Decided to tweak it from Summer Internationals bc its been freezing & frosty down here in my part of New Zealand!

  • Tonga vs Italy
  • Samoa vs Spain
  • USA vs Scotland
  • Canada vs Romania
  • New Zealand vs England
  • Australia vs Wales
  • Japan vs Georgia
  • Namibia vs Portugal
  • South Africa vs Ireland
  • Argentina vs France
  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    1•5 months ago
    • Italy by 12-15
    • Samoa by 20-25
    • Scotland by 60-90
    • Romania by 25-30
    • New Zealand by 10-15
    • Australia by 15-20
    • Georgia by 3-8
    • Namibia by 5-10
    • South Africa by 12-20
    • France by 18-30

    I think the best match for fun rugby is probably going to be Australia-Wales again. I’m not a big fan of either Ireland or South Africa’s style. But for silly fun Scotland wasting USA could be a good watch too.

    I’ve put NZ-Eng as a close one, but over the last couple of years NZ have had a habit of bouncing back from a close win, or even defeat to put on a clinic. It happened against Argentina & Australia, but England are made of sterner stuff.

    With a SH (and very good) referee in Nic Berry i’m hoping for a less stop-start match and a cleaner breakdown/offside line so it could be a pretty exciting match as England’s backs are pretty good and Mitchell / Smith work very well off quick ball.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      1•5 months ago

      Just checking through the results and my average picking winners was bad this weekend. I’ll hide the rest behind spoilers, but I think you could have flipped a coin & done as well as I did. But lets say 1 point for picking the winner & 2 for getting pretty close to the margin, I only got 7/20.

      Mentions match results
      • Got the winner right, but was quite off on the margin for this one. Tonga are a fair bit weaker than Samoa but even though I was expecting Italy to win I didn’t think they’d be up by 22 points. (1)
      • Shocked by the margin here, after last week - but looking through the other results a lot of teams flipped the script from the week before so may Samoa struggled to get up for this game. (1)
      • Apparently it was pretty hot & humid, and maybe USA are on the rebound after being pretty rubbish in the last cup cycle. (1)
      • I didn’t see this coming at all, I thought Romania would be decent and Canada were very poor last week (0)
      • Given I was picking a range for the margin I don’t think its fair to say that a 7 point win counts as close, but at least the ABs got the job done (1)
      • At times Australia looked like they were going to romp, but I think the wet weather kept it close (1)
      • The only one I think its fair to say I was close on, 2 points instead of 3, but Georgia got past Japan. The latter should be pretty unhappy with that, given they’re playing at home (2)
      • I was basically picking the home side here, but maybe at the lower levels its not quite as important. Haven’t watched any highlights but the Iberian peninsula seem to be up & coming in the 2nd tier of World Rugby (0)
      • I thought with the injuries Ireland were carrying into the match that South Africa would get the job done at home; but I guess they picked up early injuries and for whatever reason only scored through penalties (didn’t watch the match) which is a bit of a reversion to type after the tries last week. (0)
      • Given how easily France won last week I picked them to easily win this but not to be. I wonder if all the off field drama disrupted their buildup or if Argentina with time in camp are getting back to the team they can be? (0).

      Looks like I missed a couple of matches too:

      • Chile - Belgium
      • Paraguay - Hong Kong

      I’m going to go with the South American teams in both matches given they’re at home and I have a good competition to build experience and combinations now. Lets say Chile by 12, and going on Sco-HK in the U20s, Paraguay by 30.