Nigel Owens leads the charge as rugby's Twitterati condemn Ronaldo antics

They lose players left, right and centre due to pay disputes or them being unaffordable. Players can't make ends meet, getting paid peanuts, yet the top brass gets paid millions. They don't play the game. They don't sacrifice their bodies, their health and even their sanity due to all the head injuries. No, they just keep scooping because they can. Off the back of the players and unions, who are trying their very best to keep the pot full.

How can this be allowed? How is it fair? I'm a Saffa, and I'm completely disgusted by this. He is the Zuma of rugby in England. If you don't know the fall of that corrupt fool, Google him. If I were a player from England, I'd have no part of the RFU and start another organisation apart from them, or at least refuse to play any more competitions until all these corrupt fools are kicked out of the sport

Savea lost his acceleration. It's the first thing to go and it knocks player's confidence. Their game is built around a burst of speed to get through a hole or around someone. Once that fails a few times they start looking ordinary and it's all downhill from there.

There's the odd exception like Ben Smith who could do it all, but for the most part speed merchants have awesome but short ABs careers.

France has never won a RWC. They outperformed this year.

But the fact that a French player is incredibly skilled and has an incredible year (yes, except for 15s international games), it seems unbearable for many.

As if it meant that the performances or the status of teams you support was not legitimate.

Guys, Dupont being an amazing player doesn’t mean you’re failing at life. It’s ok.

Sorry but instead of disappointed and overly identifying fans, I prefer to listen to the opinion of experts and pundits who really know the game and simply appreciate Dupont regardless of who they support.

If that’s not an impact… Look at Squidge reaction on the matter.

And if you want to look at minutes, you should say Jesse Kriel should’ve have taken the POTY over Du Toit.

The guy started 7s in January.

And won the Champions Cup and the Top14 in between those 7s competitions. A week after his immense performance against Leinster, he won the Grand Final in Madrid.

Award given due to star power? He proved all year that he’s deserves his star status by winning it all, except for 1 tournament in Vancouver.

And 1 defeat in 15s.

Extremely difficult to change.

The one team in Oz with any success gets tiny crowds and has few registered players.

It was only put there to even up the numbers and take overflow.

I think that long term the only way is to put current Oz SR teams into an NPC/NRC comp along with Melbourne and Combined Country and start afresh with genuine teams based primarily in Sydney and Brisbane.

Ideally they'd be called Sydney and Brisbane, but other names I've suggested elsewhere in this blog include WA and ACT because the reality is that minor states would kick up a huge fuss if they didn't get a mention

Seems the length of of this vacancy is correlating with the length of his notice period/garden leave/indentured labour.

As I said elsewhere here, it would be easier in the Australian context to cut 4 teams than 1 or 2. A huge fight from Force and/or Brumbies.

Based on performance, Waratahs shouldn't be there, but based on where the majority of players and supporters are, Sydney must be a major centre.

Another, reason is that the brands are all scarred to some extent, particularly the Tahs.

The difficulty as you inferred is how to sell 2 new teams.

The main selling point would be for them to be cracking good, full of good players, and regularly win.

Getting names and identities is a challenge, but less so if the product is good.

The QWA Maroon Force could work,....but only if the team was any good.

Sydney-Canberra Capitals might work too...but only if the team was any good.

Ditto Sky Blue Brumbies.

Whatever it is, make no mistake, 80-90% of supporters, players, crowds are in Sydney and Brisbane

Unfortunately, we can get very excited about such ideas or even two teams joining the English League but both ideas have already been taken off the table!