I agree silly scorelines such as 74-0 should be heavily criticised.

Suppose that could come into it, still think that Russian Rugby Union is making very potent strides, they will have to include them in something soon given that they could soon attract players of higher quality to their league if they are cash rich like their football cousins.

when you've got tony smith using words like 'useful run-out' and john dixon saying 'we can only grow from here' and 'It's a starting point' i think it gives you an idea of how the coaches and temas approached the [ifriendly[/i

I thought that the top Romanian players also plied their trade elsewhere though?

i read last week that the romanian team in the euro competition, buceresti (spelling?) is made up of the best romanian players.
im pretty sure they play their games in romania.
1,000 turned up to see their game at the weekend.
also 3 or 4 more sub 2,500 crowds over weekend

Seems a little 'pot and kettle' from you there.

RU landslide = bad; RL landslide = OK.

You're quite new round here, aren't you



That's exactly how it works.
It's one of life's contradictions.
You will also find that according to many on here the fawning RU friendly press never say a bad word about RU, and that examples of RU journalists slating games are frequently linked to the board by the same people.

worst attempt at irony ... ever

fair enough. i still say it depends on the game.
when the union press come out saying its a global game and then the all blacks put towards 100 points on a 'strong' union nation like samoa you have to say that its a bit of an exagerated claim.
as far as i know the vast majority of folk esxpected england to easily beat the young, largely inexperienced wales team on friday.
i certainly did. that's why i had 20 quid on england -36

But you don't think people expected the All Blacks to whip Samoa.

If you know so little about union why comment upon it.

Making judgements with no knowledge, isn't that a definition of bigotry?

Shadow is like a parasite that lays dormant waiting for a willing apologist host to innocently wander past that he can cling to.

That's a little harsh

You've made me feel guilty now.

Rugby Union is not a global game by any stretch of imagination, still at least they are increasing the amount of games for the smaller nations against the giants of world rugby. They can only get better that way. League is very shoddy when it comes to this, take PNG for example, how many tests have they played since WC 2000, about 6/7 at most. They should have made the 4 Nations tournament scuedled for 2009 a 5 Nations tournament. PNG is the only country in the world where Rugby League is the national sport, at least the RU bodies look after the smaller nations.

couldn't agree more

It's actually made up of the best Romanian players from their own league, not just the Romanian players as that would just be the Romanian side. The argument used was that Georgias top players mainly play elsewhere, but I thought Romanias did as well

Me too.

1- PNG can only join the 3/4 Nations if it is financially viable. ATM it is barely financially viable without them.
2- I reffer the honourable gentleman to the RFU's treatment of Tonga in the last two world cups, and would suggest that RU bodies do, in fact, not look after the smaller nations.

And what treatment would that be?
The RFU have nothing to do with running the RWC.

Best game of the Heineken Cup so far today at the Millennium Stadium.
Looks like the gamble to switch grounds paid off with 27000 attending.

Excellent game & well worth the £15.00 I paid for me & my son to go. the Glawsterr fans certainly did their bit to crank up the atmoshere, although only opening the middle & lower tiers helped. Vainokolo was pertty anonymous when he came on I thought

With Sale selling out Edgeley Park for the first time (IIRC) for the visit of Munster, is the Heineken Cup finally starting to capture the imagination and interest of English and Welsh fans in the same way it has the Irish and the French in recent years?

Possibly, although I think the pricing helped with the Blues game, I'll reserve judgement until after I've seen the crowd for the Biarritz game at the Arms Park in December.

With maximum points from 2 games, that should also help boost the crowd. From memory its about a 12,500 capacity, so really anything under 10,000 would be a disaster.

Be interesting how much they get against Leicester in the EDF today.

9815, according to be BBC. I suspect that it'll be much higher for the visit of Bath on Friday night, I remember going to to see them play in a friendly about 10 years ago & we ended up building our own terracing out of a pile of breeze blocks under the hospitality boxes at the River Taff end, there were that many in the ground. Victor Obugu got sent off that night for being chopsy, so that dates it.