LOVE the World Cup!

So yesterday afternoon I headed up to Bagpipes after my interview in North Austin. I was prepared to watch 6 hours of World Cup Rugby! How exciting!

I started watching USA vs Tonga and after reading the comments on Goff, I agree and I disagree. The claim was that the Tonga players killed the ball the whole game, well yes they did. But the Eagles shot themselves in the foot too! Every time the forwards worked their butts off and made space for the backs, they knocked the ball on or had a serious mishandle! Overall the game was pretty disappointing and very physical.

The Eagles had a few key scoring opportunities, including that last breakaway by the winger, if he would have kept going straight…I really think he could have split the D and put one down between the posts. The Eagles don’t play again for awhile, they face Samoa and then South Africa.

By this time a few of my teammates had joined me at Bagpipes and we started watching the Japan vs Fiji match. I was excited about this match because I like to watch the Japanese who are usually smaller in stature meet the challenge of a bigger team. The score for this game was close throughout the game, I kind of thought that Fiji would blow out the Japanese, but they played very well! They rucked very hard and had an almost impenetrable wall of defense. They were very organized and worked hard. It was a very exciting game and came down to making and missing kicks…make sure you hug your kicker today!

The third match we watched was Romania vs Italy. At this point about half the team was at the bar and being rugby players we were getting pretty excited and loud. We also were treating this event as an informal chalk talk where our new players could ask questions. We have three practices to our next league match and we will be putting 5 to 6 rookies on the field for that game. Numbers are getting better at practice but not everyone can afford to travel with work and money. We keep recruiting, but it is always a struggle. Anyways, the match was really good and we yelled out loud plenty of times and discussed that they ran a line out play very similar to ours. Good play, love it!

So to those of you gathering around in bars all week for rugby…cheers to you! Lets let everyone know that it is the best sport ever and we want everyone to know that!

Also, check this out!!!

And what World Cup isn’t complete without the Haka? I also loved the Fijian war chant!