General Sports Thread

I think you're confusing Bargain Hunt with the rather more popular programme "Mike Hunt", sponsored by Dickens Cider

 

England being totally rinsed by France at Twickenham

10 - 41 with 20 minutes left

 

Utterly destroying us.

 

They are a bit magnifique though, to be fair

10 - 48

 

10 - 53

Worst ever defeat at HQ, and there’s still 5 minutes left

 

I had a moment then, I wondered why Dave hadn’t commented on the rugby

 

What on earth has gone wrong with England's RFU men's team? England' have the biggest pool of players by far, to choose from. They have talented players! At club level, these same players are brilliant, yet as soon as they don the white shirt they are inhibited and lack sparkle. The All Blacks years ago, and now France and Ireland have realised that passing the ball and recycling at pace reaps more rewards than kicking the ball away. To quote Brian Clough when he saw his players clattering a long pass.up.field,..
"What did you do that for?" England' need to learn to keep.better possession and pass the ball quicker!

 

Owen Farrell.

 

He must play a completely different Game with.Saracens as they can play running rugby.

 

Sounds like Cousins will be testing free agency next year. Fine. The cycle of giving him 1 year extensions to manage the salary cap has to stop sooner rather than later.

 

They are doing way more than I gave them credit for this off season. I (wrongly) thought they would all be happy over the 13 win season and be running it back with the old and not good enough team they had this year. Looks like they are blowing it all up to try and actually build a good team for 2024/2025. Cousins will still get some kind of extension/restructure I just think they want to get below the cap first so he doesn’t have all the power in negotiations (ie they HAVE to work something out otherwise they are still over the cap)

Both Smiths and Cook still need to go this off season to get below the cap, sounds like they might get a pick for Cook and Z Smith instead of just straight cutting them which helps a bit. The rumours say they are planning on being active in free agency as well so they would need to clear more money to do that.

 

The Vikings are going through a process which is going to take some time - the changing of the front office personnel was the first step and has already started to bring some positives - their hire of O'Connell as HC get's a big tick from me. It's totally impossible to fix everything in the space of 12 months and the salary cap issues means it's going to take time (probably another 2 seasons) before they can turn us into genuine SB contenders. We need a franchise QB. Cousins has never been that because we traded for him.
I'm very envious of the where the Bears are now TBH. They have got tons of cap space and they traded away their no.1 pick for multiple first round picks and a good WR.

 

Yeah the Bears are in a good position, as are the Lions. You can go from completely **** to Super Bowl as the Bengals did it. The Vikings won’t as they have a few more years to really clear out everything that hasn’t worked and the dead money on stupid contracts they gave to the likes of Cook and Thielen. They also only have 5 picks this draft atm which isn’t ideal when in rebuild mode.

They should be looking at Jefferson, Hockenson, O’Neill and Darrisaw as the players to build the future team around, everyone else is expendable at this point. Their schedule for next year will be hard as they won the division so a top 10 pick is likely next draft, maybe even top 5 which should hopefully mean they draft a QB who hopefully is good

 

And just as I was starting to think they were heading in the right direction they blow a load of money in signing a tight end. A tight end who is not a receiving threat and when one of the better free agent line backers went to another team for less money, and the best corner went as well. Both to division rivals

 

Sounds like this guy's main attribute is run blocking. TBF maybe his main job won't be receiving - Hockenson does that. Agreed though I'd rather they spent the money on positions of greater need.

 

Run blocking for who though? Would indicate they are bringing Cook back, you don’t spent that sort of money on a blocking tight end if you don’t have a top running back. They aren’t getting one in free agency as Cook was number 1 if he got released and surely they aren’t drafting one in the first round. If they bring Cook back I have no idea how they get under the cap without giving Cousins an extension which ****s them down the road again

 

Have also signed Davenport. That would suggest Smith is off. Davenport has all the tools to be good but never put it together consistently, think he was once traded for 2 first round picks as wel