Rwc 2011

I am not a massive rugby fan but I enjoy the six nations on TV etc. I looked forward to the RWC, but I thought that overall it was pretty poor and the final wasn't great. Anybody else any opinions?

I thought the final was a great game. The French showed great strength of character to do so well after all the criticism they received over the last few weeks.
There were some cracking matched during the pool stages as well.

The final was fantastic, gripping stuff. It had the perfect ending for me, the French showed what they are made of and did the Northern Hemisphere proud, but I was delighted for the All Blacks given the pressure they were under following the 28 year gap and the events in Christchurch earlier this year. Overall I thought the competition as a whole was just average. There were some good games but not too many that stand out for me. Some things that were of note I felt were, firstly the poor standard of kicking, not sure of the final percentages but it must have been down around 60% success rate. Also just how wet a country is NZ! Every other match seemed to have players slipping around the place.

Final was great but the tournament itself is flawed. It goes on for too long and the scheduling was very unfair on the smaller nations who struggled after the first round of pool games. It's the bigger nations with huge squads that should be playing twice a week.

I enjoyed the match yesterday, but thought that Wales might have done the business had they beaten France. New Zealand looked tired, which I'm sure they were, but it also exposed how important Dan Carter is to their side...if Woodcock didn't get that softest of tries then France would probably have won. Still, credit to them. It'll be a race to 3 now in England for New Zealand, Australia and South Africa....that should be my 40th sorted!!!

Wasn't the kicking thing down to a new ball being used for the tournament

I enjoyed it once it got past the fairly pointless pool stages - only really watched Ireland in the pools.

You have the 6 nations teams, 4 southern hemisphere and after that it goes from middling to poor fairly quickly. How about 10 teams awaiting the top 6 of the also rans who play a "pre-tournament" - so at least 1 of them wins that before the real thing starts and they get some competitive games under their belt.

I'd prefer straight knock out - Seed it based on the previous world cup - keep the finalists on opposite sides, semi-finalists last time wouldnt meet until the semi. 1 game a week for 4 weeks and wrap the whole thing up in a month. Probably unviable to prepare & travel for straight knock out, but would give real edge to the games.

I also thought the final was great, was on the edge of the couch for all the second half. I do agree though a previous post that it did go on for too long, but I'm not sure whether the players would have been able to play at shorter intervals between matches.

Agree that the final was enjoyable but the all-black bias of the referees throughout the tournament was a joke which culminated at the final and the ridiculous two tier method of refereeing the breakdown, offside and dangerous play situations.

As for the haka - how sad that today the French get fined for daring to take attention away from the Adidas sponsorship tour de force.

Firefly said:

...if Woodcock didn't get that softest of tries then France would probably have won.

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That try was not soft, it was an incredibly well worked try.

However if Joubert had the balls to ping NZ in their own half for at least 2 obvious penalties, France could well have won.

Chris said:

I also thought the final was great, was on the edge of the couch for all the second half. I do agree though a previous post that it did go on for too long, but I'm not sure whether the players would have been able to play at shorter intervals between matches.

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I agree that players need longer intervals to recover but it is easier to ask England or any other developed nation cope with two matches in a week than a country like Samoa. It was extremely unfair. Ireland got a week between games but the US got hammered schedule wise despite being miles behind with regard to professionalism.

As for the ref in the final talked about in other posts, I fully agree but I hated the way the kiwis went on and on at the last world cup with regard to Barnes and the forward pass so not going to start now. They won the final and delighted for them after everything the country has gone through. I am just looking forward to bursting Wales inflated bubble in the six nations.