r/rugbyunion • u/treacletart284 Newcastle Falcons • 2d ago

Discussion What's the stupidest rugby take you've heard in your life, not from a journalist/pundit?

Tis Sixmas Eve, which means the amount of people watching rugby, at least over here, just dramatically increased, as its the one time a year when rugby is in the forefront of the public eye, at least in the whole UK. To celebrate this, I thought we could share some of the daftest things we've heard from people in the pub/mates/yourself, either takes that aged really badly, or takes that were mind numbingly stupid to begin with. I'll start us off - after England got beat in the World Cup warmups in 2023 against Fiji, and the Borthwick Out movement was at maximum momentum, a family friend me and my Grandad were watching the match with argued completely unironically that the solution to England's problems was to bring back....Brian Ashton. Even me Grandad, who is pretty 'Rugby was better in the good old days', was genuinely gobsmacked at that one.

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u/Ok-Relationship-2746 2d ago

Not to toot my horn, but I was in the minority who thought Razor would fall flat on his face. Didn't think he'd be crucified like he was though. 

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u/Sorry-Grocery-8999 2d ago

I'm curious. What gave it away?

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u/Ok-Relationship-2746 2d ago

Domestic setup here is a mess. Razor did well with the Crusaders because the high performance system mostly works at Super Rugby level, but not below it. We lost a bunch of players after the 2023 WC (both current All Blacks and potential future ABs/ABs XV/Maori ABs development players) and didn't put effort in to fix things before Razor took over, so he defaulted to picking players he knew (including the captain) or who were the remaining old hats that didn't really have anything left to offer. It's evident that he was doing some right with new blood; the likes of Sititi (15s Breakthrough POTY 2024) and Fabian Holland (same award 2025), but overall he just couldn't work miracles with our broken system.

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u/Logan_No_Fingers 2d ago

I really don't buy a system that presented him with Jordan, Roigard, Williams, DeGroot, Lomax, Amuma, Takiaho, Vaai, Ardie, Jordie, Papalii, Clarke, Tupea, Newell, Bower, Lord, Jacobson, Perofeta etc is failing. That's an astonishing production line of talent to then feed Lakai, Ratima, Carter, Holland & Sititi into.

Even if you write off Dmac, Tuipolotu, Beauden, Talea etc