More amateur rugby punditry

Have been getting a bit lazy of late by not finishing posts after an introductory paragraph or posting material from other sources. I had been meaning to write more about ‘day to remember’ or ‘rugger bugger’, but by the time I got back to them those posts had been superseded by newer material, which meant there would be little chance of readers going back over them. No distractions today however.

I’m sure you’ve been making regular use of the World Cup links on the right-hand side of the page, but I’ll give you a recap of the week’s sporting events in any case. The All Blacks predictably notched up a cricket score against the Portugeezers on Saturday night by crossing the tryline 16 times to chalk up the highest number of points at this tournament – 108-13; we did let ourselves down a bit though by conceding a try, but that was almost to be expected from letting our guard down against amateurs. We were actually on a bit of a hiding to none ourselves because we were damned if we scored 150 points and we were damned if we didn’t, i.e. “big scores make a farce of the World Cup” versus “the All Blacks can’t attain their own giddy heights”. It was mostly our B-side, however, and we had a prop and a no.8 filling in as locks by the end of the match. Los Lobos got their revenge afterwards with a 2-1 win in an impromptu game of football. Anyway, that game is out of the way now, and hopefully the Scots can put up some stiffer competition this coming weekend. I recommend you head on down to Zlata Hvezda to catch the action.

Rotten and tvc (and BA if he’s monitoring) will be happy to know that the American Eagles put up a creditable display against the English last week, going down by only 20 points. England then went on to be exquisitely humiliated at the weekend by the rampaging Boks. This was only to be expected, however, since the English had fielded an old has-been former league captain as their kicker and a 36-year-old centre whose career should have ended when Jonah Lomu ran over him in 1995. For some unfathomable reason pundits seem to think that the Boks now pose a real obstacle to the All Blacks lifting the Cup this time around. They seem to forget that world champions England are now in the second or even third division of world rugby, and that after they were thrashed earlier in the season by South Africa, New Zealand still went on to win the Tri-Nations by beating the Boks twice in a row. It’s actually the Aussies who remain our greatest nemesis, even without Stephen Larkham, and they should stop the Boks in the semi-finals before facing the All Blacks in the final. All clear?