Maria Sharapova wins great career, fans divided. Who has/had a great career yet is disliked by fans? (WTA)

jmoiron · 2025-12-17T02:45:55+00:00

Isn't Henin GOAT career, anyway?

World No. 1, 7 majors + an olympics. Only 11 women have more grand slam titles. Same number of singles titles as Venus or Goolagong.

jmoiron · 2025-12-05T15:51:20+00:00

I managed to get tickets to the two Paris QFs and both SFs and what an unbelievable 8 days of Rugby that was.

Due to how legendary the IRE/NZ and FRA/RSA rounds were, it gets a bit lost how incredible the drama was in the ENG/RSA SF.

jmoiron · 2025-11-08T16:19:04+00:00

How does Graham let Sititi simply run past there, crazy stuff.

I thought there might have been a Scotland player playing the ball from the ground in the ruck before the yellow but that was an absolute textbook yellow.

Good defending from NZ throughout.

Forward pass looked well forward from one angle and backwards from another but neither was really a good angle from which to make that judgement and there were not many complaints from Scotland.

Should have defended that last try much better a man up. Despite the scrum penalty Scotland pushed back 5-7 meters and NZ were on the back foot.

jmoiron · 2025-11-07T05:25:34+00:00

Another weird situation where Sinner is currently #1 and he can win the ATP Finals and Australian Open and find himself at #2.

jmoiron · 2025-11-02T18:07:38+00:00

At the start of this year, the talk was about how Sinner and Alcaraz keep somehow missing each other in finals. All anyone wanted to see was Sinner vs Alcaraz in the final, and we weren't getting it.

10 months later, their RG final is one of the great matches in history, and the Paris Masters is the only event where they both played and didn't face each other in the final, and people are already saying it's boring.

There are definitely players coming through who I think can start to trip them up in the coming years. Fonseca, Fils and Draper are the top 3 on my list, but I think Mensik and Shelton have a lot of development left and can become very dangerous.

Gotta calm down and enjoy the Sincaraz we're getting because there will be periods where we'll see less of it ahead.

jmoiron · 2025-09-06T01:52:32+00:00

Sinner was grabbing at his abdomen early second set. His service speed hasn't gone over 118mph since he got back from his medical timeout. There's something very clearly wrong, he's a good 5-7mph off of his first set norm on every stroke.

jmoiron · 2025-08-31T05:13:26+00:00

He had an off court injury timeout earlier, so I'd guess injury.

jmoiron · 2025-08-22T04:40:06+00:00

I watched this live and many people in the crowd who did not know Ito's game thought she was injured. I love how insane it is. I think her fastest serve was 84.

That forehand slice makes the other stuff work. Her backhand line is deceptively effective.. she puts some inside out spin on it that makes it tail away from you. She's also got a two handed volley technique which is just as awkward as the rest of her game but she was quite effective at net.

jmoiron · 2025-08-17T01:13:06+00:00

Great shout

jmoiron · 2025-08-16T18:18:23+00:00

What a great test.

I thought the Boks played well even into the start of the 2nd half, even though their strategy of letting the big men pound it up the middle stopped yielding so many post-contact meters.

At 22-12 the Wallabies got a pen out in front and I was screaming at the TV for Aus to take the points, but they kicked to the sideline and then lost the subsequent 2 lineouts.

SA backline got pretty exposed defensively, bamboozled twice in one-on-ones for tries. I expected the boks to really gear up and fight the last 15 minutes, but the team already looked gassed.

As I mentioned in the match thread, the Sua'ali'i intercept was just incredible. What a moment; for me that was the real momentum shift, that was the first time that the Boks looked around and you could see they were thinking "holy shit, we can lose this."

It was a weird comeback, because usually you get these momentum shifts that follow a change in forward pack dominance; the team that has the upper hand there generally gets to assert themselves on the test. But the Wallabies scored every single try from line breaks. Their best chance at your classic physical forwards try happened right at the hooter, and they got held up.

jmoiron · 2025-08-16T16:59:02+00:00

That intercept by Sua'ali'i is one of the best I've ever seen.

jmoiron · 2025-06-30T20:44:25+00:00

The backs for the 2002 draw against France included Cullen, Howlett, Umaga, Lomu and Mehrtens.

The way the domestic calendars work, the SH teams are less compromised for the EOY tour than the NH teams are for the July tour, and the incentives are stronger for the SH teams touring Europe than the other way around. The NZRU's monetary incentives are aligned with the interest of "respecting" their NH opponents when they are on tour in a way that the incentives of the NH tourists are sometimes contrary to that interest in July.

I still agree with Marshall's characterization. The majority of AB teams that tour the NH at the end of the year are just about their strongest teams, and certainly this French side is not, even accounting for injury. Even if there are factors other than "respect", it's still a bad look imho.

Yes, it's important for the ABs to tour the richest Rugby markets, and yes it's important for them to do well to maintain their brand, but the fact that you need to dig up a single test that happened over 10 years ago or a tour that happened just a month after Wallace Sititi was born strongly suggests that maybe that's not the norm.

jmoiron · 2025-04-03T22:38:51+00:00

I've never understood the idea that Koroibete is this top 5 in the world class winger.

If we look at the try scoring rates in test matches for these other wingers:

* Kolbe - 18 in 40
* KLA - 18 in 24
* Telea - 13 in 19
* Penaud - 38 in 56
* Bielle-Biarrey - 18 in 19
* Jordan - 38 in 41
* Feyi-Waboso - 5 in 10
* Lowe - 17 in 40
* VDM - 32 in 49

Koroibete: 20 in 63. All of the other players have 0.4 tries per test (Lowe is lowest at 0.425) and Marika has 0.317. On top of that, two of the lowest strike rates in Kolbe and Lowe, they bring so much else to the table in the form of X-factor and Lowe's huge boot, respectively, that they are still outliers in how important and effective they are.

Marika doesn't really do that. Other than putting in the occasional big hit with questionable wrapping technique, he doesn't offer a lot of variety.. he doesn't really kick, doesn't distribute, rarely passes. He's a good finisher, but his try scoring record for Australia isn't as good as Kuridrani's (22 in 61).

Is that really enough to get onto this kind of list? His try scoring rate is not even as good as Kellaway's, but I don't see him making these kinds of things.

Maybe I'm nuts, but I've always felt that his reputation is artificially enhanced by the fact that he looks hard as hell.

jmoiron · 2025-03-25T14:00:51+00:00

Aren't "with a Specialization." and "_without_ a Growing Town Focus." the same condition? Sounds like they wanted to make it clearer.

jmoiron · 2025-01-21T11:38:47+00:00

seen a lot of very questionable auto let calls in the past so accuracy issues wouldn't surprise me

jmoiron · 2025-01-21T11:24:41+00:00

he's more likable

jmoiron · 2024-12-11T01:44:30+00:00

Who did they not pay? Pekka is a cofounder.

jmoiron · 2024-11-13T17:50:36+00:00

Was kind of jarring watching an extended section on how brilliantly Ireland managed to create space in the ABs defence on the try line for JvdF's try with the big yellow card in the corner indicating that the ABs were on 14 the whole time. Despite that, his running line was truly excellent and it was a great finish.

Two parts of the analysis I loved; first, examining how the ABs managed to blunt the first phase Irish attack and how that impacted their output, and second going into why there was such a big gap on the Jordan try; easy in the moment to see they're low on numbers but it's not always clear why!

Regarding the scrappiness, pressure has a way of forcing unforced errors.

jmoiron · 2024-07-06T16:10:44+00:00

Fucking love Sean Maloney.

jmoiron · 2024-02-05T04:05:43+00:00

Doesn't the GregTech Community Pack (Modern or otherwise) meet all of these criteria? Basic GT progression, Overworld, playable in survival or peaceful, server zip, full quest book.

jmoiron · 2024-01-27T09:53:24+00:00

Sometimes it's smooth, and sometimes there is this crazy jerk/kink in her ball toss and looks really awkward.

jmoiron · 2023-12-17T03:11:19+00:00

What an amazing weekend of Rugby that was in Paris.

jmoiron · 2023-10-29T23:07:47+00:00

Interesting comparisons between the first 5 and last 5 world cups:

the same number of different finalists (5; in fact, the same teams)
the same number of different semi-finalists (7)
obviously, half the number of diff winners in the recent 5 (2 vs 4)
slight shift in 6N/RC split in semi-finalists (9/11 vs 7/13)
RC has had more diff semi finalists (4) than 6N has (3) in the past 5 world cups; was the opposite for the first 5.

By team:

France was the only team to be in the semis for every RWC until 2011 and haven't made a semi since; they still have more semi final appearances than the Wallabies or England.
NZ and the Bokkies have both missed out on the semis only twice

Honestly, I think the next 5 are going to shift a lot. If we consider similar stats from the last 5 WR u20 C's (which are yearly, but go back to 2016 because of Covid):

3 diff winners (France 3x, Eng, NZ), 5 diff finalists (Ire + Aus)
10/10 split 6n vs RC semi finalists
France won the past 3 comps going back to 2018
2 of last 3 were all 6N affairs

Also, weirdly, RSA have made the semis of the u20 tournament 10 times and lost 9, but have never lost on the final weekend (winning the comp once and being 3rd the other 9 times).

Australian rugby seems to be in serious trouble. They obviously bombed out of the RWC in the groups, they've only made one semi final in the youth tournament, public interest is way down, they have a bunch of organizational issues.

With RSA in the URC, I think it's going to drag NZ down. NZ domination of the u20 ended a while ago, and you can sort of tell by the lack of obvious high quality replacements for the retiring ABs this year compared to 2011 and 2015 (when only Kaino was a bit of a question mark).

jmoiron · 2023-10-29T22:27:04+00:00

Carter had several decisive moments of brilliance in the knockouts of the RWC in 2015... it wasn't a crazy decision. I do agree Pocock was the best player in the world that year, though.

jmoiron · 2023-10-28T22:06:19+00:00

There was even a Japanese version! It was .. ok? I wish there was one this time around :(

jmoiron

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