The Rugby Thread

Johnny said there was 4 million people watching it at home!!!

Artie Ziff wrote: Basketball, Cricket and hockey have world cups and would only have a handful of decent teams.  Football is the only truly global team sport

More Anne wrote: Winning a three match test series in New Zealand is an outstanding sporting achievement and will be remembered as such. It's likely the only time it will happen in any our lifetimes.  The Lions and South Africa have each only done it once in over a century which tells you how hard it is.  New Zealand are to rugby what Brazil, Italy and Germany put together would be like to football.  Even when they are not the world champions, they are always the benchmark, and winning there in any match, especially for a Northern hemisphere team at the end of it season, is always a mammoth task. Christ, it takes at least a week just to recover properly from the jetlag it's so far away and then you have the culture shock of going from high summer to deep winter.

Well said , really was an outstanding come back from one down in the first test .

Considering no other team has won a test series in NZ in the professional era and very few before that, it is a great achievement. 

Green Cockade wrote: Baseball has its World Series, which is effectively confined to USA and Canada. Gaelic football and hurling are missing a trick here by having All-Ireland instead of World Championship competitions, which would include of course the likes of London and New York. Seriously, though, any sport we can produce decent national teams for is worth a watch if only for public house bragging rights. Rugby is one such.

Its a great win I don't think anyone is denying that but it's the lack of perspective that generally follows a result like the documentary on RTE after the win in Chicago. None the less Sexton actually quickly reaffirmed it would mean nothing should history repeat itself in 12 months time. The commentary however in the game yestersay said something like the 10 biggest minutes in Irish Rugby ever upon us thats nonsense.

Baldrick wrote: Green Cockade wrote: Baseball has its World Series, which is effectively confined to USA and Canada. Gaelic football and hurling are missing a trick here by having All-Ireland instead of World Championship competitions, which would include of course the likes of London and New York. Seriously, though, any sport we can produce decent national teams for is worth a watch if only for public house bragging rights. Rugby is one such. The world series is named after newspaper.

Urban legend I'm afraid

Great achievement and great back to back performances after the disappointment of the first test. Truth is while it's never been done before, Ireland are one of the top sides in the world at the minute and New Zealand are at a low ebb (by their standards). I expected Ireland to win at least one on this tour and if history/pressure didn't get to them a series win was more than achievable. That played out because the 2nd test we hammered them everywhere except the scoreboard, and while NZ came back strong in the 3rd test I always felt Ireland would get things back under control. 

Sad to see, was a fantatic player