Rugby...(hehe!)

Good result in the Rugby world cup quarter-final - unless, that is, you happen to be Australian...

(it's not often we get to gloat about sport, so when we do, you'll have to excuse us a little excess!)

Is there some sort of sporting event happening?

(TBH, I think it's high time some Australian sporting teams learnt some humility.  Though I do prefer it when we win, some of the gloating and arrogance is pretty ugly.)

Coming in a little late on this one, but had an excellent evening in a small bar in Biarritz (on  the far south-west coast of France) on Saturday night watching the France-New Zealand match. The place was packed and the atmosphere electric, especially when France pulled off the totally unexpected and the town erupted - at 11pm - into an all-night party.

Mind you, not such good news for the Kiwi couple renting our holiday home, who took five weeks off to come over and see their team win compete in the finals. And of course it'll be split loyalties in our village when England take on France next weekend...

Do Australians actually play Rugby?

Actually I am aware that a form of Rugby is the dominant code in one and a half of our states. I think the followers get upset if you call it Rugby though - they tell me it's League, not Rugby, even though it's officially Rugby League. Go figure.

But most of the country follows Australian Rules Football which can't really be compared to any other code - it has the opposite philosophy to Rugby. If you must compare the codes you could say that Aussie rules is based very much on attack, Rugby by comparison is all about defence. The result, to an Aussie Rules fan, is that Rugby is very slow and negative*. Apologies to some of my fellow countrymen, but where I come from the interest in Rugby is pretty close to zero.

But while we're talking about footy, have I mentioned that in the most exciting football competition in the world, Geelong won the premiership just over a week ago. Very emphatically.

Thanks Steve for starting this thread - it gives me an excuse to brag about my home town. Geelong has the best and most exciting football team in the world and they are the Premiers.

I could go on - there's much more I could say but I'll show some restraint. For now...



* Wasn't Rugby invented in England - the home of slow and negative cricket???

You can't wind me up about sport at all - I think that most of it's rather boring. The only sorts of sport that really have any interest about them at all are the ones where there's some realistic chance of there being a serious accident - like downhill slalom, etc. And from that POV, even Formula 1 has got pretty samey. And I can't really see the point of any of them, quite frankly.

As for cricket, you've probably got a good point - there seem to be two attitudes towards playing the game. One is to score runs, and the other is to avoid getting out. Whether that actually applies to rugby though, I'm not so sure. I think that the protagonists would see it slightly differently. More like a fight...

Rugby = Fool's game played by gentlemen.

Football = Gentlemen's game played by fools...

Do Australians actually play Rugby?

Actually I am aware that a form of Rugby is the dominant code in one and a half of our states. I think the followers get upset if you call it Rugby though - they tell me it's League, not Rugby, even though it's officially Rugby League. Go figure.

I've been told by people who know more about this than I do that there are two basic forms of rugby - Union and League. And that the players in each don't reckon much to the other... beats me!

You can't wind me up about sport at all - I think that most of it's rather boring.

Likewise here, for the most part.  But there's some sports I quite like.

The only sorts of sport that really have any interest about them at all are the ones where there's some realistic chance of there being a serious accident - like downhill slalom, etc.

Well, on that basis you may enjoy the Tour de France.  Each year I become more and more engrossed as I learn more about it.  Like it's not just a simple bunch of blokes riding bikes around France.  Rather there are different styles of riders, and different parts of the tour suit the differing styles.  And then there are the tactics, what with the core team tactics but also the fact that temporary alliances form.  It's actually quite fascinating once you realise there is all this extra stuff going on.  And then there are all the serious prangs.  It's surprising there aren't more of them.  In this year's tour, I recall a memorable piece of footage where the cameraman on the motorcycle following the leading readers going downhill in the Alps turned the camera to the speedometer on the motorcycle.  They were going at 70 km/hr, and struggling to keep up with the cyclists.

But a bunch of big meatheads running into each other?  No thanks.  And they have the audacity to call it football when they are carrying the ball around the park?

I made the mistake of watching the finals yesterday. Boring!

I made the mistake of watching the finals yesterday. Boring!

I dunno so much about boring, but I'm afraid that the result was rather inevitable. Still, it doesn't really matter. The most important thing that happened was in the semi-finals, when we beat the French, so the lads will be forgiven pretty much anything when they get home, I think.

So South Africa won then?