Coming across like a bellend in here themistake. Stop talking about a sport you know nothing about and don't follow. Give it a rest. We all know you're well in to your football.

Merse can't help you in here mate.

How many games do you go to a year? How many games do you watch on TV. Do you ever watch any non-international's? I'd go back to the premiership thread, you don't know what you're talking about.

I played up to county level, and played a couple games for Manchester 2nd's two years ago, and i can say that rugby fans on a level are by far preferable to your average football fan.

Uncouth is right, Eng vs NZ is not the biggest game of the year. All of the 6 nations games are bigger games the autumn internationals.

On another note, got tickets for Sale v Toulon on satuday. Apparently Jonny is in good form

Because it is still a test match and not a friendly. Though they are essentially friendlies, as 6nations/4nations/world cup games are completely different.

Why are we now #2 to win the cup? Well we aren't. We are still #5 in the world rankings. Therefore, we are seeded 5th to win the next cup. The media are the people "tipping" us as second favourites for it, because we just beat the current world #1 by a good margin.

It is no different to us beating spain in a football friendly, and have the paper start "tipping" the team to be second favourites to win the Football world cup.

England rugby have always been in the top 4-5 nations in rugby rankings. We have the pedigree, and results over the last 10 years. 1 world cup win, 1 runners up, a couple of 6 nations titles and some good test matches.

It is more the media than the fans giving it this big one, and that is no different to football.

You say they are little fish. But Wales Ireland and France on their day can beat anybody in the world. Wales missed out on the 2011 cup final by 1 point to France, after beating ireland on the way.

Ireland and Wales in the last 5/6 years have performed better in the 6 nations than England and France. It's just they have usually struggled, or narrowly lost out in World cup games.

I agree that playing the autumn internationals is a good test, but it is very rarely an indicator of a teams performance in a world cup. The local competition tends to be. We hammered Australia in a test last year but yet they finished 3rd in the world cup, and we didn't get out of the quarter finals.

Qualifying process :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Rugby_World_Cup_qualifying

I'd say we take the AIs a lot more seriously than a football friendly to be honest.

Also bear in mind that the RWC has only been going for 25 years, it's hardly a shock that some of the big teams have never won it.

As to our status as second favourites, that probably has a lot to do with the fact that a) we have the youngest squad of all the major teams and b) we're hosting the tournament.

Good point.

Hoping for NZ and England in the same group? Sick bastard.

Indeed. Going to be a fight in Group A.

Should have went and told them quiet down

Should've got a smudge with Wilko.

That is much more like it. YES. What a game!