The Six Nations Tournament 2018 starts this weekend and games are played almost every weekend for 5 rounds of games. There's no football on right now - but football's grand daddy is - Rugby Football. And the Six Nations is a favourite tournament of rivals. England are the two time defending champions. Scotland are consider to be contenders this year. Ireland also might have a shot. Wales are underdogs. France have a new coach and haven't won a tournament for a while. Italy are trying to gain some consistency. Could be a good one this year. What does Rugby look like? It looks like all running game with lots of lateral passes and jukes. Imagine a kick return where once the tackle happens play doesn't stop, someone else picks up the ball and keeps running and throw in some laterals. It's a game of awareness and spacing because you can't just get a first down and then stop and try for another, you have to keep going, keep moving, and the other side have to stop you and take the ball away. Now there's no blocking, tackles are limited to the ball carrier only, so that leads to lots of jukes and fakes - do you tackle the carrier or prevent the pass (lateral)? That's not all though. This is the version of Rugby called Rugby Union, so some forward kicks are allowed, sort of punts and offside kicks but done while in live play to avoid a tackle and keep the ball moving. Field goals happen live in play and conversions aren't straight on. They have to be kicked from a spot on the field in line where the 'try' (touchdown) happened. Oh, and for a try to count it has to be grounded, just crossing the plane won't do. If play stalls, then you see a scrum, the origin of the snap. But both 'packs' (lines) start engaged and try to force one another backwards over the ball which is placed in the middle. Once it's out of the scrum, it's live and play starts immediately as before - runs and laterals. The forwards in the scrum have to disengage from the scrum and get going quick. Then there are rucks, mauls, line outs... but maybe this is too much detail. Are there hits? Yeah... Here's a preview of the tournament... Hope to see you watching!
I watched some of the Eng v Ita match. Closer than I thought it would be. I'm not a regular watcher of Rugby. But I'll watch it when the big tourneys are on. I'm still not 100% on the rules. RUnion vs RLeague gets me perplexed at times. But I was curious about something... because the premiership is ongoing at the moment. How do the players get called up to the national teams and avoid a problem with their premiership teams?
I'm not 100% on that myself but it's definitely a bone of contention. Clubs don't like losing their players for the duration of the tournament, and some heads have publicly ridiculed the rugby schedule for it. Apparently there are scheduling changes incoming after the next world cup. Not brushed up on the details but it seems like there's hope it will resolve it. As for the England game, Italy definitely played aggressively and pressed England hard. The win didn't come easily, despite the scoreline. England's defensive efforts are going to have to improve a bit, I think, and they're going to have to clean up their performance. Too much messy Rugby at times. Against a more efficient opponent the score would have been much closer. Nice to see the win, though. And their number 8 was a bolt of lightning! More of those runs please! Wales up next, so this could be a real test!
I wish the Wales Eng match were on regular tv... it's on NBC's Sports Gold and you need a special subscription for the rugby action. I have NBC's Sports Gold for their premier league soccer. But it's not enough... oh well.
Scotland hammered Australia in November, and had come very close to beating the All Blacks the week before, so became everyone's pick as an outside bet to win the 6 Nations...then do what every "flatter to deceive" Scotland team has done before and **** the bed against Wales in the opener. A win against France a couple of weeks ago at least got them a bit back on track, but I'm not confident going into Saturday's game against England. Just please make it a bit more competitive than last year's 61-21 embarassment.
Scotland beat England 25-13 for their first win over them in 10 years. Great game to watch...if you're a Scot Ireland beating Wales 37-27 in the earlier game was an even better game to watch from a neutral standpoint, with Wales 3 points down and going for a last minute score to try and tie/win the game, and throwing an interception to Ireland to allow them to score 7 points to close it out.
Missed last weekend. Looks like it was a good week to miss! Ireland have the clear lead in points but this tournament could go any way right now. Basically everyone but the Irish are going to want Ireland to lose and not benefit from bonus points. Then it's anyone's game... well, maybe not the French and Italians. But anyone else!
