Rival Angels

[Prestwick]

The Haka is a general Pacific Island thing so islands from New Zealand in the south all the way to Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and even Hawaii have different hakas.

Here is a very rare occurrence, where two Pacific Island teams meet up. And if two Pacific Island teams meet up that can only mean one thing, right?

UH HUH! DAAAANCE OOOFF!

EDIT: Robotic breakdancing aside, the Haka can be very contentious as only the Pacific Islanders are allowed to do it and the Northern Hemisphere sides (and occasionally South Africa) complain that the adrenaline boosting war dance gives teams like New Zealand an unfair advantage and it has led to some annoying bust ups. Most recently, Wales refused to allow New Zealand to do the Haka because New Zealand refused to do the Haka before the Welsh national anthem. This led to a lot of drama not seen since Scott Steiner last forgot how to count to five..

The Haka can also be controversial in its ancient tradition of nearly but never causing brawls with multiple opposing players going toe to toe with those performing the haka before withdrawing.

The best example was during the 2007 Rugby World Cup Semi-Final between France and New Zealand. Look for the guy with the HUGE black beard, yeah..the one who look like Mick Foley's big brother. There you go. That guy is Sebastien Chabal and he eats rocks for breakfast and ended up scaring the CRAP out of the Kiwis..I mean, look into the man's eyes.

Thats the eyes of the only man in France who doesn't "do" surrendering..

[BrendaRua]

Wow! Thank you so much for all of that! I really had no idea of it until recently so it's wonderful to get this background. I'm well aware of the power in a face off and the advantage to be gained if you can get in the opponent's head. But this is just plain HOT!

[Prestwick]

Yeah, Chabal is glaring at each All Black as if to say "Its RAPE time and I'm a'gonna rape you, you, you, especially you and you!"

This week is about the good, the very bad, the ugly and the weird.

We're going to start with the ugly and its one of those things which has been haunting Rugby since the dawn of time: eye gouging.

Imagine this, you're in a pile of bodies competing for the ball and suddenly, a hand comes out of nowhere and clamps over your face. A finger, maybe two slide against your eyeball and press hard into your eye socket, hook and then pull and push. Its painful, it can be absolutely terrifying and its highly illegal. Welcome to the world of eye gouging.

Before the world of instant slo-mo replays and every game being televised, there was no hope of any serial offender being punished and so, like hockey, you had enforcers and enforcers to protect the wee lads from other enforcers and gouging was the key weapon. In fact, its still practised in France where despite cringe worthy footage, relatively little is done about it. Elsewhere though, the usual ban is for 18 weeks. Luckily for rugby, every televised game is covered by a post match citing officer who has the power to cite players for foul play after the match has finished. Lets just say that if the WWE employed a citing officer then that'd pretty much ruin all the story lines.

Gouge and you're looking not only at your season being effectively over but your chance to play for your country and the Lions being put in serious jeopardy. So take Munster, Ireland and Lions player Alan Quinlan in this horrible act of gouging. He has been cited and its pretty much a given that he is going to be sitting out his trip to the Lions and the first four months of next season with a lengthy ban. And rightly so.

And now to the good! Croke Park, Europe's best kept secret as far as sports stadiums are concerned, played host to another world (and Heineken Cup) first last weekend: the first all Irish club rugby match between Leinster and current Heineken Cup champions Munster. The game was played in front of a record breaking 82,300 fans (the most for a club rugby fixture) and was hotly contested by two teams who are also challenging hard for Magners League honours as well. In the end Leinster prevailed with some superb defensive and attacking rugby. When Munster go into Leinster's last 22 meters around 18 times and fail to score even once that is very impressive for Leinster's defence.

But there were tries too and boy were there tries!

Leinster now go to the final at Murrayfield in Edinburgh, Scotland to play Leicester Tigers who saw off Cardiff Blues in a rather weird fashion in yet another world first: a penalty shoot out in Rugby.

Here the commentator who speaks first did play at fly-half for England. Fly Half is the position that usually handles the job of kicking balls between posts unless you are in France where they tend to give the job to the scrum half instead. Anyway, his prognosis of what its like to kick a ball between two posts when theres 70,000 odd people staring at you is spot on. I'm a forward and being a fattie never wanted to kick a ball in my life after my first time!!!

Anyway, it was a rather cruel way of dumping Cardiff out of the cup but I could think of crueller and that is possibly the fairest way of conducting a knock-out competition.

[Prestwick]

Okay so we missed week or two but we're back with an (albeit short) update!

Last week we heard that England fly-half Johnny Wilkinson is moving to French Club Toulon from Newcastle Falcons, the club he has been with for most (if not all) of his professional career for a reported £700,000 ($1.2 million?) a season which may sound like small change but in the salary capped world of Rugby, that is a huge amount of money.

A bit of background on the guy though. Wilkinson is one of England's best known fly-halfs since Rob Andrews in the early to mid 1990s. The fly-half occupies a role similar to that of the quarterback as well as borrowing from the defence captain somewhat in that he is a key distributor and decision maker of the ball when it is in his hands but also is responsible for holding the team's defence together (although this role is shared with the scrum-half and the centers). When he has ball in hand does he pass or kick or even take it himself? If he does pass, who to? If he kicks, where and for what purpose. The fly-half have a huge amount of pressure and as such you usually see acts of genius, idiocy or just grim desperation that you'd find in quarterbacks like the the Manning brothers or Tom Brady.

Anyway, Wilkinson isn't the greatest fly-half ever, nor is he currently the greatest now (that honour must go to Dan Carter of New Zealand) but for four years between 1999 and 2003 he was quite possibly the best of his generation and was absolutely untouchable. For 2003 he formed part of the best back line up England has ever devised with Matt Dawson (SH), Ben Cohen, Will Greenwood, Mike Tindall, Jason Robinson and Josh Lewsey which won England the Rugby World Cup. The final play was in extra time with seconds to go he kicked the drop goal (like a field goal except the opposite team is only meters away from you and about to kill you) which won the game. Heres a video which the BBC put together chronicling his ten years in the Six Nations Championship.

His main strengths was the fact that he was a great all rounder. He isn't the biggest guy, his kicking can be erratic at times, his passing sometimes dodgy (and grew worse with each year) and his attacking flair sometimes muted. But what the one he does have is a superb rugby brain. Knowing when to release a player with a perfectly timed pass, where to kick and how far and despite his small size being an utterly ferocious tackler. I've seen him bodycheck guys twice his size and take down people in ways that makes even the most hardened forward wince he is so fearless. Also while his positional (i.e. kicking for field position) may be poor at times, his kicking at goal (i.e. field goals) are faultless.

His weaknesses? His body. There were rumours that the NFL were scouting him after the World Cup in 2003 but because of a succession of injuries between 2003 and the present day, he has only played a handful of games since he kicked that winning drop goal. He took part in the 2007 and 2008 Six Nations and the 2007 RWC but since then has suffered freak injury after freak injury which has largely removed him from the international rugby scene. Sadly it meant we were robbed of the chance to see Wilkinson and Carter go head to head in their primes

More to come next week but enjoy the clip of a true Rugby legend.

[Prestwick]

Wait! Hold the fone! Just found a peach of a clip!

Super 14 game the other week between the Stormers and Western Farce..I mean Force. Anyway, brilliant build up by the Stormers and it looks like they're going to score...or are they?

This, ladies and gents, is what happens when someone fumbles a ball just before they score a try. Its BOTCHAMANIA!

[albone]

Johnny Wilkinson is cool as hell! That was a nice piece on him. The Botchmania was definitely a bonehead play. Hold on to the ball!

Couple of questions from seeing these:

Can you attempt at kick/Field Goal at any time?

Play seems to continue even after a guy gets tackled. When does a play stop? Penalty?

[Prestwick]

As long as the ball is in play, you can attempt a drop goal at any time. You do see lots of long range drop goals (like Francois Steyn's two MASSIVE bombs from up to 70m away against Australia).

Play stops when one side or player infringes or when the ball is knocked or kicked out of play. They can range from knocking the ball forward (fumbling) and kicking the ball out of play all the way through to tackler not releasing the player or prop collapsing the scrum.

What you're seeing is the process of ball coming into play, player being tackled, ruck being formed, ball being recycled or turned over and then the process begins afresh. At least thats the idea

[Prestwick]

Here is the video of the two drop goals here -> http://zoopy.com/q/9zc which was during the first Tri Nations game between South Africa and Australia in 2007

The first time, with about eight minutes left on the clock, Australia (in yellow) try and clear for touch but the ball falls short to the Full Back who is Steyn. The angle and distance is crazy but the kid just lines it up and then *boom* fires one over from about 50 - 60 meters away.

The second one is the result of a deliberate set piece move. The forwards rumble the ball up the middle towards the posts while the kicker (in this case, Steyn) hangs back in what they call "the pocket" waiting for the ball. When he gets the ball, he has roughly five seconds to fire the ball over before the defence catches up to him but in this case he executes it perfectly.

EDIT: the music that plays between scores is apparently a fusion of African and European music popular in South Africa.

[AdamB.]

Interesting to see Rugby Union thread here. I'm not big fan of Rugby Union but big support of England Rugby Union National Team & British & Irish Lions and Rugby Union is one of great sports.

[Prestwick]

Thats the spirit, Adam!

This week we've got end of season thrillers and Rugby Seven fun and games.

The first is the Super 14 grand final. Next season they're going to crank it up to five teams with Australia getting a fifth team. If it keeps the competition going then thats great as I think Tri Nations rugby has benefited from regular cross-border competition.

Anyway, the Vodacom Blue Bulls against the Waikato Chiefs resulted in an emphatic victory for the Bulls, giving South Africa its second ever Super 14 crown and its second in three years. This is a particular warning to the B&I Lions as most of the South African team may well come from this league winning side.

Second, England triumphed in the London round of the International 7s championship at Twickenham in a total stoking thriller against New Zealand. Rugby Sevens is a cut down version of the full 15 man game. 7 men on each team covering the same amount of field which means that as everyone gets very tired very quickly through running a lot the game only lasts 20 minutes with 10 minute halfs. But it is incredibly exciting and it is immensely popular, the prize event being the Hong Kong sevens which is usually sold out at its 45,000 capacity at Kai Tak over the course of the event. My tip? Get yourself a seat in the South Stand where the beer, girls and fancy dress flow, just watch out for the showers of plastic steins!!!