RugbyRebels

Premiership Winner:

Exeter, I think Sarries the better side but will suffer for a stronger European showing

Table order:

1. Exeter
2. Saracens
3. Wasps
4. Gloucester
5. Leicester
6. Sale
7. Bath
8. Northampton
9. Newcastle
10. Harlequins
11. Worcester
12. Bristol

European predictions - how will the English teams do?

Badly, bar Sarries

Top try scorer:

Vuna, for the sake of being different and not expecting much cohesion from Bath

Top points scorer:

Joe Simmonds

Surprise of the season:

Wuss to win five the road

Biggest disappointment:

Plodding nature of AP to continue

Player having a breakthrough season:

Zach Mercer establishing himself not just in the Bath 1st XV but with England

Best signing:

Defying time George Smith

The Jerome Schuster Award for least effective signing:

Taqele Naiyaravoro, I hope not but club signings presented to a coach are fraught with risk

twitchy wrote:

Mellsblue wrote:

twitchy wrote:
I knew nothing about him so I googled him. Had a little chuckle at this in his wiki entry:


Outside rugby
On Jersey, Le Bourgeois is viewed as a role model.[15] In August 2011, Le Bourgeois was arrested for drink-driving, theft of a vehicle, driving without insurance and driving without a valid driving licence.[16] He was banned from driving for 23 months and fined £1,600.[16] He was also banned by Jersey for one match which meant he did not play for Jersey against Birmingham & Solihull R.F.C.[15] Afterwards, he apologised for his actions.[17]

Ha, yep. The guy I know who grew up with him has plenty of similar stories. Though, I believe the drink driving was a one off as he knew that was a step too far.

Just to clarify I chuckled at the bit that says he is a "role model" then immediately goes on to the drink driving stuff.

I know. Gone on the days when anybody thinks drink driving is something to laugh about. Bloody snowflakes

Let's face it the majority of hype for Bourgeois is from Gallagher
Respected rugby journalist (lol) Brendan Gallagher said on Twitter this week: "This guy [Le Bourgeois] would be talked about in England terms if he was playing in the Premiership... you will go a long way to find a better all round centre in the country. Outstanding every time I've watched him play over the last few seasons.

How many Championship backs who are over 26 have moved to the prem and made it?

He also won player of the season for the championship.

Premiership Winner:
Sarries

Table order:
Sarries
Exeter
Wasps
Bath
Leicester
Sale
Gloucester
Newcastle
Quins
Northampton
Bristol
Worcester


European predictions - how will the English teams do?
Sarries to win their pool. Wasps and Exeter to come second. The rest will depend on the draw but Sarries will surely make the semis at least.

Top try scorer:
Lewington

Top points scorer:
Biggar

Surprise of the season:
Cuthbert to be near the top of the try scoring table.

Biggest disappointment:
Charles Piatua to look ordinary due to those who surround him.

Player having a breakthrough season:
Am I allowed to go for Walker at Bath again?!?!? If not, I’ll go for Dingwall.

Best signing:
Le Bourgeois. Totes obvs

The Jerome Schuster Award for least effective signing:
Campese Ma’afu as it is every season! Also, Charlie Mathews unless that is too obvious?

And the results are:

Premiership Winner:
I started listing the winners, but it actually turned out to be easier to just name the only 5 people who didn't make the boring selection of Saracens to win. Gloskarlos and Digby maintained dignity with a choice of Exeter and Doorzetbornandbred doesn't disgrace themselves with a pick of play-off team Glaws, unlike Switchskier and Raggs who both went for Wasps!

Table order:
Picking Saracens and Exeter in the top 4 gets you no recognition at all, as everyone but Doorz (Exeter in 7th?) got that. No-one was brave enough to pick Leicester in 11th (some idiot who can't be named for legal reasons even mentioned them in dispatches for the title before plumping for Saracens. What a maroon!) or Newcastle to go down, so the winner has to be Switch and Timbo for being the most pessimistic about their chances by putting them 5th and 10th respectively.

European predictions - how will the English teams do?
Everyone seemed to have learned their lesson from last year and overcorrected to be too pessimistic with no-one picking an English winner. Renniks came close by picking Saracens to the final "and then who knows?", but Digby hit the nail on the head with an inspired prediction of "Badly, bar Sarries"

Top try scorer:
Tied between Reinach and Solomona with 12. No-one picked Cobus, but Scrumhead wins the prize for being the only person to pick Drunkie Dennie. Lots of people picked Lewington or Ashton, neither of whom made the top 6 in the charts, and Renniks and Timbo made us sad with a selection of the departed Christian Wade, but best wrong answer was Stom who not only picked Sam Simmonds, but also gave "honourable mention to Jonas Mikalcius."

Top points scorer:
Ford topped this one, as is traditional for a non-international fly-half of a team in a relegation scrap. Gloskarlos was the only person to pick this (Tigersman mentioned him in dispatches, but you get nothing for hedging your bets!). And Raggs - Sopoaga? Really?!

Surprise of the season:
In real life, I'd have to say the winner was Leicester sacking their coach after one game and then finishing 11th, but no-one was crazy enough to think that was likely to happen. I get some rare kudos for pickig Manu having a long, injury-free run, sharing that with Swindonbri. Mells went bold with a prediction of Cuthbert being near the top of the try-scoring table and we should all acknowledge their bravery while mocking them mercilessly.

Biggest disappointment: Scrumhead makes us all sad with their spot-on prediction of "Brad Shields being bang average but still making the World Cup squad." Not 100% confirmed yet, but we all know it's happening. Switch picked Newcastle to creak as their thin squad is exposed, but they didn't see them getting relegated, and Which gets a nod for Wasps disappointing and Sopoaga not settling.

Player having a breakthrough season:
Harry Randall was a good pick from Swindonbri and Gloskarlos, but the undoubted winner of this in real life was Alex Dombrandt, going from uni student to MotM for England vs Barbarians in one season. That was picked by Stom, who loses a touch of his Nostradamus air by having noted him as a ball-carrying lock.

Best signing:
Le Bourgeois was a popular, yet utterly rubbish selection for this one - Renniks, Raggs, and Mells all jumped on the Booj hype-train that didn't really leave the station. Switchskier also loses points for picking Sopoaga. I think the real life best signing was probably Cipriani, but no-one picked him here. Well, technically Stom mentioned him, but their answer pinged about 50 players, so I'm not giving them a point for that!

The Jerome Schuster Award for least effective signing:
Which Tyler gets the award for picking Sopoaga (as did I, sort of, but see above about hedging of bets) who was easily outplayed by Championship signing Billy Searle and who only regained the starting shirt after Searle's injury. Cuthbert proved a few people wrong by becoming a solid member of Exeter's squad and Naiyaravoro was another who did okay despite being some people's pick.


A few good performances on the prediction front - I think we've all done better than last year, although in my case, that was a low bar to trip over. If I'm picking an overall winner, I think it would be Timbo - he's closest to picking Newcastle and Leicester's rubbish seasons, picks out Gloucester as being due a good season, and his choices for best signing and Schuster were solid in Grobler and Tapuai respectively. Congrats Timbo - you can now put "I was right once" in your signature and we will all accord you the exact amount of respect that you deserve.

Puja

Also, for next year, do we think we want to split the Jerome Schuster up? There was a bit of discussion as to whether it was for "crappest signing" or "lowest performance to hype ratio signing". I tend to come down on the latter side when judging (as picking Ma'afu and PDJ each year is just dull), but M.Schuster himself was definitely in the first category in real life.

Do we want two categories and, if so, who would the performance to hype category be named after? I'm be tempted by Sopoaga, but I think best to have it as a past player whose ineptness has gone into legend, rather than a current one who may still come good.

Puja

Tapuai has been great for Quins. Nowhere near the Jerome Schuster award?

Re. splitting the award up, sounds sensible. How about the ‘Joel Tompkins Trophy’?

Scrumhead wrote:Tapuai has been great for Quins. Nowhere near the Jerome Schuster award?

Re. splitting the award up, sounds sensible. How about the ‘Joel Tompkins Trophy’?

Has he? I'd got the impression he'd been okay, but nothing special?

Joel Tompkins is an interesting one, although he was actually okay for Saracens. [Redacted] is another one, although that's more for the sheer amount of hype rather than because his performances were actively bad.

Puja

I’m not joking about Tapuai. He has been exactly what we needed at 12. I think you’ll find most, if not all Quins fans rate him highly. Sure, Saili is more box office but Tapuai is very solid in defence and good in attack too. A ‘glue’ player.

As for Joel Tompkins, he came with a very big reputation from League but never really warranted being a first choice for Saracens let alone England IMO. Just an initial suggestion - there will definitely be some better shouts on that.

I get no points for George Smith as best signing? he's introduced a whole new move this season, he's genius

Mellsblue wrote: Booj ...... It’ll be interesting to see how he goes this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s first choice 12 by Xmas or if he sinks without trace.

Hey! Surely I get bonus points for accurately predicting Booj's season. I can't believe autocorrect replaced 'and then' with 'or if'.

Could I nominate Moray Low for the hype v reality award. First choice international prop to reserve team stalwart in the time it took him to drive from Glasgow to Exeter.

Scrumhead wrote:Tapuai has been great for Quins. Nowhere near the Jerome Schuster award?

Re. splitting the award up, sounds sensible. How about the ‘Joel Tompkins Trophy’?

What about the "Sam Burgess Award"

Rename the shuster to the Chris Jack award, and leave it as underperformance for hype

Which Tyler wrote:Rename the shuster to the Chris Jack award, and leave it as underperformance for hype

Chris Jack is a *great* shout. The very epitome of hype vs reality.

Puja

You bitter little men.

Stephen Donald

Mellsblue wrote:

Mellsblue wrote: Booj ...... It’ll be interesting to see how he goes this season. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s first choice 12 by Xmas or if he sinks without trace.

Hey! Surely I get bonus points for accurately predicting Booj's season. I can't believe autocorrect replaced 'and then' with 'or if'.

Could I nominate Moray Low for the hype v reality award. First choice international prop to reserve team stalwart in the time it took him to drive from Glasgow to Exeter.

He was only copying Greg Holmes (bar the arriving from Glasgow part)