Australia vs Lions- The Official Match Thread

 About to kick off.

SkySports commentators of course taking the oppertunity to talk about history in the making if they win.

 Marvelous to see a horde of drunken Europeans in Melbourne as 4 nations gang up on Australia. It's like playing the WI in cricket

 how is george north picking up israel falou and carries him over his shoulder to stop foloa attempted tackle

 Lions 15- aus 9.  

halfpenny the best place kicker in the world gets another 3

 Lions 15- aus 9.  

halfpenny the best place kicker in the world gets another 3 points

 AAC you beauty! Awesome pass from O'Connor. Pressure kick coming

 Epic. 3rd Test to come

And in other news the Aussies are cruising to a win over Somerset in the cricket. This might be their greatest day in sport for years. 

@Sharkbok

Lions got Hlfpenny. Morne is a Fullpenny.  Got BMT to nail those deciding kicks

Well deserved win for OZ they played the better rugby. Last test will be exciting Lions have a lot to look at within their game plan!

aah I see what is wrong with Australian rugby.You need to play the fat mincy balls at 12 and the thin mincy balls at 13 like the rest of the world. You got it all mixed up....

@Mozart

Not  Joubert just you do not know your rugby laws. The problem is with you not him

Oh

Referee Craig Joubert of South Africa, who officiated in three of Australia’s Tests last term, has controlled 11 previous matches featuring the Wallabies.
Overall, Australia has won four, drawn one and lost six under Joubert. The six defeats were consecutive – five against New Zealand and an 18-35 loss to England in London on the 2010 Spring Tour.
Last year, Joubert was the referee when Australia beat Wales 20-19 at Sydney in June, Argentina 25-19 at Rosario, and for the third Bledisloe Cup Test in Brisbane which resulted in an 18-18 draw.
He was referee for the Rugby World Cup semi-final between Australia and New Zealand at Auckland in 2011, officiating in his first RWC Final the following weekend.

 I have just watched the tape and have to say it was great test match rugby. While Oz threw the last game away through bad goal kick and should have won the test on the rugby played, this test was extemely close and could have been won by either side. oZ pushed harder in the closing [parts of them game and their desire was greater.

Ou rooitwit must be devastated!  Get over it chimp ou! 

Great final has been set up. 

I remember reading a short story once, called Mr Contrary. That's you Spoony, no matter what is posted, you automatically take the contrary position. So firstly I'm not saying Joubert is pro Oz, in fact I think he tends to blow for the home team.

But you say I don't know my rules, which is true, I'm not a rules fundi.  I'm curious though, which of the three incidents I cited were misinterpreted and why. Provide some help, there's a good fella.

@Mozart

Your thinking is not facts mate. Its assumptions. Which makes it as useful as the toiletpaper I am about to wipe my arse with.

And I said laws. Rugby do not have rules but laws which makes it a interpertation of decisions. Which was Jouberts not yours and he called it as he saw it. If you did not see it you don't call it cause that equals to guessing.

Cheers 

Just as I thought , nothing but hot air from Mr Contrary. Call them rules, call them laws, call it interpretation......he got all three of those wrong.

 Spoony, are you saying that toilet paper is not useful? 

Most people find toilet paper very useful.

Sigh Mozart.

Its a judgement call.

(f) When a scrum becomes stationary and does not start moving immediately, the ball must
emerge immediately. If it does not a further scrum will be ordered. The ball is thrown in by
the team not in possession at the time of the stoppage.

You said when the Lions got a shove on. How long was the scrum stationary before he said use it? He waited and gave them a warning to use it. Which was a fair warning. Would you consider him to keep quiet and just order a scrum to the team not in possesion or let him use it and keep the play flowing?

Then your second point and third one

Again sigh

8.1 ADVANTAGE IN PRACTICE
(a) The referee is sole judge of whether or not a team has gained an advantage. The referee
has wide discretion when making decisions.
(b) Advantage can be either territorial or tactical.
(c) Territorial advantage means a gain in ground.
(d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

The Lions were given a tactical advantage and they decided to play it and to kick it. Joubert was correct. Advantage over. Poor decision making is not his problem. 

May I suggest you use the law book available at the IRB site?

Again Mozart you are repeating yourself and I am not going to repeat myself again. Just admit you were wrong. You are going to bang on about this to protect your ego. Its natural. Its the internet you do not want to feel like a cock cause you decided to first to try and insult a person than to check your facts. 

The scrum was stationary. You are not allowed to restart your the push. Its not a maul. He said use it you must use it. Its a judgement call

The laws want the game to go on. They want continuity. The only times advantage does not apply is if the ball or ball-carrier touches the referee and benefits from the collision and if the ball comes out of the tunnel of the scrum without being played. For the rest advantage applies. The referee and the referee alone decides on advantage. It is not a committee decision. Players do not decide it. You do not decide it. 

He had the freedom to play it as he wished. If he took contact the advatage would have still applied he decided to kick. So he chose out of his own free will to kick it away

And for old time sake 

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

d) Tactical advantage means freedom for the non-offending team to play the ball as they wish.

You are a broken record Spoony. Reffing is a combination of custom and laws. Players expect a forward moving scrum to be left  to its own resolution....in fact I really can't recall "use it" ever being applied to a moving scrum.

And players expect advantage  to last at least a phase....not be blown over when the first pass is made. That's the norm. Advantage means advantage .....it doesn't mean that possession is maintained only. You see that over and over again, where advantage continues until a clear advantage is established....if not the penalty or scrum is called.

Joubert was not consistent with standard reffing custom.

Yep the O Connor experiment has failed.....but then the Quaalude experiment was equally woeful. I agree with your assessment of Deans, he doesn't seem to have a feel for what Oz does best. Fortunately for you guys AC reached back and found a bit of Joe Cool inspiration.

what an awesome test, really enjoyed it and was the first of many games recordeed over the weekend that iwatched. i wasnt cheering for anyone but was more on the wallabies side, but when AAC scored that try i let a huge whoop which surprised me, but a real awesome test none the less, i kept expecting the wallabies to crack under that pressure, but they held their ;line big time and denied the lions a try which was meke effort.
and as for New Zealand born christain leilafano kicking that converison over, to our ANZAC bros, ur welcome, -_o

my thoughts on the game was the lioms were the better team, but got a lot of help from the wallabies who had a bad case of the butterfingers, i couldnt believe how many times they shot themsleves in the foot with just basic fundamentals. IMO had the wallabies not dropped half of the ball they had, they would have looked the stronger team.

the breakdown was one area the lions won it in spades, very similar to the way french out muscled the All Blacks in test 1. palu who is a player i like a lot was useless, hes the enforcer of the loose trio and failed to do his job, IMO dean should have subbed on gill way earlier to help negate the the lions prowess in this area, hooper was solid, but his herculean effort wasnt enough to stem the lions tide in this area.
if i was deano i would look to make the looseforwards for the thrid test 6 m hooper, 7 l gill, 8 b mowen, 20 w palu.

speaking of ben mowen, this guy has the potential to be one of the all time greats, pace, smarts, skills and loves the tight physical stuff, everything i like in my blindside flanker or No8.
IMO mowen is a better No8 then 6, but as long as hes starting, the wallabies will always be better off, cant think of a better loose forward in the world at the moment then mowen.

the bieber at 10 expereince hasnt failed, but its not living up to expectations, the alternative is tomua and the reality is hes just too green for this occassion and still a good season away from the yellow jersey.
quade is a big no no, the rebels v reds game showed exactly how much of a coward he is always hiding out at the back on defence and he was also crap with many aspects of his all round game especially the kicking.
i cant see deano changing this though, but a simple solution would be to swap New Zealand born leilafano with beiber, IMO leilafano is a better 10 then 12 anyway. but then again u dont want to tinker woth the N012 which leilafano is comfortablly making his own.

kepu needs to start test 3 and alexander needs to move over one with robinson to go on the bench, wallabies scrummed got owned, but kepus injection was a huge improvement, compared to robinson who was very lack luster.

genia needs to do more then what hes doing at the moment, hes the wrolds best 9 who looks like hes playing at half pace, this could be attributed to the lions work in the breakdowns and around the fringes though i guess.

both folau and tomane get a big pass mark, i love the idea of 100kg plus wingers and with all the attention thast folau was getting, he still contributed a lot.
deano needs to get that backline to do a lot more then an occasional bomb for folau to chae though, he can catch those under pressure in his sleep, so i would be aiming to at least get 8 - 10 bombs per half with folau as the targeted recipeint.

great test though and congrats to the wallabies, looking forward to next week, :o)

 Pedsman, I can't wait for Deans to get the sack either....he's the only one holding the Oz rabble together. QC will not get a run while Deans is there cos he's a complete knob and uncontrollable; a festering sore in any team!

I wish he would get picked as he's a choker extraordinaire when the real pressure comes on like at RWC 2011.

Of course you know better you clown. You and your bum buddy McKenzie.

@redsneck,

u say that cooper floruishes in a good team enviroment??? micheal hooper had a massive season for the wallabies last year, prob there best player, so did sharpie, timani, barnes, kepu and a whole host of other players. wallabies despite a crippling injury run which made the saffas arguments abouyt their injuries look pathetic, still managed to finish 2nd in the 4nats/RC argubaly the hardest tournamnet in the world, they ended the All blacks winning streak with a defnesvie effort similar to that of last weekend, so the enviroment might not be as bad some say.

my family and a certain wallabies family memebers are very close freinds and i know for a fact that when cooper made those comments the one that fudged of the higher ups in the adminstiration and more importantly the players, was when quade said if he was selected for the wallabies that weekend he would refuse to play.
his comments were meant to be more pro sausage link mackenzie then it was anti deans, but the fudged off a lot of players.
can u blame deano for not wanting to pick him??? i cant and that is the real key i guess, deano has a grudge on cooper and quade just needs to sleep in the bed he made and pray that ewan diabetes mackenzie gets made wallaby coach ASAP, cos thats the only way quades going to be wearing yellow again.

hard to say if cooper would have knocked that offload from izzy, ive seen him drop much easier passes, but ive seen cooper drop eaier passes and seen bieber catch harder ones too. the bad case of the dropsies the wallabies had that weekend, i doubt no one would have been immune, especially zero defence cooper.

but it wont be the worst idea to let go of deano, but to say that he dosnet have a winning culture is just silly, wallabies under deans has a better record over everyone bar the All Blacks and his winning percentage is better then the wallabies last two coaches.
in the professional era and including bob dwyer and allane jones, there has been no wallaby coach who has a superior winning percnetage over the All Blacks, rod macqueen in his three years was the best of the lot and his reign from 1997-2000 saw him win 5 from test matches and that was during the wallabies golden era and the All Blacks worst professional era (1998 especially) to date.

so when u think about that, the wallabies at their best and the All Blacks at their worst and the best the wallabies coach could do was 50%??? it makes deano not look anywhere near as bad.
still i hope lard boy mackenzie does get a shot, cos its the only way u see once and for all why the All Blacks are the top dawgs and then u can return to ur favpurite saffa past time and blame it on the ref.

@redsneck,

QC was racing the most severe persecution of any sports person Ive seen in an international competition and u think it was indicment of the small mided kiwi folk??? o_O
pffft what ever, quade had it coming and in spades with his grub tactics on arguablly NZs favourite son king richie, wallabies score a try and he shoves McCaw whose sitting on the ground with his back turned while the rest of the other wallabies are celebrating thier try, he knees McCaw in the face in what IMO was an intentional act, while McCaw is in a ruck cooper gropes his face like some gay retard in off the ball stuff and he u and ol kearnsy are surprised that when he goes to NZ they treat him like the wnaka he is??? u reap what u sow and cooper got the kamuffins he had coming.

but while cooper was doing his duty and intentionally trying to disrupt McCaws game, the All Blacks were studying his every move and he was found wanting big time in the semi finals, all the weaknesses the All Blacks had uncovered on cooper was attacked and cooper like a deer in headlights could do nothing but wiat for the 80mins to be over.
i have to admit i took a lot of satisfaction in that sooky look on coopers face a nice cherry on the cake to go with his useless performance and the crowd calling hima fuckwit, lolz.

be that as it may, cooper does have skills, ball in hand hes probablly the most attacking orientated flyhalf around, but his reds coach mr stay puff marshmallow man dosent do him any favours by hiding him out back on defence and thats a big contribution to him not getting selected and the demise of effectivness for the wallabies since the All Blacks blueprint.

i know ur a big reds man, hopefully not as big as mackenzie given the health risks, but i dont see how the wallabies can win the bledisloe, especially when the tests are for the forseeable future always going to be at least a minimum three games excluding the RWC years.
1998 was the worst year in the All Blacks history and that coincided with one of the all time great wallaby teams who coyuld give any team a run for thier money, and thats the only time the wallabies ever won a best of 3 series, the streak they had for the next 5 years were always two tests only meaning the wallabies only had to win one test to keep the bledisloe, though 2001 was a good year too as the wallabies piiped us 2-0.
what i thought was hilarious was that when the All Blacks won the bledisloe back in 2003 (big thanks to robbie who was the assitant coach, -_o) after three years the ARU wanted the bledisloe to go back to three tests, something the NZRU were trying to push for ages, the NZRU agreed, knowing that the financial side of things couldnt be ignored.

i do think the wallabies are the All Blacks biggest threat at the moment and for the forseeable future, but i still cant see them  winning the bledisloe andthats not going to change even if u inject a tub of lard into the wallabies coaching position and reinstate zero tackles cooper.

its funny, thpough cos the Boks are the biggest rivalry, the wallabies are the biggest threat, but england is the team i want the most, revenge for our only loss in 2012.