Road to World Cup 2015

On current form we'd horse Samoa.

Given a year's development I think whichever of Australia, England or Wales wins their group is beatable.

There's a reason I said outside shot. I reckon we'll make the quarters then do the tylically Scottish brave defeat personally but there's maybe a 10-20% chance we could do it.

 

Scotland are far better than Samoa atm. Samoa are all over the place

 

Pretty much the literal definition of current form seeing as they all happened in the last month.

 

Which is all I'm getting at. Fiery seems to think that I'm suggesting we can win the thing.

Young side, we'll have good cohesion in the backs seeing as 10-15 all play together at club level (at a side that had an excellent season domestically last year and is on the up at European level this season), and importantly, play for a side that is successful and used to winning games. I think that's quite an under-rated quality in sport, personally.

In knockout competition, anything can happen over 80 minutes. I think we're getting good enough that on our day, we can look to compete and possibly beat just about anyone, with the probable exception of South Africa and New Zealand.

 

Dan Coles has no business being in that team of the year. He is only in the abs due to problems with our depth in his position.

Keiran Read is there by reputation alone although we saw some glimpses of his best recently.

With regards to Scotland - they have no hope against England unless injuries strike England.
They can on their day beat either Australia or SA if they get the bounce of the ball on their side. It would be an upset but not a shocking upset. They would also require some home town calls which they can reasonably expect against those two sides.

 

Dane Coles may turn out to be a decent hooker but he is at the start of his international journey so to suggest he is the best player in the world in his position is an insult to many other hookers from around the globe.

His open field running play is the best in the world I will grant you that. But all I care about is the set piece when evaluating hookers.

Read had some moments during the Autumn internationals but hasn't been a patch on his old self this year. Don't forget he is the former world player of the year iirc so the standards i am comparing him to are very high.
Compared to whoever say Australia threw out there at number 8 then yes he has had an incredible year. Just not compared to his usual standards when he even exceeded Ritchie's performances.

Look our perceptions are very different about a lot of things. You think that Hooper=McCaw for example. And now you think that Dane Coles is the best in the world. Not that long ago he was just a good super XV player.

 

You are a very good debating opponent because you present well structured views. My main memories of him during the autumns was him doing some good carries and him getting his traditional 70th minute try against some team (Wales I think) when the opposition has run out of gas. How many tries does he have like that by the way. At least 5 by my count.

Indeed - see part I bolded.

 

I think the part you are missing is where he said "on their day". Do you not even give Scotland a 20% chance of beating Australia.

 

I think Australia's form is the worst I have seen in some times. I am not sure they can get it together in time. I would go 10-15%

Their formula for winning seems to not be suited to their own strengths. By that I mean they always try to out muscle the opposition up front before spinning it wide. That works well against teams ranked 8th and 9th in the world who are weak but not so well against teams that are stacked in the forwards. Just play XV man rugby australia right from the first minute of the game.