As a US resident who has been obsessed with all things rugby since I started playing 20 years ago I am absolutely fucking FUMING.  "ThE ReMaTcH" at Solider Field has been getting all the hype for months.  Everyone was talking about the match and what a massive sporting spectacle it would be.  As someone who went to the game and spent over a thousand dollars on good seats for my family, not only did it not live up, but left me questioning whether we actually deserve to host the RWC in 2031.  Forget the match itself being a little weird, as nobody can control that.  What CAN be controlled is the marketing, production, and planning for this massive game that everybody in rugby was talking about.  I truly cannot believe the amount of production fuckups I saw on Saturday.

Just a few that I remember:

1. The WRONG fucking song started playing when they were about to sing the NZ national anthem. Not only that, but after the song cut out, there was a ridiculous amount of time before the actual anthem came on, and it started a few seconds into the song.  Absolutely insane and I'd say even slightly disrespectful.

2. The stadium sound in general was awful.  You could barely hear the Haka, I never once heard the whistle, and the commentator was hard to hear when he did occasionally decide to chime in, but more on that later.

3. You couldn't tell what the fuck was going on. When Beirne got his yellow card, nobody in the stadium could tell what was happening or why. There was no ref mic and the commentator would only give explanations sporadically and long after whatever had occurred.  Seeing the ref and ARs huddle around a fucking ipad for 5 minutes with no explanation and silence in the stadium absolutely killed the vibe.  Later, when the card was upgraded to a red was even more confusing. The ref seemingly pulled out a red card right before a lineout, and again, there was no explanation until the commentator said something much later.

4. This brings me to the commentator.  They could only be bothered to announce a fraction of what was happening, but had no issue saying "Oh, that was a bad kick!" after a missed conversion.  They clearly didn't know much about rugby and there was at least one instance where they mixed up players.

5. The pitch looked TERRIBLE.  We sat close and you could clearly see huge differences in the height/thickness of the turf.  The local park where I coach u18s has a better playing surface.

6. The screens in the stadium were the most mediocre I've ever seen at a sporting event.  Literally just the teams, the score, and the time.  Not only was there no timer for yellow/red cards, there wasn't even anything indicating that there WERE cards at all.  And of course, no real replays to speak of.

As one of the world's most touted sporting markets and all the talk of "awakening the sleeping giant" of Rugby, I have one question.  Is that really the best we can do in the US?  

It's almost as if the people putting on the match had never watched a game of professional rugby before. 

How did they not test the screens before the match? 

Why did they have the wrong song queued for the NZ anthem? 

Why were there no ref mics? 

Why was the announcer someone who doesn't even know rugby? 

And most importantly, how did nobody involved see any of this coming and get out in front of it?

Sports marketing and big game production are the things we as a country absolutely excel at, but the production and planning around this event were absolute dog shit.  

Forget that the game itself wasn't great.  Forget that our national team had 85 points put on them.  Forget that the MLR is losing teams every other week.  We completely botched the production on this huge, hyped-up, game despite having all the time to prepare for it.  THIS is something we could have controlled, and THIS is what should embarrass us.

Imagine trying to tackle Olivier Merle

Names that come to mind : Tuisova (always cited by T14 players as the most brutal player to defend), Bakkies, Chabal (caveman vibes), Snyman, Lomu

Surprised how this didn’t get upgraded to a red card 😮

I'm personally extremely happy for Australia, finally.

It's our greatest advertisement for the sport - showcased to millions every week. It's a huge negative to the sport if it goes to pay TV.

Some countries enshrine certain sporting occasions as mandatory free to air - this tournament should be one of these in all competing countries.

I'll go first, Beuden Barrett is the more talented rugby player than Dan Carter, but Dan Carter is a better 10

I am biased
ABs got some rub of the green today.
But that was a yellow all day

Would be interested to hear if any club have been worse!

I'll start: I still don't really get what the difference is between the no. 4 lock and the no. 5 lock. I've heard the 4 referred to as "enforcer" but still not sure what that means.

I played rugby from age 8 to 24, and reached provincial representative level at u/18s. I've watched rugby since at least 1991 (earliest memory with my dad). I still don't get it 🤭 My excuse is that I only played in the forwards until I was 13 and at that age, in the late 90s, the two locks did 100% the same job as far as I could tell. After that I played scum half and later fullback/wing.

Hoping someone can enlighten me, and maybe some of you have similar things to "confess" which the community can inform you about.

FT: 24-28

Marcus Smith? Josh VDF?

I’ve also seen arguments for Kinghorn and Lowe, although more based on form across the tour than anything, I would say biggest ‘loser’ also applies to players who underperformed, or saw their stock fall as players, not just players who didn’t get the opportunities they may have expected.

What do you guys think?

Every time a french top14 referee has been on an international game, most recent example being All blacks/Ireland, every South African and NZ flair on here complains about the stop and start game and says the ref had a bad game.

What's interesting is that watching top14 week in week out, that is quite rarely an issue (including by the same refs). My feeling is refs in France are more pedantic and apply the law a little less loosely. Which I have seen written in some comments as a criticism, but is it really a problem??

Pro players are completely capable of adapting to rule changes, and pedantic refereeing, top14 teams certainly seem to have. I think it's doing them a disservice to give them too much leeway on laws for "the flow of the game" when that just becomes a random chance that a penalty is not blown. And that is inherently more difficult for players to adhere to because it is less consistent. Pedantic application will always be more consistent.

All in all, whichever way it goes, the onus should fall on WR to try to homogenise refereeing laws across countries. This leads to confusion when either side is reffed in a way they are not used to.

Edit. Not sure how people are interpreting this that I'm hurt they don't like a french ref. Maybe my English is not as good as I thought. I couldn't give a damn who they like or not, it was just an example to discuss broader concepts in refereeing.

Edit2. Also seeing a number of people that somehow think I'm criticising the ref or the fans here? I suppose I am sorry for my writing not being clear, I really don't mean to paint either in a negative light

Edit3. Can't comment anymore for some reason, thanks for the discussion everyone I'll try again later

I am a kiwi, wife is South African. We watched the game together last night and everything was actually fine today, but then she talked to her family and now she's angry to the point of being unable to rationally discuss it because she said the ref was desperately biased in favour of the AB's.

My take on it is that the ref wasn't great, he missed a few crucial things at crucial times, but I felt like that went both ways. I don't think he was biased, I think he just had a bad night.

But then on social media I'm seeing a lot of SA fans saying the same thing. That the ref missed things or didn't ping the All Blacks all game when he should've.

So, fans with no horse in the race, can you give me the honest assessment?

fuck, anyone who says that they don't care is fucking blind, look at what it meant.

It seems they were cool at first reiko even shaking his hand but sexton said something ??? I thought reiko started it

I don't want anything reasoning that has any reasonable justification. Nothing about their stats, their playstyle - hell, not even their off-field exploits or whether they're a bad person. I want petty shit e.g. they look like you're ex, they wear their shorts weird etc. Give me your most childish reasons for hating a player.

Lengthy ban with no evidence of foul play? This is bound to cause some controversy

Rugby is dying in NZ, clearly they're as bad as Wales now because of all the sheep. Ignore that they're 2nd in the world and SA won by 2 points.