The Silver Fern

Congratulations South Africa, immense game and a win for the ages.

Also a loss for one and I shed a few tears.

After SC’s red I had a lot of mates saying we were done, game over, but I had a strong feeling it would galvanize us and we would win.

Well I was wrong but kind of right.

Apart from the decisions to turn down points and missed kicks what killed us was the 50/50’s, our timing was out by a split second all game, difficult conditions.

We won against Ireland by a) taking the points on offer (and they lost by kicking to the corner) and b) not throwing 50/50’s. Not sure why we were still trying that touch rugby at the beach shit late into the 4th quarter.

Tl;dr this one hurts more than most.

Barnes, TMO, 14, 13, 12 men we are expected to and actually could of and should have won but didn’t play percentage footy like we did against Ireland.

C’est la vie, we’ll be back.

Rare is the day you scroll past all starting tight forwards in casual disgust on this poll. Says something.

Pie Guts didn’t want to have to do it before Japan but his hand was forced. He reluctantly broke the seal on a barrel of finest quality dried powder - let’s hope he’s got some more where that came from.

nice shot of Fozzie eating a bag of lollies

Maybe we’ve passed on the curse of doing defensive bombs at critical moments

@bovidae you don't know Richard McCall? He was pretty handy (for a Cantab). Gave Marty Holah a bit of competition for openside in the early 00's. Not sure what became of him. Went overseas (possibly to Tokoroa) I think.

Congratulations Ireland, what an amazing game, the Americans certainly got their exhibition match. Going to be a killer trivia question in about 100 years: "what ground did the Irish notch their first ever win against NZ at?"

Went down to Shin-Yokohama station to try my luck. First group of kiwis I asked at the station sold me a cat B ticket at face value. Kind of fun to not have winning stress while watching a knockout game.

@Yeetyaah starts at the top. E Jones pulled it off and stuffed it in his trouser pickets as soon as he was off stage.

Fiji lineout could lose them the game

what a classic

@Victor-Meldrew

Indeed, Weepu, did most certainly not, have this. He was taking and missing kicks in a game we won 8 - 7 with an injured hammy (or other leg injury) that he either a) didn’t tell anyone about or b) told the brains trust about and they continued with this plan.

Can you imagine if we lost that game, the recriminations echoing down the ages about this ‘game management’.

God bless Stephen Donald.

Boks embodying Mike Tysons maxim of having a great plan until getting punched in the mouth

@snowy when is Toeava due back from his sabbatical? Would slot nicely into the vacant no. 8 position.

why are aus kicking possession away

@mariner4life It's because the choking curse was so utterly at odds with our self image as a rugby nation - it was utterly emasculating (for men) and bewildering. The world made no sense and was overun with gleeful 'neutrals' cheering on our misfortune.

Keystone cops

@Kiwiwomble because we have (seemingly) unlimited upvotes. I believe the mods performed a sort of quantitative upvoting easing in light of unprecedented upvote shortages after the 2011 final and now here we are in an inflationary spiral

@gt12 legend