Who is your 2nd favourite rugby nation?

First topic message reminder :

Other than your own wonderful nation, who is 2nd in command? Please don't cheat! Evil beady eye is watching.

I would still love to visit. Maybe the next Lions tour!

Well if you ever come this side let me know, drinks on me. Pretoria ain't that far away from us.

Good man!

Or you can just drop him off at Centurion and point.... "Pretoria's up there..."

No actually, the centre of town looks quite nice? Gardens, nice buildings, etc.
Are the suburbs like that too?

Yes, Pretoria has some very nice suburbs, mostly in the eastern side, but then here where I stay is nice as well, I live sandwhiched in between an Eco Estate and a Nature Estate (to poor for the real deal, so I pretent I am the real deal.

You're in Alberton aren't you... near all the racecoruses and green areas?

The race course is being turned into a Makro now, and also some Office blocks. But yes, there are some very nice Gold courses closeby, Glen vista and Reading.

Biltong I'm a closet South Africa fan too, so add me to your list!

Partly due to family connections, partly due to enjoying my visits there and more importantly as a rule the people I've met seem to enjoy the same things as me; rugby, beer, meat cooked outside, outdoor activities in general. If my portion of the family had gone over too I would have fitted right in!

I would say mine's closely fought between France, Fiji and Samoa.

I picked Fiji just because they're such a great bunch of characters, and are really fun to watch and are one of the few international teams (apart from New Zealand) I really enjoy watching just because they look like they're having the time of their lives almost every game. If they were let into the 4Ns and sorted out their defence then they could be a pretty formidable side, same applies for Samoa really.

France are great to watch when they're playing well, and in a way I prefer watching that than New Zealand play well, because France seem to always get something from nothing, whereas New Zealand are just well drilled, and whilst they still are incredible to watch, you can always predict when it's try time.

Samoa I like because again I like the characters in the squad, not only that they trained in my local gym (SSP) when they were playing England in the autumn internationals a couple of years ago and they were an awesome bunch of guys, much friendlier than the Quins lot who normally use it!

Bathman_in_London wrote:Biltong I'm a closet South Africa fan too, so add me to your list!

Partly due to family connections, partly due to enjoying my visits there and more importantly as a rule the people I've met seem to enjoy the same things as me; rugby, beer, meat cooked outside, outdoor activities in general. If my portion of the family had gone over too I would have fitted right in!

To emphasise this, I will be sitting at the top of the twickenham stand tomorrow cheering on england while probably eating some of the meaty snack you have named yourself after...

Stocked up myself on some Kudu biltong.

Looking forward to slowly devouring the antelope whilst the match is on.

PS. I'll probably be too nervous to eat it.

Good choice, I do like the game varieties more I think.
There are loads of SA shops in SW London where I live but they tend to just have beef (not that I'm complaining!). I prefer the traditional rather than any fancy flavour though which seem to be popular.

To be honest I'm expecting an SA win, I've accepted that so I will be able to munch away quite happily!

I have to say I've really warmed to SA since Muller, Pienaar, Pedre and co came to Ulster.

A finer bunch of sportsmen I've never come across.......

France. In spite of myself, but France

Lots of votes for France and I can see why. My only problem with them is that we haven't seen that flair game against top opposition since the try from the end of the world or the 99 RWC game. Against weak opposition they use their power up front and silky runners to run in tries. But too often in recent times they have used a conservative game of tackling the opposition out of the game and capitalised on errors. Yet to me SA does a better job of playing that type of game. France have the players for a more attacking game across the park but I haven't seem them play 'total' rugby against top class opposition all that often. When was the last time you really saw that flair rugby that endears us all to French rugby? The problem for me is that they still have those players but prefer to go into their shells and go for the conservative percentage game. Their defence can be breathtaking and Dusatoir is an astonishing player but they can be so much more than that.

Kia, there's certainly more pragmatism / conservatism about France these days, but that could just be a reflection of what Bob Dwyer was on about the other week: that fear of failure is such that teams take fewer risks.

Not sure why but South Africa are my second favourite.