2023 RWC Buildup, Squads, Fixtures 'etc'

I will be honest, I thought NZ did enough at the end to get a scrum penalty. They did to SA what SA do to other teams. Not sure if it was kickable, but couldve set NZ up deeper in the SA half for one last phase.

The lineouts were a complete shambles for both teams. More so SA.

And dear god, like 4 piss poor drop goal attempts? Keep the possession, dont just give the ball away cheaply. I would be pissed off if im a forward, killing myself to get the ball near the opponent 22 and the backs all want a piece of glory by trying drop goals. And not even good attempts either.

As for the red card, i didnt like that it happened, but dont disagree with the call either. Didnt look like it made much difference to NZ.

South Africa with 4 titles!!! Insane. Congrats to Rassie & staff. 2 for Rassie!! Certainly an all time great.

Going forward though, I feel both the kiwis and saffers will struggle to stay ahead of the French and Ireland.

For the kiwis. There's no more Whitelock, Rettalic and Aaron Smith. I think their run has ended. The bright spot is the new front rows.

South Africa have to find an out half. Replace a relatively elder pack.

France will struggle to find spots for the young bucks. They're falling over talented players, it's ridiculous.

Jeepers, don't tell some around here you won by making a few mistakes and with a share of luck and the bounce of a ball. Their wee heads will implode. 😁

Congrats Jacovs. Enjoy holding the Webb Ellis.

"Now imagine the furore if the try stood and NZ won the game with the officials missing a rather blatant knock on?"

Now imagine the furore if the ref made a bad call for a penalty, realised it on the spot but instead of reversing the penalty, allowed the eventual winning team to kick it.

That's one of the reasons why Barnes and his team will be under scrutiny. Allowing one team a score off a bad decision but disallowing the other. And a well taken try at that, whilst the winners couldn't even score a point in 45 minutes of play. Piss poor.

Worst winning team was SA 2007 they weren’t even a top 3 team IMO , best team 2015 ABs a bit of a debate where you rank the rest and I was too young for 91 and 87 so won’t talk out my …

edit - winning with a lesser team is also a compliment to the group of guys so don’t be offended any 2007 SA supporters

I think NZ should have had a pen off that last scrum. I also think they should have had a pen before that (not sure if it was the ruck directly before the scrum or the ruck previous). It looked in real time to me that a SA player (could have been Smith again!) had their hand on the ground while competing at the ruck. Can't find it in any clips on Youtube though.

I think there were a lot of ref calls which went SAs way. FdK bought a pen with the player on the wrong side, we've seen plenty of times where the ref dismissed that because of such theatrics from the SH. EE was lucky not to get a yellow for disrupting that pass in the 22, at least should have been a warning for cumulative pens.

The NZ try was probably the right call, was worth reviewing but wasn't clearly forward from the angles we saw. It was no more forward than EEs knock down v France so SA can't complain. The decision to disallow the other try has question marks over how far they went.

As said above, going for the long range kick was a bad call by NZ. It was a low percentage kick and I think they'd have had a better chance of winning by going down the line. They were the better team but circumstances often dictate in sport that the best team doesn't win.

No I dont agree, France nearly beat them and they hadn't a great team back then. NZ fell over the line.

Jesus, the amount of bitterness and glee towards NZ for not winning their 4th World Cup is pretty pathetic to read. Sad f**kers.

The TMO seemed to go out of his way last night to find things to pull New Zealand up on and he left alot of South Africa discrepancies go.

All throughout this tournament South Africa seem to have been the benefactors of lenient refereeing.

Just the France game alone, the blocked down conversion should have been retaken and the winning penalty overturned.

I feel a bit of sympathy for Cane just because of the occasion, but it was a red card and the officials had no choice. I'm sure the last thing any of them want to do is send someone off in a WC final to the point that there may even be a smidgen more leniency, but this was pretty clear cut unfortunately.

Zombie Rassie version

Definite scrum penalty at the end - Wayne Barnes bottled it.

I hope that maybe if NZ didn't manage to win the game, they did at least show that this 7/1 split stuff is just nonsense, along with many SA 'innovations'. SA won in spite of their style of rugby. I've seen a lot of people of Twitter saying that winning rugby is all that matters, and there's no playing rugby the 'right way', but the reality is that NZ at least matched SA in every facet of forward play, while being a man down.

On top of this, SA were scrummaging for a lot of the game with NZ having Jordie in the pack, and they still didn't have a clue how to take advantage of the extra man in the backs. Just imagine the problems Ireland would cause a defence in this situation.