Diggity Doc, how would you sum up the opening round of the 2017 Rugby League World Cup in one word?

Chill.

Let me extrapolate that one word; cool ya jets folks.

Making any rash judgements on teams based one their performances over the weekend is foolish when you consider that RLWC is a tournament, spanning over a month. That's the joy of the RLWC though as we get to watch how teams move through the tournament, observe how these teams develop with more trainings, more reflection and preparation and a better understanding of how their opponents are playing footy. 

Hence Aotearoa's move to come into camp so late was strange, but ultimately it won't have a major influence on how they perform. I went into depth on Aotearoa here and will offer a few different Kiwis thoughts in video in the nek 24 hours, so I won't expand too much on them but regardless of whether you left their win over Samoa with positive or negative vibes; Shaun Johnson and Kodi Nikorima are at the start of their combination, this was Aotearoa's first hit-out executing David Kidwell's game plan, it was Nelson Asofa-Solomona's debut etc etc. 
Let me take that vibe into Samoa's performance because I straight up thought they were pretty crap. 

There's a lot of sugar-coating going on in the mainstream media about Samoa fighting hard and what not, but their celebrated forward pack got steam-rolled, their halves were non-existent and they made some silly errors when the footy went wide. 

Samoa won't win games with Junior Paulo averaging 8.63m/carry (95m from 11 carries) and Sam Lisone averaging 8.09m/carry (89m from 11). They definitely won't look the goods with Joseph Paulo and Ben Roberts as their halves combination either, although that's where we can look forward to how Samoa develop over the next few games; Tonga's nek so they better improve swiftly.

A spine of Paulo, Roberts and Young Tonumaipea isn't going to create enough attacking wizardry to break down the good defences. I was surprised to see Fa'amanu Brown left and he'd be someone I'd bring in asap and how coach Matt Parish works with Herman Ese'ese (9.5m/carry, 114m from 12 in 53mins) and Suaia Matagi (10.8m/carry, 54m from 5 in 26mins) through the middle rotation will be of interest. 

Adjustments Parish and his coaching staff make will be of huge interest as Samoa will have to improve the subtleties to their game. The usos won't need any motivation to fizz up to play Tonga, they'll definitely need to play with more class in their attacking movements and be able to peg Tonga down their end consistently. 

As for Tonga, well there's no learnings from a 50-4 win over Scotland. There shouldn't be excessive hype either as Tonga did the job against Scotland and how they perform against better teams will obviously allow us to gauge their threat to the big dawgs later on in the tournament.

Samoa vs Tonga hype is off the charts though. I'll put a focus on this in the coming days but yo, I'm frothing; South Auckland's bonkers, rugby league will be the focus back in the Islands and Hamilton is a short drive down the road from Auckland so there'll be hefty crowd. 

I yarned about rugby league moving in on rugby union turf in the Pacific Islands and this game (as part of a monumental RLWC) will be another example of rugby league's growth (the takeover's for real folks).

Same story with Papa New Guinea whipping Wales 50-6 and Fiji rollin' over USA 58-12. Don't get all downbuzz about those scores though as we're at the start of this growth curve and it's great to have 'minnows' in a RLWC, these results are just how it is. 

Ireland beating Italy 36-12 and Lebanon beating France 29-18 did however tickle my footy tastebuds like a grotty chicken fried rice. Italy lost Terry Campese before this game and then lost Jack Johns during the game, taking their best halves combo out and that's reason enough to not kick Italy to the curb. 

Ireland were glorious though and what I saw in Ireland's performance was how a team can rally together; a champion team beats a team of champions. They executed a basic plan of getting to their kick, putting it deep in Italy territory and then oozing effort, determination and energy in limiting Italy's progress. Liam Finn is the Irish wizard at halfback and pulls all the strings, which is crucial as you can't have the effort without the game control of the halves and vice versa. Api Pewhairangi adds a splash of funk with his footwork, although when it was his turn to take a last-play, he came up with the wise option more often than not - dribbling it over the touchline for example.

Finn's got an almighty boot as well and Italy's discipline was terrible, allowing Finn to eat up 40m with his penalty kicks for touch.

Ireland destroyed Italy's left edge with a few of their early tries and overall, left edge forward Louie McCarthy-Scarsbrook, left centre Michael Morgan and winger Liam Kay had fantastic games. That's Finn's edge as well (Pewhairangi pulls the strings on the right) and some slick plays along with mediocre defence combined for Kay to grab a few tries.

You ain't stopping jack with a zig-zag defensive line like Italy had here:

And you ain't stopping jack with two defenders left with their feet in concrete, which is a product of a slick-play execution from Ireland:

How Lebanon and France move forward from this game will be of great intrigue as they are staring at two vastly different trajectories. France were alright and could get better over the course of the tournament, although they could also get worse. Chill on the negativity around that though as this is kinda like a France B team considering their injuries. 

Lebanon have the top-tier talent to do something funk in this tournament, they also showed that they have un-fancied jokers like winger Abbas Miski, or Elias Sukkar coming off the bench who can contribute strongly. Ultimately though, having Tim Mannah run for 167m off 17 carries (9.82m/carry) in 63 minutes, Alex Twal running for 151m from 17 carries (8.88m/carry) in 60 minutes and Michael Lichaa darting out of dummy-half for 126m from 10 carries (12.6m/carry), is what made Lebanon such a dynamic opponent for France. 

These lads tore through the middle - shout out to Nick Kassis as well who had 110m from 12 carries in 63mins - and if Lebanon are rollin' down-field, then Robbie Farah and Mitchell Moses will be in righteous form. Moses will get the headlines, don't sleep on Farah's touches however as he produced a crucial kick when the game was in the balance.

After Lichaa darted 10m and earned a quick play-the-ball, Farah pushes aside a joker and has his eyes on the price. In this case the prize is open pastures deep in French territory via this only being the 4th tackle:

Farah has time to munch some kafta and then kick, which isn't good news when you're giving Farah time to pick his spot. That's via the quick play-the-ball and 4th tackle business:

Despite this not being planned, three Lebabon players are there to greet the French winger and Farah's one of them. Four lads in total plowing down field to force a repeat set:

Finally, Australia vs England. Well not much here as it's super silly to make any judgements on either team as they both know that there's bigger fish to fry later on in the tournament. I do think that Sam Burgess' injury will be alright for England to absorb as Burgess was playing as an edge forward and this won't impact their middle stock as it otherwise would. Australia will obviously be able to absorb the loss of Jake Trbojevic because, well, they're Australia.

I will give you some Cameron Smith wizardry to finish with and funnily enough, Smith makes a fool of Burgess. Burgess is more than capable of moving between middle and edge and he's undisputedly a lovely player, although defending on the edge ain't easy, especially when Smith is crabbing across field near the tryline.

Smith shapes to kick for Slater, but stops that fake fairly early on in the process:

Smith crabs over some more, luring Burgess in and Burgess didn't really need to move that far in-field if we're keeping it a hunnit. Smith's that good though:

Because Burgess went on a journey in-field without a map, he left halfback Luke Gale defending on an island by himself against Matt Gillett. Never a good time for a little halfback, yet Gillett didn't use power, he instead stepped off his right foot as he caught the pass, making use of the space created by Burgess' journey in-field:

Oh damn, something pissed me off though...

Commentators gotta stop saying that player X played for another country at the last RLWC or in other Tests. We're living in the now bruh and all that should matter is who that play has chosen to represent right now.

Oh damn, one more...

Kiwis like to think that they are the greatest creatures on planet Earth and trying so hard to get Australian commentators to pronounce Maori, Polynesian and any other name correctly is mental when you consider how kiwi commentators butcher the same names. When kiwi commentators pronounce all names perfectly, then kiwis can start to get all righteous about Aussies.

Peace and love 27.

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