Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 7:38 am  

Mugwump wrote:

I think it didn't help. But the truth is England were practically BEGGING Wales to sucker-punch them.

From the very beginning they'd set their stall out to play the "England Way" - which means cynically exploiting any and every opportunity to exhilarate the crowd with free-flowing kicking.

England are the zen masters at the science of extracting penalties and strangling the life out of a game once they've nosed ahead.

It was EMBARRASSING listening to purported Union "experts" wax lyrical about "Head Down" Farrell's "engine", "tackling" and "bravery" whilst those piddling little attributes usually associated with the position of Fly Half worldwide ("talent", "class", "style") went completely unmentioned.

Even with England ten points ahead you just knew they were only thinking about choking the breath out of Wales like Darth Vader.

Burgess probably shouldn't have gone off. But putting Farrell into the centres was arguably an even bigger blunder - compounded by the fact that the newly arrived playmaker (George Ford) had nowhere near enough time to acclimatize to the game sufficiently whereby he became a threat.

I agree, plus the fact that when the Welsh were losing players left right and centre, Lancaster decided to make IMO a raft of totally unnecessary changes instead of being ruthless

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 7:59 am  

Anyone would think RU was a free flowing end to end game the way it's reported. Last night's game was pretty much decided by how many penalties were given away and how many of them were kicked. In fact pretty much every International RU game is decided this way. How many sports do you know where the outcome solely relies on penalties during actual game time?

I also watched the earlier Middle 8s game between Bradford and Halifax and saw more attacking flair in that one game than what will be on show for the whole of the RU world cup. If some of those Twickers hooray Henrys saw that many tries in a game it'd blow their minds. But then are the majority really that bothered? Or is it just about being seen at an event with a royal presence? ITV made sure there was plenty of opiate for the masses with their constant panning to the young royals.

After spending the afternoon in the company of Professor Tony Collins prior to watching both of yesterday's oval ball games, I have even more disdain for the supposedly 'superior' code.

[PopTart]

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 8:30 am  

The unfortunate part of all this is how good the coverage, sponsorship and income is.
I admit to being jealous of rugby union for that.

If I was running RL, rather than get upset about it, I'd copy as much of the coverage as possible.

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 8:42 am  

The best thing Sam can do is get back to League asap. What a truly dreadful game that was last night.

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 9:48 am  

roader wrote:

The best thing Sam can do is get back to League asap. What a truly dreadful game that was last night.

It was classic northern hemisphere RU, both teams doing all they could to con the ref and try and gain a penalty, so they could take a pop at goal.

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:11 am  

wrencat1873 wrote:

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Was thinking the same thing. The RU points scoring system just doesn't really encourage open rugby. Why try to build a move for 5 points when you can con an easy penalty for 3?

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 10:14 am  

PopTart wrote:

The unfortunate part of all this is how good the coverage, sponsorship and income is.
I admit to being jealous of rugby union for that.

If I was running RL, rather than get upset about it, I'd copy as much of the coverage as possible.

Including the dwarfish presenter in sports casual?

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 1:20 pm  

wrencat1873 wrote:

It was classic northern hemisphere RU, both teams doing all they could to con the ref and try and gain a penalty, so they could take a pop at goal.

Although it will probably never happen, they should copy RL's scoring system with 4 pts for a try and 2 for a conv/pen and 1 for a dg, this may just reduce the inherent negativity within the game.

Er, it's five points for a try in RU...

But as they've already found, giving more more points for tries doesn't encourage try-scoring. In fact, the more valuable you make tries, the more worthwhile it seems to conceded penalties to save them.

What makes me laugh is that they need a bonus point system to try to encourage teams to score tries, even when they're clearly on top.

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 2:00 pm  

Until 1971 union's scoring was three for a try, two for a conversion, three for a penalty kick and until 1948 it was FOUR for a drop goal
In 1992 it then changed to 5 points for a try, still really hasn't encouraged scoring tries for the negative/totally talent free sides like England.
I wasted enough time watching 8 minutes of NZ dross last week, I can't be arsed with watching shiote not to mention the refs deliberately ignoring certain infractions (knock ons are a fave with onion refs) whilst pulling up on minor petty incidents often giving yellow cards for them

Re: Sam Burgess Union debut : Sun Sep 27, 2015 3:33 pm  

They could do with keeping the try at 5 points and either increasing the conversion to 3 or leaving it at 2 but reducing the penalty to 2 and drop goal to 1.

A drop goal isn't supposed to be a method of accumulating lots of points. It's meant to be a way of splitting 2 evenly matched teams by nudging yourself slightly ahead.

The objective of any points system in either code of rugby should be to encourage attempts at try scoring.
Unfortunately, since England are so powerful in the Union world, those points systems won't change because England would have to totally change their style of play and what suits them best.

In Union, because there's no guarantee of possession, there has to be a significant punishment otherwise defending teams could just keep giving penalties away rather than let the attack through. But rather than encouraging attacking teams to take 3 points, Union should use the sin bin to discourage defending teams giving away penalties.