Hi David & All,
Quote:
Originally Posted by AstralTraveller
The ref blew the pea out of his whistle for the first 15 minutes. I understand they are trying to set a standard and that is fair enough but there was no continuity in the play.
Quade Cooper has a bit of the Campo about him. Inventive, sometimes brilliant but also prone to goosing up.
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Yes the ref did give the whistle a good workout but he was a northern hemisphere ref so what's new? Let's hope that when we get down to the business end of the tournament, that they will be over the whistle blowing fetish but more importantly be able to see through Ricthie McCaw's "cloak of invisibility" as I read in an article in the Herald the other day:
http://m.smh.com.au/rugby-union/unio...831-1jl9l.html
and I agree with it certainly so far as McCaw is concerned (the word cheating is a bit strong here though I think). It seems everyone else in the world (including the T.V cameras) can see Richie McCaw standing off-side at the breakdown almost all the time, loitering around the finges of the ruck a metre or two ahead of where he is allowed, stifling the attack if not deliberately interfering with the passage of the ball and his opponents and slowing the play down. He doesn't do it sometimes, it is frequent and I wish the refs would somehow de-cloak him -- everyone else can for goodness sake! Walter Mattfield (S.A) is also good at doing this but McCaw has turned it into an art-form.
Re Quade Cooper -- yep David agree. He is very much one of those sorts of players like Campo who can either win or loose you a game in a twinkling. All the same I'd much rather have him in the side than out. An experiment I'd like to see the Wallabies try against one of the lesser nations (USA, Russia) in a fortnight is to play Cooper at inside centre outside of O'Connor at fly-half. I think it would give him a bit of extra room to move and O'Connor has a great eye for the game. Personally, I think O'Connor is destined to play fly-half after Cooper moves on to play rugby league (which somewhow I think won't work out for him -- but he seems to have his heart set on it).
Looking forward to the game -v- Ireland.
Best,
Les D