Recent content by Omar Comin'

It's not ideal, but I think they're roughly in the same league as most of our options, or at least not far off. We don't have anyone who's kicking at 80%+ year after year, and Sua'ali'i kicked at over 75% in the NRL.

Yeah it's the timing - if they played Italy they'd have to play 4 test matches in 14 days, and it's not like they can risk rotating players in the final qualifying tournament.

A good thing for Carter now is that the Wallabies have a couple of other legitimate goal kicking options in other positions in JAS and Ryan Lonergan. That would take a lot of pressure off him. I wouldn't be surprised to see him get game time in November.

They're going to risk hundreds of millions of dollars in the hope of creating a successful new competition. If it fails as badly as most seem to expect, those investors will lose all their money in 2-3 years and World Rugby will lose next to nothing. Because they're fighting them, the 2027 world...

That's a good point. But I guess if it worked, it would really only involve the very, very top players in the game. Mostly guys who've already developed into world class players, and for whom less games (and perhaps faster but less physical games) may even be beneficial outside of test rugby -...

Do you not think it likely that rugby ends up with 1 or 2 globally popular, mega club leagues that dominates all others? This seems to be what happens in other sports. I'm very sceptical an F1 style traveling league could work in a sport like rugby, but it's arguably preferable to a couple of...

Haha well maybe, I'd like to know! I feel like there's a bit of a difference between something being 93% Saudi owned and controlled vs say 20%, or the Saudi's owning 1 team. I think there is a fair bit of virtue signalling that goes on though to be honest. I haven't seen too many English...

Do we actually know if it's Saudi money behind it, and if so, to what degree? From what I've seen it seems to be backed more by the UAE than Saudi (not that the UAE is some virtuous state, but it's not as bad). There's also been reports of the Glazer family, Fenway Sports Group and Red Bull...

I think there's no chance a quarter of the players would be Australian. Even in a scenario where RA allowed eligibility and NZ and SA didn't, I'd be surprised if there still weren't more kiwis and saffas in this comp. They just produce a lot more good players. There'll be plenty of Europeans...

Too much panic. There's only going to be 6 mens teams to start and then 8. The format limits it from expanding too much more than that. There'll be 20-25 Australian players in it at any given time, and half of them might come from the NRL. There's a lot more Australians playing in Japan. It's...

Most of those unions already exclude foreign based players. Even South Africa doesn't pick that many from outside its domestic teams. Plenty of top players still move in their peak. But there was never going to be a huge exodus before the world cup anyway - most top players are already signed...

Surely the most obvious answer is to bring back Carter Gordon if he's interested - even if it requires offering the Titans a little compensation to let him go. Though if Nathan Cleary was really keen and Penrith were willing to let him go early then he might be worth a huge offer, especially...

I agree that 3rd game dead rubbers aren't great, especially if they're frequent, but the problem with the current structure is that there's often 2nd game dead rubbers! I think it'd be better if 2 game series were decided on aggregate, or through a special extra time period / tie breaker after...

I don't think we know enough yet, the range of possible outcomes seems really wide. I would rate its chances of success higher if there's partnerships with existing giant sporting brands. E.g. the Madrid and Lisbon teams could be owned by (even named) Real Madrid and Benfica - they are already...

I share a lot of the scepticism you and others have, and on balance expect it to fail. But it's not impossible for new competitions and new clubs or franchises to build a following and be successful. Why not be open minded about it and wait to see what it's actually like first? A lot of the...