!

Nice to see a man losing his shirt...

Rava wrote:I'll have a (E)

Might relieve the boredom because this hasn't started well for the neutral.

Called it!

Sheesh! Who says the scoreboard doesn't lie? But we'll take it. Great defence for the most part, but I can't help thinking Wales/Ireland/France at home would have been 20 up on England by half time.

(PS: you-know-who playing 10 for England never would have made that charge down for the try. nor would Toby Flood. Good on yer, Charlie!)

I don't see Wales putting 20 points on anyone this tournament to be honest with you.

Good evening all!!Back from local rugby club after a few 2 good matches....Scotland must be kicking themselves!!

prop_lyd wrote:Good evening all!!Back from local rugby club after a few 2 good matches....Scotland must be kicking themselves!!

If they did - they'd miss.

Just watched the match in time warp.

Boy was that frustrating.

I don't think I've had my head in my hands that much watching as a supposed neutral before.

Exactly!!! I'd hate to be in their dressing room!!

For you tonight Mr Gibson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIkjFhoW2ns

To be fair Scotland didn't miss their kicks. They just can't pass to each other.

I didn't see the Ireland v Wales U20s game last night but it sounds like Parks and Jackson played like polar opposites.

Parks was fine kicking from the ground but pretty poor from hand.

I suppose the up-side for Scotland is that they did create plenty of chances.

MrsP wrote:I didn't see the Ireland v Wales U20s game last night but it sounds like Parks and Jackson played like polar opposites.

Parks was fine kicking from the ground but pretty poor from hand.

I suppose the up-side for Scotland is that they did create plenty of chances.

You didn't miss much last night to be honest. Ireland should of won easily to be honest they made heavy going of it. Wales offered little or nothing in attack. Much like Scotland today.

If it was as frustrating as today I'm glad I didn't watch it.

Mind you it might be a bit more forgivable for U2os to play like U14s than it is for the seniors.

As I say, Scotland must be very disappointed but England, although they won, didn't do much.

Yeah but basics like catching are the same at every level though. I must say the Irish fullback did look handy yesterday.

Ok, so from the above I deduce that most regs wanted England to lose. I thought we defended heroically, when Scotland were pressing, and forced a number of penalties as a result.
Weren't Connacht being lauded for their magnificenr defence when beating Quins in the HC the other week.

I must be watching a different sport .

Hound,

I wouldn't say I wanted England to lose but I did want Scotland to win. There is a difference.

In the end just the opposite occured.

I'm not sure that England defended all that well either. I thought Scotland were the biggest obstacle Scotland faced!

Really pleased for Lancaster that he got off to a winning start. Seems like a good bloke!

And,

Are you saying the England are the "Connacht" of this 6 Nations?

Well, duh Harrow. It's England in the Six Nations; whats changed

I legitimately wanted Scotland to win (as opposed to wanting England to lose) just because of my own personal history. But I don't know if it was heroic defence that won the day for England. Had they allowed that many clean line breaks against another team they certainly would have leaked a few tries. A fairly rudderless Scotland team were allowed several golden chances; what mainly won the game for England was their discipline which has improved out of sight under the new regime.

Hound,
In all honesty, France, Wales or Ireland would have hammered that English side today. A woeful Scotland, had a massive amount of the game, butchered 3 tries and made some God-awful decisions.

Robinson, if he had any, would be pulling his hair out.

Delighted for Lancaster. He took a chance, completely changed the squad and fortune favoured him. So with momentum now, those young lads have a chance to grow in the 6-N.

Congratulations bud.

I don't know why anyone is of the opinion that Wales with five first choice forwards out will be beating anyone let alone that they would of beat England today. Admittedly if they got into the positions Scotland did Wales would probably do better but they don't have the forward power to do so at present.

Typical Welsh of you rhino- incredibly confident or unable to see anything but defeat!

One extreme or the other!

Quiet in here tonight!! May go play my sax for a bit!!

Notch wrote:Typical Welsh of you rhino- incredibly confident or unable to see anything but defeat!

One extreme or the other!

I am very rarely confident however i just feel realistic. If you take Healy, Best, the two second rows and Ferris out of the Irish team how confident would you feel then? It is a much more settled and balanced Irish team and they should really win at a canter.

Yeah thats a fair point it would be difficult for us. But we have our own problems... I don't want to see you running at our centres too much!

I feel confident but I'm certainly not getting cocky... this is Ireland. We win the matches we're NOT supposed to win

We make a hames of the ones we're favourites for.

Thanks for the feedback on England. I chucked bait out for a reason - I wanted an honest reaction. Or even a biased one

Despite today's win England will do well to win another game in the 6N from what I saw today.

Notch wrote:Yeah thats a fair point it would be difficult for us. But we have our own problems... I don't want to see you running at our centres too much!

I feel confident but I'm certainly not getting cocky... this is Ireland. We win the matches we're NOT supposed to win

We make a hames of the ones we're favourites for.

We have to get the ball first for our centres to run at yours. Even then i feel Earls absence is a blessing in disguise for Ireland.

All we need to do is make sure we win our own ball and not concede turnovers.

Hound_of_Harrow wrote:Thanks for the feedback on England. I chucked bait out for a reason - I wanted an honest reaction. Or even a biased one

Despite today's win England will do well to win another game in the 6N from what I saw today.

I'm with the others. I really think Scotland lost that game rather than England winning it. I was looking forward to seeing some sparkling back play from your young centres but you didn't win any go forward ball. Hodgson did very well to get the try but really you never put a move together that was going to bother the Scots.
You can only hope this has given them some confidence and they can improve.

As for Scotland . I just can't believe they have gone another game without scoring a try.

As for Ireland, we have to maul them a fair bit. Use the maul, don't just try to get Ferris and SOB to run over them. And we need our backs to run better lines so we don't get so lateral.

I believe if we can get going forward in the scrums and in the mauls we'll win the game.

Evening all

Interesting reading peoples thoughts on England. I am sure you were aware of my misgivings about the lineup prior to the game and some of what I said came to pass.

However I am more positive going forward. Discipline has improved massively, which is huge for us as it cost us badly at times in the past 2 years. We also have the confidence gained from a first win in Scotland for 8 years. There is a foundation there to build on now, and we have good players like Lawes, Wood, Flood and Tuilagie to come back who will make us stronger.

As soon as Wood is fit I would like to see a back row of 6. Robshaw 7. Wood 8. Morgan. I think if we can get the balance right there we will be much more competitive.

Anyways, I am happy that we won a game that I expected us to lose.


So how is everyone?

Decent Pete, just can't wait for 3pm tomorrow. Why is Croft persisted with at this level? Everyone knows I'm a fan of Paddy Wallace, but if your ball carrying blindside can be picked up and dumped into touch by him you've got problems!

I'm not a Croft fan at all to be honest Notch, and he's not what I want from a 6. Robshaw is a better 6 than Croft, which is why I want to see him there. I'll probably miss the Ireland v Wales game tomorrow and have to watch it later as I am going out in the afternoon.

Just settling down to watch France v Italy now.

Ozzy3213 wrote:I'm not a Croft fan at all to be honest Notch, and he's not what I want from a 6. Robshaw is a better 6 than Croft, which is why I want to see him there. I'll probably miss the Ireland v Wales game tomorrow and have to watch it later as I am going out in the afternoon.

Just settling down to watch France v Italy now.

No commitment!!

rhino_dragon

'I don't know why anyone is of the opinion that Wales with five first choice forwards out will be beating anyone let alone that they would of beat England today. Admittedly if they got into the positions Scotland did Wales would probably do better but they don't have the forward power to do so at present.' You've just answered your own question. My point was that Wales (Ireland or France) wouldn't have butchered all those clear try scoring opportunities, hence my comment that England well might have shipped a 20 point 1st half deficit on today's showing against any of them.

I'm afraid I shed no tears about this '5 1st choice forwards missing' mullarkey. England were decimated by injuries to key forwards and backs immediately after their RWC win and no-one - quite rightly - shed any tears for us then. France won a Grand Slam about 15 years ago with a completely different side to the year before when injury-ravaged too. If you want to be taken seriously as a rugby playing nation of the top table, make the best of what you've got. England stumbled their way to a win today with 4 key, shoo-in 1st choice players missing: Tuilagi, Wood, Flood and Lawes. Injuries happen. Deal with it.

Was at the beach there and saw a man struggling in the water shouting 'Help, shark, help'.

I smiled to myself, I knew that shark wasn't going to help him.

Back home at last. For anyone still standing.

Here's a thing, you don't get what you think you deserve from a game like rugby, likewise, you don't get anywhere with wafted promises nor do you get your "just rewards" from "potential" threat.

In all the years I've been watching the game, it tends to pan out the same way, the team that stays best-disciplined, that makes the fewer mistakes, that sticks to the gameplan and totally trusts the next man to do the same tends to get the results.

That was a young/inexperienced/new format England side that just went to Murrayfield and came back with 4 points, better "teams" than the one tonight have been there and come away with nothing, broken almost.

England earned that win and I'm pleased for them, on more than one ocassion the back of the sofa beckoned to me, the potentially explosive England backline didn't get much ball, but ultimately Scotland didn't do what Scotland had to do to win the game; England did.

pishedbutsatisfied.com

PJHolybloke wrote:In all the years I've been watching the game, it tends to pan out the same way, the team that stays best-disciplined, that makes the fewer mistakes, that sticks to the gameplan and totally trusts the next man to do the same tends to get the results.

Ismael and Hymie are walking back home after a 12 hour shift in the factory, dreaming of better and brighter times together Ishmael asks Hymie

"Hymie, if you were rich and had two Ferraris, would you let me drive one?"

"Ishmael" says Hymie, "You are my best friend in the world, if I had two Ferraris, I would GIVE you one of them."

Ishmael nods his approval, "I know you would Hymie, but if you were a rich man and had two beautiful houses, would you let me live in one?"

Hymie smiles knowingly at his beloved friend, "Ishmael, you are my best friend in the world, if I were rich and had two beautiful houses, I would GIVE you one."

Ishmael smiles at his friend and sighs, "I know you would Hymie, but if you were a rich man and had two chickens....."

Hymie looks at Ishmael and says "Feck-off Hymie, you KNOW I've got two chickens!".





Thank you very much, I'm here all week.

Nice one PJ. There's a decent amount of snow here in London, though at least it held off until after me and several thousand Kiwis on the Waitangi Day Circle Line pub crawl had done the mass haka in Westminster. The bus ride home an hour ago was a bit hairy at times, and the friend who's over from Canada just heard his flight home is cancelled - ironic given there's a foot of snow around his house there, and that's no problem.

KRD, sounds like you had a ball then!

Isn't weather just like totally fecked up? I went out to my van this morning expecting to see it encased in a block of Siberian permafrost, but there wasn't a crystal on it to be seen; Apparently, it was too cold for frost to form as there was no "dew point".

I came back from my mates earlier in 4 inches of snow expecting it to be freezing feckin cold, but the taxi driver eruditely informed me that we would have a warmer night tonight because it had snowed.

I mean, like feckin whatever!? What is that shoite?

BTW - any vid of the Westminster haka?

Happy Waitangi day also.

My manners suck at times.

Just in. My taxi driver tonight had a degree on the dangers of global warming. At least I assume he did...

It was **** cold in Westminster so there weren't too many taking their shirts off to do it properly. To be honest the haka was nowhere near as good as 3 years ago when I last did the crawl - having Parliament Sqaure proper cordoned off to keep protesters squatters out cramps things up a bit. Here's a clip from 2008, I appear in back of shot near the end when they focus on the bloke with the zimmer frame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCZLll3Ul0g

A good day all right. Loads of Kiwiana costumes around the place, and we managed to get to the Shepherds Bush Walkabout in time to catch most of England vs Scotland.

Ha! Saw you in your long black/blue overcoat KRD, glad you had a good day/night out, but a shame you made it back in time for the game.

Better luck next time.

Kiwireddevil wrote:It was **** cold in Westminster so there weren't too many taking their shirts off to do it properly. To be honest the haka was nowhere near as good as 3 years ago when I last did the crawl - having Parliament Sqaure proper cordoned off to keep protesters squatters out cramps things up a bit. Here's a clip from 2008, I appear in back of shot near the end when they focus on the bloke with the zimmer frame https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCZLll3Ul0g

A good day all right. Loads of Kiwiana costumes around the place, and we managed to get to the Shepherds Bush Walkabout in time to catch most of England vs Scotland.

What a brilliant tradition. 12,000 pished and happy Kiwis and not one incident. Must make you prouid Kiwi.

Morning Pub. Any rugby on today?

P.S. Hound, PJ and Ozzy, great and honest posts on your team last night. I expect ye to give the same on todays game. Good, bad or indifferent.

England now have momentum and a young side who fought and won for the shirt, in a really tricky away game. And I have to say, I am loving your new coach. So honest and down to Earth. No hype. Really refreshing.

Believe.

Aren't Ireland playing Tonga, Gibbo?

Really looking forward to this match after the one in the RWC. I have tipped Ireland by 10 points but after the last match I think I have an error rate of + or - 11 points. Anyway, may the team with the mostest win! Good luck to regs from both sides.

Mornin Breaker, how are you today bud? Skyped with my son in Gladstone yesterday. He is playing football for the local team and is loving it. As he was trained, from the age of 4, in Nederland, they can see it in him and they are hoping he is their new local Cryuff.

G'day Gibbo. I'm fine thanks... and you? Big game today.

Good to see your son is being well received in Gladstone. Real people up there - no BS.

Johann Cryuff... what a sexshy player he was! I felt so sorry for them in '78... I still remember all the ticker-tape on the field and Passarella's goal.

Big game indeed pal. Nerves setting in already. Need to go for a walk in the snow. Id bet Mickado, Micky T, Stag, Dreamer and Glas already have sore heads today in Dublin. Id say the pre-game banter between them, is great craic.

We wuz robbed in Argentina. They bought that Final. A Final they should not even have been in. It has been proven since. They paid Peru a fortune to lose 6-0.

All in the past now. Best forgotten. Cheatin basterds.