England vs Croatia predictions

[sasguru]

Senior male players of rugby according to the IRB

England 147,944
SA 147,650
Aus 29,100
NZ 27,745

Seems like other countries take it quite seriously.....England and SA have over 5 times the players...

You are now slightly less ignorant.

HTH

What's the denominator? Those figures are meaningless unless you divide them by the population of the respective countries.

You are now slightly less ignorant.

[sasguru]

Proportion of NZ population who play rugby approx 0.65%
Proportion of UK population who play rugby approx 0.22%
Hmmm

[wendigo100]

And need I remind you that England, the mighty swing low chariot itself, has only ever won the "tournament" once...so does that make the english poofs who play rugger chokers too?

Not really, that was the only time the English have ever taken it seriously.

We have a trait where we discover, achieve or invent things, then get bored and move on.

[Mailman]

Proportion of NZ population who play rugby approx 0.65%
Proportion of UK population who play rugby approx 0.22%
Hmmm

Ok, you may have a point here as clearly NZ takes rugby 0.23% more seriously than Eng-gaaaa-land

Mailman

[tay]

Those figures are meaningless unless you divide them by the population of the respective countries.

Irrelevant, you have 5 times as many players, much more money... and you still suck.

The vatican city has a team as well.... I suppose that makes them the country that takes rugby most seriously? Your logic is a nonsense.

We have a trait where we discover, achieve or invent things, then get bored and move on.

I think you will find the problem is that England rugby hasnt moved on from 2003...

[sasguru]

I think you will find the problem is that England rugby hasnt moved on from 2003...

Ah the arrogance is exquisite. Some chokers who came out early think they are entitled to give advice to the finalists.

[DodgyAgent]

Irrelevant, you have 5 times as many players, much more money... and you still suck.

The vatican city has a team as well.... I suppose that makes them the country that takes rugby most seriously? Your logic is a nonsense.




I think you will find the problem is that England rugby hasnt moved on from 2003...

The reason we have much more money is that our economy doesnt go into free fall every time we lose a rugby match

Anyway on a slightly more serious note Tay, you and the Aussies are constantly going on about the fact that England has so many more players than any other country. This is because the amateur game in the Uk is so huge and so many players who are very ordinary play the game here that would not continue playing in Australia and NZ. The truth is that only very few players can be considered good enough to be taken as serious contenders to play competitive rugby.
The amateur game in the UK has quite an extraordinary dimension that you guys really do not understand. why do you think our singing and off field antics are so extensive? It is because most players play for the hell of playing, with very few aspiring to much more than a rough and tumble on a Saturday afternoon for the 4thXV. Thus Northern Hemisphere supporters always out sing the southern hemisphere ones. We also do self effacement better than you guys as proven by the barmy army (who have now become borish). Even the only Aussie song of the Lions tour in 2001 was hijacked and turned from waltzing matilda into waltzing O'Driscoll
Every time you speak to an Aussie or a Kiwi about whether they play cricket or rugby, they wont simply say "yes", they always have to add the grade level at which they play. In other words rugby and cricket is only played within a quasi professional, benchmarked, competitive environment which has no room for the fat talentless "salad dodging" centre. This is why English rugby fans are not particularly bothered about whether we win or lose, they themselves have probably played largely for the fun of the game.
Having said that whenever a Kiwi, Saffer or Aussie does come along and says that they play rugby it is likely that they will be a very good player indeed, and English club rugby has been enriched at all levels by their prescence.

And we dont have a cynical recruitment program of deliberatly pinching the very best players from overseas countries either.

[DodgyAgent]

Senior male players of rugby according to the IRB

England 147,944
SA 147,650
Aus 29,100
NZ 27,745

Seems like other countries take it quite seriously.....England and SA have over 5 times the players...

You are now slightly less ignorant.

HTH

Do those figures for NZ include Fiji, Samoa and Tonga?

[DodgyAgent]

Anyway set aside the petty squabbling between our respective rugby teams. At least we all agree that in rugby we have in common a great deal of National pride in playing for and supporting our teams (And instead of the haka the All Blacks should maybe play the fijian, tongan and samoan anthems ), a pride that applies because rugby is largely a middle class game that has not been ravaged by money and political correctness.

Jeremy Clarkson explains quite well why we as a Nation do not win at football.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle2935442.ece

[tay]

Anyway on a slightly more serious note Tay, you and the Aussies are constantly going on about the fact that England has so many more players than any other country. This is because the amateur game in the Uk is so huge and so many players who are very ordinary play the game here that would not continue playing in Australia and NZ. The truth is that only very few players can be considered good enough to be taken as serious contenders to play competitive rugby.

Thats true.

Do those figures for NZ include Fiji, Samoa and Tonga?

Read and learn...

Paul Thomas: False charge of poaching
Saturday June 25, 2005
By Paul Thomas

They're calling it the Rape of the Pacific. And like most of the hot air being expelled throughout the nation, it involves rugby.

New Zealand stands accused of enticing the best players in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga to abandon their homelands and throw in their lot with the All Blacks.

This charge has been levelled time and again by British rugby writers, sometimes indignantly, sometimes with disgusted fatalism as if our poaching operation is so brazen and methodical that it's impossible to maintain the rage.

And as the temperature rises ahead of tonight's first test, it's getting another airing.

Leading the attack is Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times. Jones has created a persona built on relentless disparagement of New Zealand rugby - its players, stadia, referees, fans and media. It can only be a matter of time before he lays into the ball-boys.

Although Jones has one setting - a pop-eyed, bull moose roar of outrage - he's not always being entirely serious. When challenged, he tends to complain that Kiwis don't get irony.

We could search for the irony in his statement that Sitiveni Sivivatu's four-try All Black debut was "one of the saddest sporting occasions I can remember". We could try to work out what he really means when he tells his readers that "the All Blacks continue to steal the best talent from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga" and "are now an amalgam of four nations".

But seeing we're frightfully gauche provincials who think Irony is one of those all-girl hip-hop groups, we'll just have to take these assertions at face value.

There are 10 Polynesians in the current All Black squad, five of whom were born here. Four went to primary school here. Sivivatu arrived when he was 17 to attend Wesley College.

We may think that because these players' parents came to New Zealand in search of a better life, because they grew up, went to school and learned to play rugby here, because they regard themselves as New Zealanders, it's appropriate for them to wear the black jersey.

Apparently not; apparently we stole them. Apparently this constitutes the Rape of the Pacific.

That's not my idea of irony; that's my idea of bulltulip.

The British rugby media rat pack choose to ignore the decades of immigration which have made Polynesians one of the four main ethnic groups in our multi-cultural society and Auckland the biggest Polynesian city in the world.

It's odd that they find it so hard to get their heads around the phenomenon of immigrant communities producing more than their fair share of outstanding athletes given that it has also happened in England over roughly the same period.

English track-and-field and boxing have flourished largely thanks to athletes of West Indian and African descent, and the days of the all-vanilla English soccer team are long gone.

Were these athletes poached or are they New Britons?

And on the subject of flags of convenience, how about that good southern man Brendon Laney, who a week after setting foot in Scotland was lining up at Murrayfield hoping that the TV cameras wouldn't focus on him during the singing of Flower of Scotland?

But that's okay. It's okay too that South Africans like Mike Catt, Stuart Abbott and current Lion Matt Stevens play for England, even though England already has more rugby players than any other country. And it's okay for France, when they played the All Blacks last November, to field two South Africans, a New Zealander and a flanker from Cameroon, even though France already has more players than any other country except England.

What's not okay is Jerry Collins, having arrived in New Zealand aged four with his family, having attended primary school in Porirua and St Pat's College in Wellington, having joined Norths, the club he still plays for whenever he can, having represented New Zealand at secondary school, under 19, under 21 and A level, running on to Jade Stadium tonight in an All Black jersey.

Well, I can understand that the Brits would prefer he didn't, but to insist that he shouldn't be an All Black because he should be playing for another country is - here we go again - bulltulip.

It would be laughable if it wasn't for the nasty, lingering suspicion that underpinning this campaign is a mindset that those white South Africans, Australians and New Zealanders who swap countries at the drop of a hat are exercising their free will while the poor, naive Polynesians are being led by the nose.

After this week's Australia-England one-day cricket match, The Guardian website ran a headline describing Kevin Pietersen's 91 off 65 balls as the "best innings by an Englishman".

Only he isn't. Pietersen was born in Pietermaritzburg, represented South Africa at under-19 level and played first-class cricket for KwaZulu-Natal. Convinced that his progress was being blocked by the quota system that promotes non-white players into national teams, Pietersen defected to England in 2001.

Now that's irony - of the unconscious variety.