<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Sir. Speedy @ Dec 16 2008, 10:45 PM)
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Nothing beats a good weekend of Heineken Cup rugby, but on the day of an international, my heart races with anticipation. I suppose that's because of patriotism kicking in - I sincerely enjoy watching my country play like it did during the Autumn - the first half against NZ was enthralling. But with European rugby, the tournament is so unpredictable that one round can change the whole outlook of the knockout stages. Besides, the rugby played is fantastic too - the Clermont v Munster battle this weekend was as exciting as the same fixture was the week before, and that was damn exciting.
You can notice when a competition means something to a side when they keep the scoreline within two points after being dealt a red card; and also when after going down two points with six minutes, a side comes back and scores two tries (the cnuts...)[/b]
Completely agree. I've been to a live game roughly every weekend since the season began. Most are my club National 3 South side Richmond, but I've been to a few GP games, 2 England games and I went to Quins vs Stade. Without a shadow of a doubt the most fun I've had all season watching rugby was the Heineken cup game.
There's something about the Heineken Cup that is so very special, largely because you're seeing fantastic sides that are about equal knocking the **** out of each other for 80 mins, and the scores are nearly always between 10 points. If there's any more than that then one side has had to play a blinder. (I'm not counting games against the Italian sides).
However, as Speedy said the anticipation for international games is far greater. I am so psyched before every England game - even this autumn when we were **** - because it's England playing and even if I think we will lose I cannot wait to see if our big guys will dominate and if our quick ones will dazzle. It's almost a tribal thing.
International rugby is a pinnacle, it's where your nation shows to the rest of the world how it can front up in the most diverse team sport in the world. Rugby is the MMA of team sports.
That's why I got up early with hangovers to go to the local pub/ hotel to watch the games in NZ in June over a cup of coffee. I knew we'd get battered, but it's still England.
If we were to send a 2nd string side out, that's when I'd stop watching. I didn't see the last tour of South Africa, for example. It was a waste of time. SH teams will have to accept that all the home nations sent their strongest sides out last summer, and we try to most of the time... it's just after 9 months of physically bruising rugby, with no breaks, there are players with injuries, and the summer is the only time players can have operations on that ****ling knee injury, since during the season something like that would put them out for months and hence lots of matches.
I personally think that instead of going to NZ and playing them twice, we should play NZ, Fiji and Australia or some combination like that. My criticism of NH tours is that they're too one-dimensional.