[cbloom]

There's a proposal floating around to cut the entrants to 16 nations instead of 20, which would make all the games more competitive. Obviously the idea of letting the weaker nations in is to hope it builds the sport in those countries, so dunno where that proposal is going.

IMHO it's actually kind of fun to watch SA and NZ put up tries, you get to see some really nice running, but yeah probably not good for the sport. It's a lot more fun than watching a close game where nobody can get anything going and both sides are just sloppy.

A lot of people were saying how bad England looked against the USA, but I thought they actually looked pretty decent, and the US was just really playing to spoil their flow, going really hard in the rucks. Olly Barkley looked spectacular, but apparently he has some injury now which is bad news.

England looked better than anyone in Pool D. Actually it's pretty weird that they're in the same pool with SA.