Fiji

[normanski]

Changing the subject from reffing and game management

Beard is pwp

Test Lion - Gatland rates him and thats good enough for me He is a unit, good line out forward. makes double figure tackles and scrummages well. Don't believe the stuff you read

He’s underrated on this Board. He fielded the first two Fijian kickoffs perfectly to set up the exit and get us underway. His line out takes were clean and soaring. He does a lot of unseen work around the pitch and is great disrupter of mauls.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Changing the subject from reffing and game management

Beard is pwp

Test Lion - Gatland rates him and thats good enough for me He is a unit, good line out forward. makes double figure tackles and scrummages well. Don't believe the stuff you read

He’s underrated on this Board. He fielded the first two Fijian kickoffs perfectly to set up the exit and get us underway. His line out takes were clean and soaring. He does a lot of unseen work around the pitch and is great disrupter of mauls.

His stats are poor for passes and runs, but so are Rowland's. He made 11 tackles in 58 minutes (no misses) (exactly the same as Faletau) - at that rate he'd have made 15 in the whole game - not as spec-tackle-ar as Rowlands but not bad.

I assume he pushes his weight in the scrum and is great for lineouts and restarts. To be honest, I suspect WOL are constantly on his case because he looks a bit more dweeby than Rowlands.

Yeah, I wish he was a carrying machine but let's face it we don't have many of those.

[Wallpaperman]

I'm happy to concede that we got the better side of a wobbly ref.

What I'm not happy to do, is apologize for that FINALLY happening to us in a crucial match.

The magnification is ridiculous. Wales should have had a YC one or two penalties sooner than Domachowski. It's highly arguable that we should have been given a second; I think Biggar's offside gets a YC 7 or 8 times out of 10. Fiji were not being pinged for all manner of ruck infringements. What's worse - pinging a transgressing side constantly without giving a yellow, or not pinging them at all? And as already stated, Tagitagivalu's YC was an absolute stonewaller, and arguably should have been a PT - although that ultimately didn't matter.

I guess we just have to lean into being the bad guys this time, and take our turn smirking "look at the scoreboard". So be it.

Totall agree. How many times have we been left fuming? Basically, we won, haters can fuck off.

Loving all comments of this ilk. There’s always the press and commentariat to take the shine off a Welsh win. Cheers all.

[Sandydragon]

Test Lion - Gatland rates him and thats good enough for me He is a unit, good line out forward. makes double figure tackles and scrummages well. Don't believe the stuff you read

He’s underrated on this Board. He fielded the first two Fijian kickoffs perfectly to set up the exit and get us underway. His line out takes were clean and soaring. He does a lot of unseen work around the pitch and is great disrupter of mauls.

His stats are poor for passes and runs, but so are Rowland's. He made 11 tackles in 58 minutes (no misses) (exactly the same as Faletau) - at that rate he'd have made 15 in the whole game - not as spec-tackle-ar as Rowlands but not bad.

I assume he pushes his weight in the scrum and is great for lineouts and restarts. To be honest, I suspect WOL are constantly on his case because he looks a bit more dweeby than Rowlands.

Yeah, I wish he was a carrying machine but let's face it we don't have many of those.

We don’t tend to breed monster ball carriers very often. We have some sizeable players, Beard is by no means small, but we don’t often have the physicality of SOuth African forwards.

[Sourdust]

Changing the subject from reffing and game management

Beard is pwp

Test Lion - Gatland rates him and thats good enough for me He is a unit, good line out forward. makes double figure tackles and scrummages well. Don't believe the stuff you read

Personally I haven't read anything written against Beard, except the odd quip hereabouts.

But I have noticed how I've completely stopped noticing him.

[Sourdust]

Loving all comments of this ilk. There’s always the press and commentariat to take the shine off a Welsh win. Cheers all.

There's been much more hate than usual in the "bottom half of the internet" about this match.

Some people had obviously invested a LOT in the consensus that we were going to get our arses handed to us, they've had their toy taken away and they're lashing out.

That none of this is coming from Fijians, goes without saying.

[normanski]

I think a lot of people were hoping Fiji would do to us what they did to England. In the end just wishful thinking.

[Mikey Brown]

Is it hate or do people just love Fiji and complaining about referees? They were a dropped bounce pass, nothing to do with a Welsh intervention, from a win.

[normanski]

Is it hate or do people just love Fiji and complaining about referees? They were a dropped bounce pass, nothing to do with a Welsh intervention, from a win.

That’s right but they would have still needed a touch line conversion to win. On the evidence of previous kicks the odds would have been against them and would have been an even bitterer pill to swallow.

[Tuco Ramirez]

Is it hate or do people just love Fiji and complaining about referees? They were a dropped bounce pass, nothing to do with a Welsh intervention, from a win.

That’s right but they would have still needed a touch line conversion to win. On the evidence of previous kicks the odds would have been against them and would have been an even bitterer pill to swallow.

Lots of Saes all over it on BBC sport. Sour grapes cos they lost to Fiji praps

[Sourdust]

Is it hate or do people just love Fiji and complaining about referees? They were a dropped bounce pass, nothing to do with a Welsh intervention, from a win.

That’s right but they would have still needed a touch line conversion to win. On the evidence of previous kicks the odds would have been against them and would have been an even bitterer pill to swallow.

With Radrada's speed and skill, I'd have backed him to get around LRZ and near the posts. The player inside him had Adams (?) on toast though, if only they'd passed to him instead.

So Wales won, but could have done precisely nothing different, and lost. Which would also have been true with a successful wide conversion, of course.That's what's so maddening about the fine margins of this sport. Chumps to heroes, on a coin-toss. You have to be mad to do it.

[Sourdust]

Is it hate or do people just love Fiji and complaining about referees? They were a dropped bounce pass, nothing to do with a Welsh intervention, from a win.

Fair comment, "hate" was a bit hyperbolic - but then so are the reactions!

But a lot of it feels like the impotent, bitter rage of losing fans, rather than just disappointed neutrals. But it definitely is the latter. As I said, from what I've seen Fijian fans have been universally gracious.

[ALunpg]

We were lucky to get the win , but also we deserved the win as much as Fiji , but for me there would have been no bad feelings if Fiji had won.

It was a great game 8 tries and heart scaring excitement.

Have the officials got decisions wrong , probably, and they do in every match , but the level of complaint is maybe not justified.

There have been epic mistakes made before, my personal read is this is not one of them.

Fiji have without doubt set a standard that will be challenging to all teams and hopefully be followed by Samoa and Tonga in the future as well as others.

On a side note. I was impressed by Chile never seen them before .

[Son of Mathonwy]

I think a lot of people were hoping Fiji would do to us what they did to England. In the end just wishful thinking.

It's simple logic:

Fiji>England and we all know England>Wales therefore Fiji>Wales.

Oh shit, reality says Wales>Fiji therefore excuses must be found.

[Wallpaperman]

Loving all comments of this ilk. There’s always the press and commentariat to take the shine off a Welsh win. Cheers all.

There's been much more hate than usual in the "bottom half of the internet" about this match.

Some people had obviously invested a LOT in the consensus that we were going to get our arses handed to us, they've had their toy taken away and they're lashing out.

That none of this is coming from Fijians, goes without saying.

And, bizarrely, Nick Knowles.

[Sandydragon]

We were lucky to get the win , but also we deserved the win as much as Fiji , but for me there would have been no bad feelings if Fiji had won.

It was a great game 8 tries and heart scaring excitement.

Have the officials got decisions wrong , probably, and they do in every match , but the level of complaint is maybe not justified.

There have been epic mistakes made before, my personal read is this is not one of them.

Fiji have without doubt set a standard that will be challenging to all teams and hopefully be followed by Samoa and Tonga in the future as well as others.

On a side note. I was impressed by Chile never seen them before .

Exactly. It was a cracking match between two equal teams who could both have won it. Fiji could have had a penalty try but also have been awarded a red card for head contact on two occasions. Plus breakdown offences that weren’t punished and standing up in the scrum.

It’s pathetic griping by many so called neutrals. Beat just to grin and move on.

[Sourdust]

We were lucky to get the win , but also we deserved the win as much as Fiji , but for me there would have been no bad feelings if Fiji had won.

Perfectly put.

Wales deserved to win, Fiji didn't deserve to lose, not a contradiction that's just how it goes sometimes.

[Son of Mathonwy]

We were lucky to get the win , but also we deserved the win as much as Fiji , but for me there would have been no bad feelings if Fiji had won.

Perfectly put.

Wales deserved to win, Fiji didn't deserve to lose, not a contradiction that's just how it goes sometimes.

It's impossible to know how the match would have gone if it had been refereed well. As it is, we'll take the result, we did enough good work to feel good about it.

[Mikey Brown]

I guess I’m just confused because I haven’t seen any of these comments that you’re all referencing. I can imagine based on other games the kind of stuff you get on the comments sections in the papers or social media, but this time you’ve got the whole world (supporting the underdogs obviously) against you rather than just one nations fans.

A bit like Scotland after the ‘15 controversy maybe. People just want to see upsets.

Most on here thought the England loss to Fiji was well deserved (and personally pretty funny), and thought very little of results between our mixed teams in the warmups, but I guess that isn’t representative of the internet as a whole.

“Did enough good work to feel good about it” is only a questionable stance because actually holding on to the win was completely out of your hands. I guess it’s good to get that kick up the arse re: taking your foot off the gas, without actually losing a game.

[pompey-zebra]

I still dont get the Fiji as underdogs bit. In the past perhaps but this time they were ranked 7th in the world while Wales were 10th. And whatever you might think of the value of world rankings, this was by all accounts the best prepared Fiji side to come into a world cup. They must have seen a victory against Wales as giving them one foot in the quarters but couldn't manage it. In the end they gave themselves too much to do by not scoring a point for an hour. Wales might not have had a direct effect on Fiji's final move going wrong but keeping Fiji to nil for an hour probably put more pressure on the last pass that it would have normally done as Fiji knew it was their only chance to win.

[Sourdust]

I guess I’m just confused because I haven’t seen any of these comments that you’re all referencing.

That's because unlike us, you're smart enough not to scroll down to the comments on articles.

The cries of "cheat", "fix", "corruption" etc. are deafening, and regularly spilling over from frustration with the ref to suggest that Wales' standard (some might even say insufficient) game management was somehow unprecedentedly dastardly cheating. You'd seriously think this was a team who had got the advantage of a dodgy ref regularly - or at least occasionally - before.

[Son of Mathonwy]

“Did enough good work to feel good about it” is only a questionable stance because actually holding on to the win was completely out of your hands. I guess it’s good to get that kick up the arse re: taking your foot off the gas, without actually losing a game.

My point there was that had the game been refereed well there would have been a different different set of events taking place (as various sanctions would have been made, or not, differently), leading to completely different tries being scored etc. I'm saying that during the course of the match we did enough good things to make me feel that we might well have won under that hypothetical perfect referee, so I'm justified in feeling good about the result.

And, yes, I really hope this does give them a kick up the arse re losing control at the end of a match. However they've had that same kick up the arse a number of times before and they haven't got this problem fixed. I'm not sure they even understand why it's happening.

[Sourdust]

I still dont get the Fiji as underdogs bit. In the past perhaps but this time they were ranked 7th in the world while Wales were 10th.

Well it was entirely predictable that haters were going to pivot from "You're ranked below them and you're going to lose!" to "So what if you won? You were favourites!" instantaneously.

Not having it, sorry. The world and his wife said Fiji were going to win that... and we have the receipts.

[Tuco Ramirez]

I still dont get the Fiji as underdogs bit. In the past perhaps but this time they were ranked 7th in the world while Wales were 10th.

Well it was entirely predictable that haters were going to pivot from "You're ranked below them and you're going to lose!" to "So what if you won? You were favourites!" instantaneously.

Not having it, sorry. The world and his wife said Fiji were going to win that... and we have the receipts.

Absolutely spot on

[Tuco Ramirez]

“Did enough good work to feel good about it” is only a questionable stance because actually holding on to the win was completely out of your hands. I guess it’s good to get that kick up the arse re: taking your foot off the gas, without actually losing a game.

My point there was that had the game been refereed well there would have been a different different set of events taking place (as various sanctions would have been made, or not, differently), leading to completely different tries being scored etc. I'm saying that during the course of the match we did enough good things to make me feel that we might well have won under that hypothetical perfect referee, so I'm justified in feeling good about the result.

And, yes, I really hope this does give them a kick up the arse re losing control at the end of a match. However they've had that same kick up the arse a number of times before and they haven't got this problem fixed. I'm not sure they even understand why it's happening.

That works both ways… watched it back last night. Wales should have had a pen prior to both late Fiji tries at end. Check out the no arm late charge on Tompkins just after he puts North in…. Persistant sealing off and off feet at ruck time… i could go on