Aug. 1st #WRWC2014 Day One

Day One & Done … So Have Some Fun!!

Day One of the 2014 Women’s Rugby World Cup was a day of frustrations. The USA Women Eagles struggled to a 23-17 loss to Ireland. They face an impossible challenge of defeating New Zealand on Aug 9^th to have even a small possibility of getting to the semi-finals . The Black Ferns will be entering the match with 21 consecutive World Cup victories.

The loss to Ireland was frustrating because there were 3 players in the USA who certainly would have made at least a one try difference in the outcome: Griffin, Javelet, Folayan. Will the Olympics sap talent and interest from this tournament? Four years ago the announcement of rugby entering the Olympics was only a year old. Would these 3 talented rugby players have been waiting this one out in Chula Vista then? I suppose if the announcement had not been made, one of them would still be playing field hockey and Chula Vista would not exist for rugby.

The USA coach’s statement after the game that, ‘Ireland was the best mauling team in the world and we will be ready for that next time’ was a little frustrating in that you wonder, “Why weren’t you ready for it this time? Why was it a surprise?”

The challenge for the women is tremendous now.They have to run in a bunch of tries against Kazakhstan and beat New Zealand. (New Zealand beat Kazakhstan 79-5.) This week will tell if they are going to conquer the tower or enjoy Paris. Either way they have a lot to be proud of.

Ireland was not an easy team and from how I was able to follow the game on Twitter … which brings up another frustration.

I foolishly assumed that I could stream the matches through Universal Sport which the IRB website was telling me was the provider in the USA. When I went to log-on, I found out they were only streaming the USA matches. So I followed New Zealand doing their thing against Kazakshtan  and the Magali Harvey 24 point  first half magic for Canada.  I meant to write down the names of the tweeters in the stadium and say thanks, so if you were doing that ,” Thanks”.

Then I tried to log-in to Universal Sport to get the stream of the USA match , but my cable provider was not approved … or something like that. So I followed the USA match on Twitter. Thanks again to those tweeters at the USA v Ireland match. I tweeted about my problem streaming Universal Sport and became a follower of Universal Sport. I got a message from someone at Universal Sport asking who my cable provider was. I sent back, “Comcast,” and that was the end of that conversation. The stream got strange when the England vs Samoa match started, and the English tweets dominated … and then there was the HIT! The Twitter stream was overwhelmed with the HIT! The Samoan player got a red card .There was a tweet about ,“Remind me not to get in a domestic dispute in that country.” Things moved on.

I’ll have to try to see some video of the hit. I hope that doesn’t make me sound too violent, but we all do play rugby … or did.

There was a tweet in French  from, I think, a Japanese tweeter. My rough translation is ‘There is no doubt that the athletes and the competition are spectacular, but do not fool yourself by calling this a “world” cup.’ I’m taking that to mean the tweeter thought the selection of the world cup  teams was not fair. Was Japan robbed of a chance at the cup?

I’m going to leave this article on that question as I need to go pack for Paris.

Au Revoir