the World Cup starts on Friday night with the frankly ridiculous opening fixture of France v New Zealand and I’m getting quite excited for it. could easily be the best game of the whole thing.
it’s shaping up to be a really interesting tournament. Ireland, France, NZ and SA are the clear favourites (just a bit of a shame that the two halves of the draw are so lopsided). Tonga and Samoa could be dangerous with the benefit of this new “birthright” rule (How birthright rule is giving teams the X-factor for Rugby World Cup | Rugby World Cup 2023 | The Guardian). Scotland have been dealt a really rough group, particularly in comparison to England and Wales. Chile will make their first appearance at a World Cup and Los Condores won the try of the year award last year for this effort on what looks to be a classic waterlogged English sunday league football pitch:
it feels like the overall quality is generally on the rise too. plenty of teams who could win it and very few teams that you’d be happy to play.
the nerds have had a go at predicting the winner and apparently it’s Ireland’s for the taking by a landslide (0.3%):
Most looking forward to watching: New Zealand (closely followed by France)
My team: England - will scrape through their group undeservedly and then go no further. I’m not remotely confident about this - they’ve looked rubbish in the warm-up games and can’t seem to stop picking up injuries and suspensions. could be an absolute humbling.
Should be well up for it. But I’m not. We (England) will 2007 it to a stage in the tournament we don’t deserve to get to thanks to the draw. The tournament will be dominated by red cards as the last one was. And it’s an absolute shame France have been hammered with injuries.
Winner: France
Most looking forward to watching: Shrugs
My team: England. Progress to the KO stages without deserving to. Actually hope we do a 2015 tbh.
Would like to win: France/Ireland
Feeling a bit robbed of a monumental game on Friday by the French injury list. Not long but several very key players out.
England are a shambles, with a injury hit squad, exacerbated by players being selected who were carrying knocks, and, barring a miraculous transformation, a badly outdated game plan.
I was going France to win, but reckon South Africa’s strength in depth up front will now see them winning it.
Either way, that set of quarter finals will be ridiculous, compared to the possible shambles on the other side.
Fiji are the best shots for an outsider breaking into the last 8, with it being a toss up if that’s at the expense of Wales or the Ozziez. With Japan not looking to be where they were 4 years ago, They arent the threat they were, otherwise England and Wales out in the groups would very definitely have been on.
oh man, what a freebie that is! rugby isn’t always a spectator sport - particularly if you’re not really into it anyway and particularly if South Africa decide to play in a certain way - but on paper that’s one of the absolute biggest games of the tournament.
SA’s ability to bring on an entirely new, world class front row is so crucial isn’t it. they’ve got some lovely backs but I suspect they’ll largely just grind everyone else into oblivion up front.
really looking forward to seeing how Fiji, Samoa and Tonga get on. sounds like they’ve all been on a good run of form/have some exciting new players
Danty in particular is massive in their defensive system.
I reckon only Am missing from the Bok squad is as big a deal quality wise, but they can just stick a massive unit like Esterhuizen in there and their system kind of ticks on.
Difficult to predict with Wales. In theory it doesn’t look promising, but we’re on the easier side of the draw, so who knows. Semi finals if they’re lucky, but probably not.
I think it’ll be between New Zealand and South Africa for the title.
There’s a documentary on Louis Rees-Zamit on BBC 1 Wales right now. He’s very good, but it seems a bit premature.
