Be nice to see a tight contest and some good finishes as for the most part it's been a bit boring watching 1 sided games.

So as the title says, I've fully gotten Womens Rugby World Cup fever. The vibes are immaculate and I love the atmospheres so far. Plus, I think part of me regrets never getting a chance to go to any games here at the 2015 men's RWC, though the less said about that as a home fan the better 😅

Either way, next weekend in York looks good for me - it started off as an extension of a possible trip to Sheffield on Thursday for a gig, and now I'm just feeling a weekend of rugby in York, coupled with a wander round the National Railway Museum (because I'm a train nerd, so be rude not to really). The prospect of USA vs Australia on a Saturday night sounds amazing both from a competition and atmosphere standpoint, and I believe there's still tix available for both that game and Italy-SA on the Sunday.

If anyone else is planning on going - or wants to try and convince me to go to games in another city next weekend instead - let me know! Also if there's other games with tix available, so long as they aren't on the 6th September where I already have plans - pitch them to me. I'm excited 😁

(Also, I'll most likely be a neutral at any games I do go to - unless I somehow wangle an England ticket! - so I'm more than willing to adopt your team or be an honourary fan of your team for the day!)

Yesterday's win against the All Blacks was nothing short of impressive. However, it was still weird to see the Argentina team lifting a trophy when the game is just part of a bigger tournament involving two other teams. It just feels cheap.

There's a lot of good things to say about them. I'll put one of the less obvious ones here to start us out. Discipline was phenomenal. Their penalty count looks high, but easily half of their penalties if not more are just scrum bad lol. In terms of things that the individual players had immediate control over, they were almost immaculate.

They made well over two hundred tackles and how many of them were high? Like maybe two? Tops? None high enough to card for. How many times did they get caught offside or get caught doing stupid things like playing the ball from the floor?

We give rugby players a lot of grace for stupid brain fades under pressure and like, to be fair, who among us has not had a stupid brain fade under pressure? But also the answer is evidently the rugby discipline of the Brazilian Women's National Rugby Union Team.

Loved the England game because I got to see it live, but in terms of the best match I've got to go for Ireland vs Japan, was a much closer game than the scoreline made it out to be. Honourable mention to Brazil, because bloody hell they put up a fight.

Pencilled in Scotland vs Wales and France vs Italy as the matches to watch in the opening round, but Scotland just blew Wales away, was pleasantly surprised with how good they were, and both France and Italy left their game with far more questions than answers, thought they were both a bit shite to be honest. New Zealand and Ireland will be licking their lips if that's how they're gonna play in the quarter finals, and South Africa must surely smell blood for next week.

Just came off Ireland v Japan and she's a fantastic ref.

• Most common call is "play on"
• Breakdown reffing is not "grab the ball" or "lift the ball" it's "win the ball. If the tackled player is holding on, I'll blow my whistle. Otherwise, you don't win the ball until you win the ball"
• Personally offended when she has to blow her whistle, but perfectly able to do it
• "From my point of view, the scrum picture is fine" No other ref has ever said this
• Only allowed one TMO intervention in the whole game
• That one TMO intervention led to her overturning a yellow card
• Japan go backwards 15+ meters in the scrum, Ireland ask for advantage. "No. Play on."
• The whole game was flowing, safe, still full of monstrous tackles, and incredibly fun.
• All the games she refs are like this.
• Just embrace that she doesn't care enough about you to blow every penalty you want and she'll be the best ref you could ever ask for

Personally I think the Wallabies loss may be a better one simply for how in the competition we felt until the JOC collapse in the final minutes of the game but then again we had massive injuries early in that game. The All Blacks loss felt to me abit like how the Boks lost last weekend, just sheer disbelief that it was happening and then had no solutions to try rip it back. But the scorelines do read that the ABs lost at a smaller margin than the Wallabies did. So which loss performance would you rather have your team dish up if you had to accept a loss?