Hey I'm a Kiwi sports fan and I promise not trying to start a fight I’m genuinely curious:

Rugby is pretty clearly divided between Hemispheres, with a lot of major matches most importantly World Cups normally happening September to November.

I don’t wanna ruin the All Blacks advantage but we play most of our big important games towards the end of our season rather at the start… this is most obviously applicable to World Cups where a quick search makes me think that every world cup besides 87 and 95 (ironically NZ and SA) has been held Sept-Nov and this may have an impact on the results as the South traditionally does much better, winning 9/10 World Cups.

Obviously there are many other factors, but when I see the South win 5 from 5 on the weekend while our teams are deep into the season playing Northern sides who are just coming off a break? That has to be some sort of edge right?

Maybe someone less lazy than I could analyse the difference between Northern Tours Sept-Nov and Southern Tours that might happen earlier I dunno.

Happy to be proven wrong, sorry if this is a common discussion or easily explained somewhere else? I didn’t see much on the topic. Edit: Formatting.

Ah, the current team of Wales is some farcry of what it could possibly be;

Reality

1. Gareth Thomas
2. Dewi Lake
3. Archie Griffin
4. Will Rowlands
5. Adam Beard
6. Taine Plumtree
7. Tommy Reffell
8. Aaron Wainwright
9. Tomos Williams
10. Gareth Anscombe
11. Blair Murray
12. Ben Thomas
13. Max Llewellyn
14. Mason Grady
15. Cam Winnett
16. Ryan Elias
17. Nicky Smith
18. Keiron Assiratti
19. Christ Tshiunza
20. James Botham
21. Jac Morgan
22. Ellis Bevan
23. Sam Costelow

What could it be

1. Nicky Smith
2. Dewi Lake
3. Archie Griffin
4. Will Rowlands
5. Dafydd Jenkins
6. Cameron Hanekom
7. Jac Morgan
8. Aaron Wainwright
9. Tomos Williams
10. Ben Thomas
11. Immanuel Feyi-Waboso
12. Eddie James
13. Max Llewellyn
14. Louis Rees-Zammit
15. Cam Winnett
16. Brodie Coughlan
17. Rhys Carre
18. Keiron Assiratti
19. Christ Tshiunza
20. Tommy Reffell
21. Reuben Morgan-Williams
22. Ioan Lloyd - now, if you're not happy with either, there's Callum Sheedy or Dan Edwards. I'm not too sure about the consensus of fly halfs in Wales.
23. Mason Grady

(Edit took out Blair Murray for obvious choice IFW).

TLDR - University Rugby is holding Japanese Rugby back

It has not been the best year for the Brave Blossoms. After making some progress in the last decade, the results have shown that Japan has fallen behind Fiji, Italy, and Georgia. Eddie Jones has his work cut out for him. In the games against the All Blacks and France, Japan’s poor tackling, poor kicking, and poor decision making were all on show.

Some people will blame Eddie for the regression. Others blame Japan leaving Super Rugby and say JRLO isn’t at a high enough level to bridge the gap to the international game. And there’s probably truth in both those statements - Eddie’s tactics are proving to be very tricky to master and lead to a lot of easy points being shipped. As for JRLO, I’m more bullish about its future than many of its critics, but overall it’s still not yet at the level of other Tier 1 competitions. However all those arguments look past what I believe to be the main culprit - a University rugby system that does a terrible job of player development.

Last weekend, England played New Zealand in what was a very competitive game. I went through the wiki’s for each player on the respective team sheets and tried to determine the approximate age at which each player received their first professional appearance. For both England and NZ, the average age is something around 19.1. For the team Japan put out against NZ, that average was about 22.1. A full 3 years of arrested development. And this affects plenty of foreign players who come to Japan as student players who eventually become eligible for the national team.

If you were to implement a proper player development system from scratch, there’s a lot of different templates you could choose from. However, they would all share a pretty common feature - around age 18/19 (if not earlier), promising players would be introduced to a professional rugby environment and start getting experience training and playing against fully grown, professional players. It’s such a blindingly obvious component of rugby players development that you’d probably be surprised if any country tried something different. What you wouldn’t do is sequester your best young talent away from professional environments and then have them only play each other. And yet, that’s what Japan has been doing.

Nearly every promising rugby player aged 18-22 in Japan is on a university team.These players won’t be trained alongside experienced professionals, they won’t test themselves against teams from other nations with different playing styles, and for the most part, they won’t get quality coaching. Wait, I have more complaints!

• University teams rarely play official games, with teams playing at most 14 games split between spring and fall (with a huge number of unnecessary practice games thrown in)

• The good teams horde way too much talent (Teikyo University, reigning University champs, have 147 players)

• As a result of point #1 & 2, official games are mostly noncompetitive. (Teikyo has an average margin of victory of about 53 points)

• There are 3 conferences for top division University rugby, yet there are no non-conference games between teams in different conferences.Even though there are plenty of opportunities to do so!

There are more issues, but I don’t want to beat a dead horse here. The point is this development doesn’t work. We know this because the U-20 results have been terrible for over a decade. I think every time Japan has made it to the top division, they’ve immediately been relegated. This year, they lost to Scotland U20s by 36 points. And while Japan has been spinning their wheels with university rugby, other countries have been getting their youth development in order and have been reaping the rewards.

The obvious solution here would be for the professional teams in JRLO to simply sign the most promising young players out of high school, or at the very least the players that have shown they are already too good for the university game. There’s a reason why young players go through the university route, besides the educational benefits - it’s pretty influential in the Japanese rugby scene. The University championship is broadcast on public tv, and it’s probably more fun to be in school than being a professional in a league that’s still finding its footing.

If Japanese rugby still wants to have its university pathways and have a competitive national team, there will need to be a lot of reforms. They should limit roster spots on teams so talent can be more evenly distributed, and allow cross conference regular season games so teams can play more often. Most importantly, the JRFU would need to provide more exposure and investment for the 18-22 age group. They should gather multiple sides of the best young players and do regular spring tours to places like South Africa and Europe. Otherwise, Japan will continue to fall further behind other rugby nations.

Argentina are getting plaudits for having an attack that can shred teams to pieces and a back row that beats up opposition players like they owe them money, but you don't win tests without quality locks, and this guys looks like the business: big tackles, about a million post-contact metres, fast, good hands, and yet it was only 5 minutes ago that he was bouncing around assorted SLAR teams, and he doesn't even have an English-language wikipedia page yet. So far in his 10-test career he's beaten every national team he's played against at least once (FR, UY, NZ, AU, RSA, IT). It's ridiculous.

I don't think he'll get breakthrough player of the year because he's not famous enough but I can't think of any other player who's had such a rocket-like ascent to the peak of test rugby this late in their career (Molina is 27). Keen for more informed opinions from Argentina/Selknam/Dogos fans, or just suggestions of other players with this kind of career trajectory (for comparison, he's sort of done what Nacho Brex did, only in 18 months instead of 7 years).

https://www.lequipe.fr/Rugby/Actualites/Fickou-atonio-et-penaud-de-retour-la-tentation-buros-le-point-sur-la-composition-de-l-equipe-de-france/1519736

Penaud was sick last week, Atonio had a niggle on the knee, Fickou was dropped for youth, but training today seems to point out to Galthié may want to select them all for the first XV this weekend as they were wearing the starter team bibs. Well, for Penaud, I guess it's just a return to normal.

However, there also was uncapped fullback Romain Buros wearing the 15 jersey, in effect replacing Léo Barré who is currently having a so-so season, being in Stade Français sucks.

But Buros is a very cool-headed very reliable fullback, who happens to also be good in the air. Very reliable in all aspects, one of the strangest cases of continuous non-selection because he always was injured at a bad time, and at the end, it was kinda too late to blood him for the 2023 world cup.

Ok, so all of us Northern Hemisphere fans are feeling pretty sore this week but let's look at some positives.

Now I don't mean who should go on the Lions tour based on previous form, stature in the game, experience etc BUT rather who, over the last two weekends, has shown they should be on that plane. PS Scotland's game against a Fiji 'A/B' side last weekend doesn't count.

Doing this by position and I have left some positions unfilled as I don't think anyone put their hand up for that position in the last 2 weeks:

1. ,
2. Ashman
3. Fagerson
4. Itoje
5. Mcarthy
6. Cunningham-South
7. Van de Flier
8. Doris
9. Gibson-Park, T.Williams
10. M.Smith
11. Lowe
12. Tuipolotu
13. Jones (just and only if he practises passing off his right hand!)
14. Feyi-Waboso
15. .

I think some wildcards entered the fray over the weekend eg Winnet and Muarry for Wales, Jordan for Scotland but the weekend was more marked by a bunch of quality players not delivering eg the Irish backline, England's centres and full back, Wales' back row and dare I say it Scotland's fly half (maybe that is a bit harsh). Again, we all know that this year's 6 Nations will really decide who goes but as I said in the intro, I just need something positive to look forward to.

Without our golden generation of players that lasted from say 08 until 2019 (2021 withstanding because I know we won the jamslam) we would have been in the same state that we are now.

Things will never change until it effects the pockets of the avengers of incompetency in the upper-echelon of the WRU boardroom. They can raise the ticket prices even though the team is performing poorly because the average punter just cares about singing Delilah and having a piss-up.

Welsh Regions have been massively historically underfunded since moses wore short pants. The coffin dodgers of the Old Boy's Club are treated to jollies, and amateur clubs are getting brand spanking new club houses and facilities. Also, I forgot to mention them building a hotel which was a vanity project. So, this finicial strategy is to purely serve themselves and their butties.

I will finish by reiterating that the WRU will not care about the performance on the pitch until it hits their pockets. And, we haven't begun to tread into the scandal of the sexist and racist culture at the organisation itself.

They are a national disgrace who have made welsh rugby into the laughing stock of the world of rugby.

slams door.

From All Blacks instagram:

Sam Cane has been ruled out for the game due to Head Injury Assessment (HIA) protocols, which will see All Blacks XV Captain, Du'Plessis Kirifi join the squad.

Mark Tele'a is also out for the France Test, after suffering a hand injury during the match against Ireland. Chay Fihaki has traveled as backs cover.

AJ Lam replaces Harry Plummer who suffered a minor leg injury.

Fabian Holland has also joined the All Blacks camp, following Sam Darry's season-ending MCL injury.

Just a bit of fun. I'll get the ball rolling with my thoughts:

All Blacks: Porsche GT3 which missed all of its scheduled services for years. Splutters and makes random warning noises all over the place but when its running well nothing looks smoother on the track

Springboks: Corvette Z06 - built on a classic model of raw power, but now has great handling too

Ireland: Audi S4 - annoyingly precise and efficient high performance

Australia: Mazda RX7 - tendency to spin out but when the rotary is at full revs blasting away its a hell of a good time

Argentina: Alfa Romeo 155 - looks good enough to beat anything but only works half the time

Wales: Morris Minor - hopefully someone's gonna take it off gramps and dump a new engine in it

Feel free to add your own :)

I am so happy that the Aussies are back playing solid rugby. Now I can stop pretending to like the bastards. It's been a tough year or so having to be all nice to the Aussies because they sucked at rugby. I couldn't keep a straight face anymore. It would take Meryl Streep to play me in the movie of my life (with the looks of Charlize Theron if she was a hot guy) because the acting skills I had to pull out to be all positive about those cu ... people stretched way beyond my acting level. I was sweating fearing people will catch me out any minute. I deserve a Nobel Prixe for keeping a straight face, never mind an Oscar. Let's face it, they are just a shit version of a Saffa or Kiwi. POM would agree. A barbie is infinitely inferior to a braai and Vegemite is just a cheap tasteless copy of Marmite. Now world order is restored and I can stop pretending to like the fcukers. Welcome back you dickheads.

The average Aussie male on a date

Admittedly I missed a couple of matches this past weekend, but I don't think I saw anyone try and make the mark from kickoff in the ones I did watch. I know there were more short restarts, especially in the England-Aus game, but Scotland took a couple of deep restarts and just kicked them out as standard.

Edit to add: I'm talking about the Autumn Nations Series particularly.

Edit 2: Didn't realise it wasn't being used in this series.

Just the 1 match run in the end for Ireland and New Zealand take it to France for their first defence this rum.

Has been a brilliant weekend on social media for the channels with such a positive response to the concept and many reporting back to me how they have had conversations playing golf, at rugby clubs or just with mates about it.

Really blows my mind sometimes how far it is going and how far it has already spread