r/rugbyunion • u/neverbeenstardust #1 Alia Bitonci Fan • 21h ago
As Yaras Brazil Appreciation Post
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.
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy Rugby United NY 20h ago
Important to note that South America only has 2 teams - Colombia and Brazil. Argentina doesn’t even have a women’s 15s team. So it’s incredibly difficult for them to find any opponents without having significant travel. Despite being around since 2008, they’ve realistically only played matches semi-regularly since 2023. So this is basically a 2 year old national team.
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u/Zeca_77 20h ago
As someone from Chile. I'm happy to see them representing our continent in a WC. Hopefully they will only get better from here and we'll have more South American teams competing in the future.
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy Rugby United NY 19h ago
Yea it’s nice that there is now a direct qualifier for SA. The quality is much lower than other countries but they need it as an aspiration so they will improve.
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u/MrPoopersonTheFirst Brazil 15h ago
Plus, Brazil doesn't have a domestic XV competition for the women. They set up a high performance academy, but not a true competition with multiple teams.
When we see that the most experienced players had around 12caps, the number of actual competitive XV games they have played before isn't much higher than that. It is truly a remarkable achievement just to be able to hang with South Africa in the first half.
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy Rugby United NY 12h ago edited 12h ago
That really is amazing. Kinda sad that there isn’t a national competition but hopefully there is a trickle down effect that creates more clubs.
I assume for now they will try to create a women’s league and concentrate it in SP where these women will play?
And as for the setup they have now - how does it work? Did they just centrally contract 30 players and have them train and play games against each other?
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u/jonpettas96 20h ago
This was an amazing watch.
Watching this match, I had a full epiphany over the fact that the whole SVNS competition, event, structure, branding etc had all been shaping the best way to pull off a day of women’s rugby like this.
1 day, 1 venue, several matches, fans for other teams sticking around to cheer on the under dogs, crowds floating around between kiosks and bars.
You take a moderately sized, intimate stadium - and you make a sunny day of it. This is the model that WR has been working towards and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve cracked the code in how to package and make a profit out of professional women’s rugby. (This is what Super W & Aupiki should be doing)
It’s nice to (nearly) sell out a Sunderland on cheap tickets - but this… this is how you build consistency.
P.S. I’ve noticed that when all you offer is single matches at home grounds, you never get the opportunity to see how other fan bases do their fanning. And as someone from the most isolated city in the world - seeing how Brazilians, or Kenyans get behind their teams - is a learning experience. Being a fan should be just as competitive as being a player.
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u/Tobar_the_Gypsy Rugby United NY 12h ago
This is a good idea for women’s rugby which may not have a ton of fans but should have quite a few passionate fans. If I’m not mistaken they do this now for the WXV setup - there hasnt been great attendance but it’s a new competition and they’ve been getting unnecessarily large stadiums.
Off topic but I’ve heard that they may axe the WXV 2/3 levels which is really sad.
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u/cipher049 South Africa 21h ago
I gonna say here what i said in the match thread, they were obviously outplayed, but a formidable opponent. As you mentioned, no obvious transgressions nor deliberate foul plays to be seen in the game.
I've been made aware there are some 7s players in the team and their grit and determination is showing. Their first match at the World Cup didn't go bad at all(200+ tackle without cards or penalties), they can only go from strength to strength at this point, just like they did in 7s.
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u/Weird_Plankton_3692 Harlequins 15h ago edited 15h ago
They made 237 tackles with a 81% percent success rate against a team with some strong runners and only conceded 7 penalties to SAs 5. Their discipline was pretty phenomenal.
Other positives: They also had 100% of their lineouts. In the first half their defence around the tryline was very good. I also thought that when Edna Santini had the ball she looked like she could be slippery.
Outside of the rugby, I wound up close to their travelling fans in the stadium and they were cheering the whole time. The team stuck around for ages signing autographs and taking photos.
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u/samuel199228 20h ago
They certainly gave it a go and unfortunately got outplayed but I really hope they can win at least one of their games It would be good to see them win next Sunday at sandy park Vs France
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u/maverickmak Meg Jones Fan Club 20h ago
They were facing a level that they've never really experienced before, but every single player fought for every inch of grass. Absolutely A+ attitude.