Is a NEW British and Irish League About to SHUT South Africa Out? | Loose Pass Rugby Podcast

Including the Harlequins game, out of the last 12 games the Stormers have won five. One of those is Dragons at home, one of those is Edinburgh at home, one of those is a lesser Tigers that was deliberately trying to lose at home. It's not great. Rugby's a simple game in there. If you don't want someone to tackle you, just run around them.

And that's what Cardiff did. They just ran around them. Yes, I do think there is some substance to it. I think there are a lot of clues. There's a lot of dots that one could join to suspect that a British and Irish league is coming.

We're going to be left iron dry. Nowhere to go. Double World Cup champions and nobody to play against. This is the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast, only on Megaphone Rugby. Welcome back to the Loose Pass Rugby Podcast.

Back on a Thursday, as usual. Last week we had to postpone the Dean to Sunday for a variety of reasons. So welcome back, Hugh. Hello, we're back, everybody. The Wednesday crew is here once again.

oh it's not even wednesday when they watch it is it it's not thursday night i'm so i'm i'm my i'm fixated on your microphone you know it's making a bit to escape again i'm trying not to fix it on my microphone i didn't touch it because it's been playing up all the whole time that we've been talking pre-recording so it's okay at the moment but it might change everybody say how much you like my new marx and spencers jumper okay no it's yeah it can go with a coconut bun I've got fun with the coconut bun. There's an Afrikaans word for you. It goes well with the coconut bun. That's what it means. Anyway, let's talk about rugby a little bit.

And apparently, you know the number one target when the Stormers lose. People start tagging you and start saying, yeah, you were right, you were wrong, whatever. Have you now found new state? Have you got a newfound Stormer celebrity status? Or what's the story?

I'm the guy when the Stormers lose. Hi, Dobbo. Hi, Snaman. Hi, everyone. Not Snaman.

Darby. Dave. okay hi everybody from the stormers who watches our podcast every week um yes every time the stormers lose um i get tagged on social media and in comments and things saying it hugh you told us this would happen and it did this isn't the identity that i wanted i didn't want to be the guy like the storm was losing guy and i don't hate the stormers i keep having to say this every time i come on the podcast i don't hate the stormers okay i really like the stormers and that's why i hold them to a high level and things and they're really good for views so you know it would be really really unconstructive if i did hate them but yeah they did they did lose to cardiff on friday and um it's my fault apparently well explain a couple of things to me and put it into context in a south african context it's let's say for argument's sake lends the loss to the sharks i would be you know because i'm not a shark supporter now it's almost lost to cardiff you're really a card of support so how do you feel about that side of it in fact the card of beat and never mind that the storm was lost how does that work well firstly i think cardiff fully deserve to win i thought they played very well i watched the full game and i enjoyed it and i thought they scored some very nice tries and i thought that a lot of players played excellently including joan lloyd at 10 who's a player who i've criticized a lot but he played very well in this game i thought jacob could beat them on the wing played very well um tain bashing at number eight they they deserve to win they were the better side on the night and they they they made they made a plan they reacted they solved a problem because it's easy to remember that at the beginning of the game they were getting smashed they were getting in the scrum and the collisions and things and then they found a way around it and they played to the referee and they got out of it you know that they were down to 14 men in the first of what three minutes or something like that and they they conceded to try and you thought oh god this is gonna be a long day for the cardiff it wasn't i'm not a cardiff fan as you rightly say in wales you suppose if you're not a cardiff fan you're supposed to hate cardiff but i don't so i break the rules a little bit you know there's um there's the abc club anyone but cardiff um oh anyone but cardiff okay that was a bit slowly um so but i'm not i'm you're supposed to hate cardiff a lot but i don't so i'm i get in trouble for that um so i think you just have to to praise them but it's again the storm is you know they had these two games ulster away and cardiff away they did the hard bit which was beating glasgow at home smashed them and then all they had to do was hang on to top of the log all they had to do was beat cardiff and ulster you didn't meet either of them i mean they had to take a three at the end to get losing bonus point it's a bit of a calm down from top of the league isn't it well yeah there's there's always a question you know something like this happens that the one team particularly bad or did the other team play particularly well or was it somewhere in the middle you know the card of played better than we normally do or what they expect them to and the storm is obviously something went a bit awry there let's talk about that what which one of the two was that i think cardiff played better than they normally do certainly most cardiff fans that i've seen have said that it was their best performance of the season and i'm not surprised because i don't think that the stormists have ever won in cardiff i think and i always had a feeling that it would be one of those games i'm very happy that um cardiff won for one reason is because lee halfpenny meant that he signed off his career in that way lee halfpenny was my favorite player and the way that he got to end his career i'm very happy about coming onto the pitch and not touching the ball that's probably what he wanted as well if it had come down to a kick from him to win it i think i would have been sick so i'm glad it was totally stress-free so that was nice and you know i've seen harry saying that the storm has played poorly the thing is mvay since i went to see the storm as ah that makes it sound like it's my fault again but since i went to see uh no um harlequin all the good story yeah yeah oh yeah yeah it's you man i'm telling you now i was gonna ban you next time he sees you better not wear your cap next time i'm telling you you can't ban me from harlequins you can ban me from kate i can throw you out of coaching box you can throw it out there because like in the same place yeah you probably can get me thrown out um uh the including that harlequin's game of the last 12 games the stormers have won five and one of those is dragons at home one of those is edinburgh at home one of those is a lesser tigers that was deliberately trying to lose at home you know it's it's not great considering where they were up until then they were unbeaten in 12 wherever it was um it's not a disaster it's not oh my god kind of time but but it's worse than six out of 12, for example. You made a video about the Stormers' defense. We're going to talk about stats just now a little bit later on in this video, but just talk to me about the defense.

What did you see there? I mean, they've got a quarter cut around them, the so-called double tackles and stuff like that. Where did it go? What happened to the defense? Rugby's a simple game in there.

If you don't want someone to tackle you, just run around them. And that's what Cardiff did. they just ran around them this is kind of what happened so they avoided the smash zone i i england did the same thing against france at the weekend they just avoided getting getting smashed and the woman yeah oh you must be clear you must clarify we don't really know what's going on if it was the men i wouldn't say the men yeah but we don't know you say england and we say okay you know we ultimately go there we're actually trying you know every sunday we're going to do something about, publish something about women's rugby, including the second episode of Libby's podcast, by the way. Watch out for that one. And you and I are going to be doing quite a few more interviews as well while we're on the subject of the women, which we'll get back to just now.

But yeah, we'll talk about the stats. And the reason I want to ask you this is that the Storm's defense, you know, the first couple of games had conceded no points at all. Remember that? Those were hello days. And now, according to the UFC, they're the second worst defending team, according to the statistics.

now like you get large lies and damn statistics i want to talk to you about that just now a little bit later so watch out for that so let's talk about the rules you know i say the bulls and i get like goosebumps because the pools are in a good space i think i mean they they made a bit of hard work against bennett and maybe but it made it a bit harder the worst thing that came out of that day was the fact that we i was told that now we're the stormers like a rugby pod of course this is the storm is loose pass pod no nothing he's ever going to be either it was so funny i laughed at the same it was a bit of a joke anyway look at me about the bulls what are you seeing there are they on the upwards curve are they actually going to be running out of steam there's a lot of rumor a lot of talk about the fact that they might be caught out in knockout games with the kind of rugby that they're playing any truth to that the bulls sorry yeah the bulls i don't know i don't know i don't know about that because the storm is like i said had two games to secure top spot and you could kind of call that a rehearsal for knockouts and didn't manage it whereas the bulls have actually been winning now i do think that the bulls rugby against benetton was very goofy particularly gamete day he had a very goofy game and so whilst you obviously won by a big score line i don't i wasn't that impressed by the performance i have to say you know you got over the try line it's really hard to analyze the balls and this has always been a problem it's not really a problem but there's always been a thing with the balls it's really hard to analyze you because you score so quickly like you get the ball and you either lose it or you cross the try line and so there's nothing to analyze this so it's it's not like leinster or glasgow who hold the ball for ages so you've got loads to talk about and things and it it's partially my um my kind of northern hemisphere perspective on it and also to be fair super rugby is a lot like this as well where teams hold the ball for a long amount of time and there's lots of shapes and there's lots of deception there's lots of players standing in different places and things there's lots to look at whereas south african rugby is much quicker you know there's the the the time between getting the ball and scoring is much shorter so it's difficult for me with my northern hemisphere brain to wrap my head around i wonder if the uh bulls might be looking to um um increase the number of phases that they would like to go through per attack in the future in the knockouts or in general just in in seasons to come i mean the next evolution kind of a thing yes exactly i wonder what um coach neil has got planned well on the subject of bulls assistant coaches talk about our next guest if you don't mind briefly kennedy kennedy simba am i saying his surname right timber timber timber yes timber yeah very looking forward to it he's written this whole thing about transitions in rugby which is the hot topic in rugby at the moment. Something that I know that Dobbo obviously spoke about on his interview with you as well about how important transitions are. So I'm looking forward to learning about it. And we'll be doing a review of the Champions Cup final and... With Kennedy.

With Kennedy. And he'll give us all of his insights, which will be much more insightful than mine, I'm very sure. Well, we'll be on the subject of next week now. We're going to be doing a review of the Champions Cup final with Bernard Jackman on Lackaracki Pod. Then we're going to be doing a preview of the UFC knockouts with you, Hugh Griffin, on the lacquer rugby part.

And then we're going to be doing a review of the Champions Cup final with Kennedy Timbal, transition coach, assistant coach, with the Bulls, former Zimbabwean international, all-of-famer, rugby all-of-famer. Busy week for us next week, don't you think? It's chock-a-block. I'm very busy this week as well because I'm finishing all my coverage of the Women's Six Nations, so I'm extremely busy. We'll be on this subject now.

We keep talking around it. What's happening there? We have no idea. England won it. again uh france came second again ireland came third again so on the surface not much changed it was quite interesting if you really get into the depths of it because england's team changed quite a lot because they've had injuries and retirements and pregnancies which you don't get to talk about in men's rugby and and france had a new coach and they've got a whole new game plan france have been the most interesting team because they've got a new coach new game plan new structures so they've been the most interesting to watch the tapes of look at the stats of and stuff and they're so physical they're so physical and they've increased their line breaks compared to last season by are you ready 93 percent quite a lot yeah Ireland not that interesting Ireland a bit better but not tons better not really any difference Italy don't know if they're good or bad they lose to good teams they beat bad teams score some nice tries same as the men probably relatively better than the men no I'm just saying you know beat good teams and then lose against bad teams that kind of up and down kind of a thing yeah Scotland were dreadful and Wales were somehow even worse OK, so this is as usual pretty much I don't know I was not keen on that thing let's get back to the URC let's talk about the Lions a little bit they've got an uproar, you watch the game against Munster as well and the Bulls have to face Munster and I was worried the Bulls have to play the Lions I'm never a fan of a derby and a knockout except if it's maybe the final which I'm hoping it's going to be a Stormers Bulls final act in Cape Town if it works out but the lines that happened before it has happened before yeah how did it go listen I'm not living in the past otherwise I could have just retired and never talk about rugby again I mean it's always I'm just saying I mean this it's going to be an interesting one yeah all change talk about the Lions I mean they're staying behind in Ireland number one is that a idea number two are they that's interesting because when the scarlets were potentially um going to have an a knockout round at a quarterfinal in south africa they played their last game against the sharks and then they could have been back to play the sharks again in the quarterfinal i asked someone at the scarlets um were they going to stay down and they said no it was too expensive to stay down so they're going to come back and go back down again so it's interesting that the hot dog lions are staying up in ireland maybe the plane tickets are so expensive now of fuel prices that it's stupid to stay somewhere maybe possible i mean i spoke to edgar the other day and by the way watch out for that interview that was a good one you know these unexpected traveling costs huge big impact yeah that is a story for another so what are you thinking that lands any chance i mean they have got a lot of injuries apparently key players you know not that not necessarily going to be back but they have a week off linster has to play a championship final and then a knock knockout against the lions what do you think um no i would be shocked if the lions beat leinster beyond shocked i mean the the game against that they had against them a couple of weeks ago was closer than it looked on the scoreboard leinster scored three tries in the last 10 minutes and i thought that definitely one of the lions ruled out tries was very harsh very harsh so it could have been a different game that i thought against munster in many ways the lions were the better team i enjoyed watching them they were a little bit they reminded me a bit of watching a welsh team in that there's lots of good stuff going but there's just that lacking that little bit of extra something just that little bit like final five just not there and they got unlucky against munster because craig casey beat them on his own if craig casey wasn't on the pitch for munster lines would have won it very easily he he dragged them kicking and screaming once again to champions cup qualification and so i think yeah the lions i mean if you you could say though that their two tries were what uh an intercept from kwan horn and against 13 men was it at the time so you can say you know but then the weather wasn't lions adjacent which is i just thought of that at the top of my head i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna remember that lions adjacent that's a good rugby term or bulls adjacent it's basically the same thing yeah you're actually a bit lucky that you're not playing the lions really because i don't know if you've heard them but um the lions are the south african shields champions reigning yeah i've not only heard it i knew it but i forgot about it because it's so unimportant who cares but well done lions on that i'm not saying it's you know anything to do the lions it just doesn't these shields don't mean anything to me i mean like the scottish and the italian teams are in the one shield for example no man and linds that wins it every year for ireland uh i don't know who won it for wales by the way i don't want to talk about it i have the ability to just you know poke and prod where i shouldn't i tell you what if the scarlet's on the wealth shield i would want a star on the jersey yeah yeah okay fine all right the team i want to talk to you about the most is i mean talk about dark horses coming in through the back door slowly quietly you know getting in the top eight um up against glasgow you know is that as far as they're gonna go is there any chance i mean i said the other day to our friend ari the afrikaans podcast that glasgow and the stormers and monster on a sort of a downward curve and the bulls and um connacht and leinster are on an upward curve but you know when the two meet like connacht against glasgow you know it might be interesting or anything i know it's away at glasgow and everything else but stop oh no that's escaped it's back um so yes it'll be interesting it'll be worth watching i'll be very surprised if if kind of beat glasgow away that would be a massive upset it's very impressive what kind of done turning their seasons around because we all thought that it was over 10 games ago less we thought oh my god this is the worst thing i've ever seen then nowhere it's funny how you can be revisionist about these things because if you go back and check their score lines you can say that when they were losing games it was only by small margins and they had some hard games and they only lost them narrowly that was one point remember yeah so you could say like oh you know it was never really that bad and you could do the opposite it with Muncie because you can say that when they were winning games at the start of the season they were only winning them narrowly so you could say it was never that good but it's impressive and you know it just goes to show there's the right person for the right job the right coach for the right club and Stuart Lancaster I was slandering him six ways to Sunday at Rassing where he didn't fit at all he was the wrong person in the wrong job and he's gone back to Connacht and now he looks very much like he's the right person in the right job so fair play you can speak the language at least and so then align people up in order of their salaries isn't it they do they do speak a different language in connor you've got to give them that i don't know if many of the players do and no i think it's it's legal now in irish schools to teach at the irish language so yeah but i mean you don't want to keep teaching coaching irish language to speak english yeah no that's what i'm getting at in france that's a different kettle of fish altogether and the culture thing like i said lining the players up in order of their salary you know their salaries you heard that story obviously no i think i told you that story yeah i'm reminding you see i'm an old man i'm very interested to see that you're holding your pen in your hand which means there's something serious you want to talk about because if you take it out of your cab then i know something's up well yeah typically it's about it it's a rant so i i want to get to the rant but um we'll get to that just now like i said something else that's not come up.

Jim Hamilton said something that shocked the nation. And a little bit worried about the cards that SRIP are playing at the moment. It's the fact that having a review of all competitions and initially everybody thought they're going to be pulling out of the Champions Cup, which is not true. They've now vehemently denied it. It seems to be a shot across the bow of Sansa, you know, saying, listen, if you don't want to move the rugby championship to a, you know, overlapping window of six nations, we might consider pulling out but now jim hamilton comes along and says yeah he thinks the ui and the premiership are going to emerge and south africa is going to be left out in the cold number one where on earth did he get that from any any truth to that rumors and we'll talk about the implications of south africa in general but is that is there any any substance of that that you know of yes i do think there is some substance to it i think there are a lot of clues there's a lot of dots that one could join to suspect that a british and irish league is coming like there's it's very clear that the premiership want to change and the english want to change and they want to completely revamp the way that club rugby is done and structured and there's lots of little things the room the merger between the urc and the prem has been rumored for a couple of years now it's been bubbling away for couple of years and cvc who is the big investment company owns a stake in the six nations but they also own a stake in the urc and the prem so there's like a force there that might want to consolidate and then there's reports in wales online today you know choose how much you want to stock you want to put in that source saying that the rfu have given the green light for ealing trail finders which is an English championship club to join the URC if a Welsh team, if and when a Welsh team goes.

So they keep the numbers. Now ask yourself this from a RFU, the English union's point of view, why would you let an English team join the URC? Why would you do that? Why would you let a competitor? And this is the same kind of conversation about all the chat about the cheaters joining super rugby.

It's a messy, it creates a mess. It creates a headache, you know, because then you've got two things competing against each other in your own back garden you know and you're not aligned you're you're not not everything is in a straight line anymore everything's all diverged and you've got you would have english rugby adding value to competitors playing in a competitors league and it would bring that comparison between the urc and the prem into much more sharply so generally why would you want that unless it was kind of an experiment unless it was kind of a let's see how this goes now going back to women's rugby there is currently talks ongoing about the english premiership women's competition merging with what's called the celtic challenge which doesn't have any south african teams in it but it's two welsh teams two irish teams two scottish teams and let's talk about those two merging and you have to remember in there that the people who run the women's game are the same people who run the men's game it's the exact same people so could that be a little experiment as well to see well if we were going to do this what would it look like how would it go because obviously it's not the same rugby teams but it would still be the same like logistical things it would still be the same things with scheduling that you'd have to figure out it would still be like getting from between all these countries okay you know in between the uk and ireland it's not exactly a long plane flight but you know it's still a challenge to be there so there are little signs in lots of places that a british and irish league is desired by lots of people and there are things to suggest that They're just creeping up on it slowly and sideways. I don't know. Ealing trail finance, I mean, that, number one, is a bit of a slap in the face of the UFC, if you ask me. But they even accept it.

I mean, also, they've been going on every year at the end of the UFC season. You get all these press releases, statistics, how well they're doing, how financially well they're doing, what difference the African teams made and everything else. I hear what you're saying in terms of, you know, maybe the rumblings about a common share, although maybe one thing, the line thing is a bit more, but I don't know, man. and that's the other thing i wanted to just clarify the fact that there's another there's still four wells welsh teams next year because the ospreys are only going to supposedly be what's the word terminated at the end of next season am i right we don't know who it is because it's going to be terminated yet and it won't be earliest it will be 2028 and there's a lot there's a lot of stuff that can happen between now and then yeah yeah but last i thought it was going to be ospreys wasn't it ospreys were the favorite for a long time we don't know okay all right so that's my point i mean if they're going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs that's that that's a bit of a worry to me okay let's say that happens now in traffic you know we put out of the rugby championship we're going to be left iron dry you know nowhere to go double world cup champions and nobody to play against or maybe argentina or japan like jan de kooning suggested that's a bit of a joke what do you think we're talking clubs or internationally both because if we put out the rugby nations a championship and we can play in the six nations that everyone allows in which i don think they will where are we going then the same thing happens to the clubs not in the in the ufc in europe anymore where do we go america you know that's what i'm getting at you know on that it's a high stakes game that we're playing in there and the fact is that south africa is really really far away from everybody else and the travel is going to be a big thing and i can't impress on you enough how getting on a nine hour plane flight to go and play a club rugby match is so alien to europeans and especially people in the uk we're talking more like half an hour to an hour is what we're used to to to drive to go and see club games people in wales hate the fact that we play against the irish and that's a half an hour plane flight so going to the going to the sun yeah yeah so it's it it's a problem that you are always going to have unless you just go straight curry cup and the the other podcasts can talk about the reasons why that doesn't happen internationally it would be an extremely if the kiwis and the australians would decide they don't want okay fine we're not going to play against south africa anymore i wonder if that's a bigger risk for them than it would be for you because yes you you lose like your big rivalries and things but it's a big rivalry for them as well and you know as well as i do south africans are everywhere and they come out of the woodwork when you least expect and that's that's real ticket sales that's real do kiwis really want to watch them australia five times a year do they really want to watch that do they really care about playing argentina like more than twice a year can we play them twice a year do they want to play against japan twice a year do they want to do that you know it's it hurts them as well not playing against south africa and look we've got the great perfect example this year we've got the greatest rivalry tour this rugby championship has already been binned for this year for just new zealand and south africa to play against each other for in favor of that so are new zealand is going to then really go actually no we won't play you at all in the future it doesn't feel likely to me i think that you're always going to play each other one way or another. No, that's what I'm saying.

South Africa's calling their bluff. You know, either move it or we move. And that puts us in a strong situation. But the point is, if they say no, what happens to us? I mean, I agree with you.

I think New Zealand is between a rock and a half place here. The sport's losing popularity in New Zealand against, you know, league and basketball and everything else. Now, if they lose their biggest competition, I'm not saying they will, but I'm just talking about potentially, that can be devastating, if you ask me. Yep. And the thing with this, obviously the Springboks and the All Blacks are the two biggest brands in rugby.

But it just means like you'll be getting phone calls from people in Japan or USA or someone saying, hey, come play here against whoever. And, you know, get ready to play Fiji lots. I just checked now. It's 11 hours from London to Joburg. It's not nine hours.

It's even longer. It's a long flight. And what's the sentiment in general from the public? i'm going to talk about not about traveling anything the welsh and irish and scottish and that sentiment about african teams playing in the uric you know is it positive is it welcomed or is it sort of frowned upon are they being seen as interlopers what what are the what's the general feeling the irish and the scottish like you the irish really like you secretly and i don't know about the italians i don't speak to that many italians but i've never heard anything particularly again i think the italians probably see them more aligned to you because they're more like outsiders as well if that makes sense because they got added to the league you know what this the urc is the latest incarnation of the celtic league the italians didn't join it until 2010 so then they think that if you get cut they'll probably get cut as well so they're kind of on your side um the english and the french hate you and everybody hates the english and the french you hate them too but we don't play against the french you know in the club championship anyway the and the welsh hate everything including themselves and the weather well the weather is probably low down the list of the things that the welsh hates there's a lot of welsh rugby fans who love england which really really really is weird to me all right talking about england and the premiership and everything else last year the bulls beginning of this year was it got a hiding against the bristle bears remember i don't even want to talk to you you just convinced me to come on and do a bit of an instant reaction and that's one of the things that edgar and i talked about in his office if i remember correctly so then the bristle bears go and lose against lose against northampton saints 90 something against almost nothing what on earth how does that happen the problem is the premiership is stupid and it doesn't make sense anymore and actually it's quite interesting because even the the English media, who are usually very, what's the word I'm looking for? The English media usually avoid criticizing themselves at all costs.

Even they've turned on the premiership now at this point. The Telegraph and the Times have both done multiple articles saying that things need to change and this isn't good. Even the BBC have done an article in the last week saying that it's embarrassing, the scoreline. Let me just read you some scorelines from the english premiership recently so this weekend we had bath 69 newcastle 12 we had northampton saints 94 94 bristol 33 previous weekend we had newcastle 17 harlequins 76 weekend before that we had some quite tame scorelines really only sail sharks 52 harlequins 33 bristol 52 newcastle 19. weekend before that we had saracens 85 sale 19.

leicester tigers 62 newcastle three then before that bath 62 saracens 15. saracens 73 newcastle 14. that's the same team like saracens it's going to interrupt you but one weekend they score 70 points next weekend they get 14 and they lose by a mile northampton we get round nine northampton 66 harlequin's 21 like it's i think i worked out that it's more than one in 10 games in the premiership you see someone score 60. it's happened once in the urc this season last weekend when leinster beat the ospreys 68-7 that's the first time this season that in the urc someone has scored 60 points whereas in the prem it's happening one in nine games but why i mean is it the same players is it like a third squad third you know third best squad or what what's happening like bristol bears explain that to me how can they beat the bulls that convincingly at lofters the part of the fact that the bulls are still transitioning into this new structure and then lose this badly is it the same players mostly they're just rubbish they're just unserious you know they're massively lacking in defensive effort look northampton saints' attack is really really really really good northampton saints are probably the only english team that i would say would have a chance of winning the urc but even then i think they would come up short against the bulls or leinster even though i know that they beat the bulls quite regularly um but and they beat leinster as well so maybe i'm wrong so yes northampton saints are the only team that could win the usc in my opinion but it's it's just a silly league it's just you get this silly score lines and it's not a high quality of rugby i'm working on a video i'm just starting to work on a video now about a premiership team and i've done it in the past i did one about exeter and when i sit down and watch a lot of clips of and highlights packages of the english premiership i'm always shocked about how slow and ponderous it is i'm always shocked about how basic the rugby is and how bad the defense is so i did you know what i you know when i did with the stormers i watched every single stormers try and codified it in my own little code and just said it came from this it came from this in making this one about this premiership team sometimes i've just written shambles sometimes i've just how did this try happen shambles um it's it's unserious rugby it is in my opinion and i've maintained this for a long time the premiership is of the four big leagues top 14 urc super rugby premiership the premiership is the one that is the furthest away from international rugby and the scary thing is that the clubs are losing a huge amount of money i think sale lost 8 million in one season pounds uh saracen's lost 9 million in the same season and exeter lost 10 million in the same season pounds and that's not good and the other thing you have to remember in there is that the league is kept afloat by foreigners can you imagine if the english premiership only picks english players they'd have enough players for about four teams like the it's it's so kept afloat apart from northampton saints by foreign talent is what makes the premiership even slightly credible like it's it's a crazy situation earlier in this conversation you talked about our fast south african team score remember you said yeah there's no multiple phases and you just talked about how slow the english teams are ponderous you call it but what does that say for the nation's champions we play against england first first game up you just said there's not many english players not that many english players they actually play there what does it mean i mean do you be expecting something different is there a gap opening up here between south african teams maybe and english teams because that's interesting that first one is going to be important it's just different styles and when i say slow and ponderous i just mean the intensity like there's nothing wrong with having slower rocks and playing tighter if you want to call that slow but it's just the the lack of intensity in these premiership games that shocks me compared to the urc yeah so i think when the two styles clash i mean you come up with a team that's you know very very quick and intensity is high and you come up against a ponderous team who've used to being playing you know playing at a slower pace and low intensity it's gonna something has to happen or will they up the game england just had their worst ever six nations they won one game against wales so you could argue that maybe it's already already happening i think england have finished in the bottom two of the six nations more than they finished in the top two in the last five years all right let's talk about the european cup final and firstly let's talk about challenge cup final just quickly because you you know much who cares hold on you really care about who wins between hold on i want to talk to you about montpelier apparently they're doing so well in the top 40 this year is that true yes the second they are very good suddenly and now they're playing in the challenge confine what do you expect um there to happen just as an amount of interest also you know they're desperately unlucky not to enter the top eight lots of injuries and likes is that going to carry through going to be yeah i think i think they're going to i think montpelier are going to beat them quite easily um i think that ulster have run out of gas no and um no what's his name now steve mccloskey yeah he's out injured they've got a couple of other injuries i think they're cocktail uh they're running on fumes and and I think Montpellier will deal with them quite straightforwardly. So what happened with Montpellier?

All we know, from African point of view, for now, is, you know, Toulouse and Toulon and Bordeaux. So I know Montpellier, because Jan Sargentain played there and Andre Pollard played there and Jay coached him, but then they won a Challenge Cup there. He won a Challenge Cup. But, you know, why suddenly are they doing so well? They're a funny club.

They have a very high squad's turnover, so maybe they just got a lot better players this this year but they've just been good um just generally every there's not like one thing that really like marks them out they've got a really good pack they're really good away from home in the top 14 as well that's a big thing in the top 14 because the top 14 is a very home and away league i think it's like 75 win home rates in fact i might be able to tell you exactly because the top 14 actually track this on their website aren you um i don have it oh no i do have it open um here we go let have a look are you impressed as a ember because i i know you have friends that be open on your computer i am blown away and i navigate this i navigate this site in french so i know all the rugby stats in french so it's a 71 home win rate in the top 14 yes and if i go to this tab that i also have open of the top 14 on all rugby standings away from home to lose our top and Montpelier a second okay that makes a difference yeah okay I hear you all right but moving swiftly along to the big one Bordeaux versus Leinster I know you've got a couple of stats here but just talk to us about that briefly and then I'm going to let you loose on your stats stand that I've been promising people about from the beginning of this video what's going to happen there so UBB versus Leinster is kind of the way to think of it is it's chaos versus control it ubb being the chaos and leinster being the control two very different styles of rugby you would say that based on the champions cup so far that ubb are hot favorites but their league form in the top 14 has been very iffy i think they're sixth fifth or sixth at the moment and they got a couple of injuries and they're kind of held together by sticky tape they've got very good players very very good players but it's it's very like you i i wonder if leinster might just grab a hold of the game and not let go it's going to be very interesting to see what ubb do because i don't i think someone told me that these two clubs have never played against each other or hardly ever played against each other it's going to be very interesting to see how ubb get on against the jack ninaba defense against that incredibly intense defense because ubb don't play there is a bit of a formula there but they invent they create they think outside the box on the pitch and they they do kicks a lot chips a lot cross kicks a lot and that is a way to kind of get outside the rush defense is to chip over the top of it go over the top of it so i'll be very interested to see how that goes so i don't really know what's going to happen in this game a lot of people think that you would be a hot favorites i've got a feeling that leinster might just peak at the right moment and every a plan comes together for them and you think they can do the double leinster enough yeah i do i definitely think they can do the double um which is a bit as harry said a bit boring but i think they're good enough they've got the players they've got the squad they've got the coaches oh i'm actually looking forward to that i think it's going to be good i mean there's no other up here so it's going to be a nice one to watch and looking forward so right stats right there we go i'm going to put a trumpet or something in here you know like a big announcement let's hear it so rugby stats at the moment from a fan's point of view that like the the freely available ones are absolutely deteriorating so the six nation stats and i wrote a whole sub stack about this the six nation stats were really bad this year because what they do though there was obvious when i say really bad i mean there was obvious mistakes in them like you could watch the game look at the stats and go that's clearly wrong like for example in the england versus france game the official stats say there was no intercepts even though ollie chess and scored a tried there early from an intercept i can show you the video of him doing it according to the official stats there's no intercepts so you can go through like basic stuff like the the number of missed tackles the number of made tackles and the percentage the percentage isn't a combination of either of those two numbers like really basic stuff and then the other thing that six nations did is that they would announce their stats immediately after the ending of the game and then not update them now you can't statify a game live whilst the game is going on you have to go back and re-watch it slowly and do it slowly and get it right but the six nations were just doing their stats live and then publishing it and not changing them that's that's not integrity that's not credible you need to go back and revise and make sure that you get it right and they weren't doing that and then you come to opta opta who in my opinion are the best stats company i've always said that their club rugby stats hub hasn't been updated since the beginning of february we're now at the end of may and everything's like at least half a dozen games out of date now so i can't use it i can't use it to back up any kind of research or anything it's really really frustrating the urc stats website it's not the worst thing in the world but it's got some flaws in it like the one that you said earlier stormers are apparently the second worst defense in the league to fight despite having conceded the joint fewest tries with glasgow 48 tries in 18 games apparently the second worst in the league because nowhere where the urc like grades defenses at no point does it take into account the number of tries that you conceded it takes into account the number of turnovers that you've lost which is not a defensive stat but it doesn't take into account the number of tries that you conceded so it's like what what what what are we doing like this isn't a sensible conversation and between competitions now let's say the urc versus the premiership or the top 14 do they have for example the same do they use the same um whatever rule for determining defenses or looking at you know whatever they're looking at not no each one has each competition has a different standard let's call it that for a different statistic so the other so it's different for every competition the super rugby stats website is actually pretty good but no no other stats website for a competition does it in the same way of great of like ranking them no one else does that actually that's not true the pwr the women's league in in england does which i believe is the same stats provider i think they're both oval insights who i don't really like um so i'm gonna get in trouble now they so the the premiership doesn't have a stats website the english premiership doesn't have a stats page on the website it has a very basic one but it's really basic i think there's five stats there like top point scorer top try scorer offloads and things like that it's nowhere near the same depth as the other ones it's it's really not up to scratch to be honest with you um like i said super rugby's one is quite good quite useful uh it's quite limited that super rugby is better for in-game stats super rugby is better if you want to go into a specific game there's loads of detail in there and it's really well laid out um so that's good the top 14 website is different again it is quite good um it's got good stats in there but the other thing is that not everyone has different different different definitions for things so if you take like uh from multiple sources so say you take the six nations official website you take opta and then then you take rugby pass for example you'll get different stats for the same games from each one but you've got different definitions like a carry is a carrier carry into contact or is a carrier just holding the ball he had the ball and that's a carry you know different definitions come with it and so you get very different tackles as well like tackles you think is pretty simple you get massively varying tackle stats from different websites because they they get them different offloads offloads are really subjective was that an offload or was it just a pass it's really subjective and that i spoke to one stats coder he said they went mad with it once and he said so he just came up with his own process of yes or no did it happen or didn't it one or two ever i've been on rugby pass stats um match center stats and it's got the number of lineouts wrong it's got the number of lineouts that there was in the game wrong like yeah really really basic stuff i saw on the usc side i think that's chris smith won five line outs this year it's possible because um some data providers count a quick line out a quick throw so you know when they just take it quickly not form a line out so to you and me there hasn't been a line out but because the ball has been thrown in from touch and someone's caught it and that could have been chris smith that counts as a line out say but it's not a line out say yeah but it's a is opportunity for us here man we come up with a standard set of definitions for every one of these stats and we start codified we sell it come on then you can compare me to do that i'll pay you from the profits no promises but anyway no i'm just saying you can compare apples with apples compare super happy to premiership and whatever you know my overriding point is that there's always been these problems but it's gotten worse this season overall the pro the products because espn used to do a stats thing for rugby that was really good and that's gone that went a couple of years ago um but now it used to be a lot better than it is currently and it's really disappointing if you think it's about money you know having to pay these people to do it yeah it could be could well you just mentioned how much money the premiership teams are losing can't afford to employ a statistician you know can they maybe something like that yeah all right anyway time for your accounts listen apparently you're going to start teaching me wealth lessons and i'm vehemently opposed to that and i'll tell you why because my my aged aged brain is not as elastic as yours anymore my language learning ability is possible i'll give it a shot but you know no no promises so you want to go first teach me a language word so we're going to start at the beginning and i'm going to just teach you the welsh word for welcome oh it's not too difficult well how long is it this word's always that long it's short it's actually shorter than the english word um so it's it's croeso great right yes exactly croi and so croeso that's an easy one i've good it's spelled c-r-o-e-s-o croeso oh all right almost like it's okay okay croeso croeso like croissant just ending with an o croeso i like it and welcome back is croeso null and also no i must write this down because you're going to probably taste me at some stage you can do croissant null to the loose pass podcast okay all right okay i'm actually quite happy with that that's not too bad and uh the one thing i did learn is camry it's not i've always thought it was kimro you know because it was actually the other way around because i read it as like you know that's yeah that's why is difficult in welsh yeah camry all right all right so my fricons it's not a word this time it's uh i was thinking about it the other day because I saw someone eating KFC and they had an advertising campaign in South Africa called Finger Lack Lacquer, Finger Licking Good. You know the one. Yeah. In Afrikaans, it's Finger Lack Lacquer. I'm talking about the rugby coming up because I think this UFC top eight and next weekend, this Champions Cup final, there's going to be Finger Licking Good rugby.

So Finger, which is finger. I'm just going to say finger. Finger Licking Good, Finger Lack Lacquer. And you know lacquer. You know the word lacquer.

So what's the middle word? It's like lac. Lac, L-E-K. Lac. Yeah, finger like lacquer.

Yeah Yeah, finger like if actually nothing that's fun. Come on. You give it your best. No, come on. It's just like Let's find it Funger G in it.

Yes, the G NG is if V I NG are enough across Not an F V I N G R. Yeah, so that's like vinegar really Yeah, but there's no a in it. Oh, and there's nothing in between the N and the E G. It's just finger Did they spell it with an F originally and then go, no, that's a bit too similar to the English words, chuck a V in that stuff? No, no, no.

There's many instances in Afrikaans where the F is actually a V. The people, the funniest thing about Afrikaans people is they always talk about the F word, you know, the swear word that we all know, and they spell it with a V. And I go, no. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah.

They refer to the F word, but they spell it with a V. Come on, people.

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