Eugene's Blog

  I enjoyed watching the rugby on Saturday.   It was a great win for Ireland against South Africa but no prizes are being handed out yet.   Ireland topped the pool in 2011 and 2015 to lose the Quarter Final to Wales and Argentina respectively. Those teams are projected to meet in the Quarter Final and the winner will play Ireland should we beat the All Blacks.    You would expect the finalists to be the winners of the bottom two quarter finals but you never know. Fiji beat England recently and are projected to meet them in the Quarters so they have a good chance of getting to their first Semi-Final.      It should make for interesting viewing. From an Irish point of view, I wouldn't be getting too carried away as a very difficult Quarter Final awaits.

So the  Rugby World Cup is upon us. I'm not really a rugby fan, although I watch the Six Nations. As long as we beat the English I don't care. My most memorable World Cup moments, ironically, were in Spain. Watching France v New Zealand in 2007 with a Kiwi and that year's final, England v South Africa with an Englishman. I was supporting England in that game and got a lot of criticism for doing so. In 2011, I went for breakfast with Kiwis, English people and a Scot to watch some of the games.   Ireland  scored a point a minute earlier today and there will be other one-sided games so I wonder, are there too many teams in the group stage? Surely 16 would suffice? 4 groups of 4 and it means no team would have to sit out a match day. The Irish Examier asked the question the other day,  is rugby Ireland's most popular sport?  I don't know about that but it is certainly enjoying a period of growth, buoyed by the national team's success. As for Ireland's chances, ...