2019 Rugby World Cup

Looking beneath the Aussie and Kiwi wins, they are a  beatable team and SA were tactically magnificent.
 

There’s no arrogance like rugby arrogance. Dawson and O’Driscoll were two fine players, unfortunately both are the epitome of the rugby ****.

I feel the final swung on Farrell’s missed penalty. England were dominating the game at that stage and South Africa looked rattled for the first time, the miss left them off the hook and they never looked back. 

It could have changed the game, but I feel England lost it after the 25 phase play. England had 2/3 purple patches but were generally second best.

Overall though, between the early morning kick offs and Ireland sh*tting the bed again, I’m kind of sick of rugby now. Be hard to get up for it now for the champions cup and then the 6 nations.

In saying that, you see SA as world champions and think back to us beating them fairly comfortable a couple of times in the last few years, same with England, England not getting out of the group the last time and now nearly winning, you do think are we that far away? At the moment we look miles apart but no doubt the hype train will be back within a year!

Would you believe 50/1 in Paddy's. Bet365 had it at 33s and I was about to place the bet as they're usually best odds for most things. Had a gawk at Paddy's and spotted the 50s.

I should have done the reverse as a saver at the time, would have made this morning a lot less stressful 

There's still far too many mismatches in the tournament as a whole in the group stages, maybe they should look at something like a 16 team tournament with the top 12 on a certain date (say 2 years out) qualifying automatically and have the rest engage in some class of 2 year qualifying campaign (format shouldn't really matter, there's loads to pick from) to get the last 4 spots. Wouldn't solve the huge disparity between teams in itself, but would make the tournament shorter and most of the games a little more meaningful.