Brazil's Humiliating Defeat

[DVV]

Speaking of Hearns, the Hagler/Hearns fight was a brutal knockout!

Three memorable rounds !
The first one is particularly incredible.

[Sam Flynn]

He began as a wing - but journalists were wrong comparing him to Shane Williams. Both are short, but very different qualities.
Delon Armitage plays back in Toulon, and I don't think Halfpenny is better than him. Wing and kicker,ok.

Nobody compares with Shane Williams - he was a one-off. That said, when Halfpenny used to play wing, he would often "do a Shane" by coming off his wing to look for work and distributing the ball quickly from the breakdown, in effect acting as an extra scrum-half. That's a useful weapon to have in the armoury, and a tactic which should be encouraged more.

[GUT]

In my opinion any winger who stands around waiting for the ball to come to him, the way the game is played today, should be introduced to the lower grade coach.

[chrisjd]

Caz

Caz, my friend, I only read it today (being much more on facebook these days than here). You must have gotten quite drunk :-)
See you in August hopefully
C

[Ginger]

Had Neymar played, then they might have lost 7-3 or so. In the end, what killed them was that they're not a team, but a bunch of 'beautiful game' showboaters who fell apart without their captain da Silva's guidance the second that something went wrong.

Gotta eat my words here. Even with Silva, that was a sorry spectacle.

[GUT]

Once the Aussies were out I was going for three teams

Holland
The Dutch or
The Netherlands

At least they came third.

[Barnaby]

Brazil loses again 3-0. Ouch.

[Robert]

A non-team of non-individuals. What the hell is going on with them?

[Fleetwood Mac]

And herein lies the issue. The traditional rules for the modern game known as football were devised in Britain, in the private schools of England. The game with these rules was and always has been called football.

Following the establishment of football with it's newly found rulebook came other different sports around the world which involved a ball and were named by the same title.

Those countries/regions with more popular sports by the same name of football decided to call football by the name of soccer. Thus the name soccer spread and was used even in Britain by some following it becoming popular abroad.

Please do correct me if I'm inaccurate on any of this.

That is inaccurate.

The private/public schools used the term 'soccer' when referring to the game (way back in the 1870s/1880s). It was a shortened version of 'association football' and was a term used to distinguish the game from 'rugby football'.

The term 'soccer' lost relevance in England because the two games became known as football and rugby, rather than association football and rugby football.

So, really, 'soccer' is an English term, not an American term, but it's not really used here anymore. Like so much of what has happened in this world over the last few hundred years: we come up with the ideas, other nations taken them on board and we forget about them.

In terms of Brazil, there was no chance that team would win the World Cup. Anyone watching the Chile match could see the space the two Chilean wingers were getting down both flanks and at times the Brazilians were all over the show and you could have driven a bus through the two centre halves. It was clear that as soon as they came up against a well organised team who could play a bit they were gone. I doubt anyone expected the Germans to put 7 past them, but it didn't surprise me that Germany were comfortable throughout the match.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Hasn't Britain invaded far more countries than ze Germans?

Yes, I was reading an article stating that we have invaded 9 out of 10 countries on this planet at one time or other. Christ, if we were a dinner guest we'd eat what was on the table and then take the contents of your fridge home when your back was turned!

I think the Germans had a few spats around the time of unification: Austria, France, Sweden and maybe one or two more, but generally they've been amateurs when compared with England's propensity to steal other people's things, but on the plus side sometimes we did get round to replacing what we'd stolen....only usually we replaced them with our things that we wanted there.

[DVV]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IynteMtSBxo

[Fleetwood Mac]

I'm familiar with Leonard vs. Duran in the infamous "no mas" match but not hearns/duran. Will check it out. Speaking of Hearns, the Hagler/Hearns fight was a brutal knockout!

Duran fought Tommy Hearns when he was well past his best and Hearns just mauled him.

Hagler/Hearns: Hagler the best in that division of all time and just too powerful for Tommy Hearns. Being hit by Hagler must have been like walking head first into a bulldozer.

[Robert]

It's a language thing. The Americans call football soccer because in American it's soccer. They also call pavements sidewalks because that's what they are in American.

[DVV]

Nobody compares with Shane Williams - he was a one-off. That said, when Halfpenny used to play wing, he would often "do a Shane" by coming off his wing to look for work and distributing the ball quickly from the breakdown, in effect acting as an extra scrum-half. That's a useful weapon to have in the armoury, and a tactic which should be encouraged more.

That will be interesting to see how Bernard Laporte will use him. It will be whether rear or right wing (the left being for Habana, although he made quite a poor season).
Since Armitage is definitely a rear (imo), I'd rather see Halfpenny with the 14.
But here again, there is already the excellent Drew Mitchell.
It's crowdy, these times, in Toulon.
Maudit Murdoch.

[DVV]

I agree, Hagler is the best middleweight ever.
But Hearns was a better puncher. Had he been a pure middleweight, he would have won.
At the end of the first round, perhaps the most brutal Hagler has ever faced, nobody could predict who would win.