The Orange

Far be it for me to call it the greatest league test match of them all, but the Sydney Daily Telegraph did just that.

The key point is that regardless of the result (I’m only saying that because we lost), the real point was:

But right from the first moment [of the series], Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain showed that rugby league can matter on the international stage.

At 10-2, the Aussies were all over the Kiwis, had all the ball, all the possession, all the momentum.  In the past, it would have been all over, red rover.

This time, the Kiwis stuck in and made it a test.  A real test.
Even when the Kiwis lost THREE players to injury, the team never gave up.

Not one person in the crowd, the commentary team or out in TV land knew who was going to win.

Compare that with the rugby – no contest.

1. The Welsh are the village idiots of world rugby, apparently.

2. Stephen Jones, the Times rugby scribe, is Welsh.

3. I draw no conclusions but leave the rest up to you.

As they say, all of a sudden … nothing happened.

Normally the crowd starts booing when the AB’s start the haka.

This morning, the non-performance of the haka caused the crowd to start booing.

You can’t win – it’s just like being married! [Let's hope the Domestic CEO isn't checking my blog these days!]

There’s some validity in the comments that have come out of the UK – the Times didn’t think much of it while the Guardian let rip with some stinging alliteration:

The only thing they got wrong was not doing the haka in public before the game, a prickliness over protocol that revealed a certain pomposity.

The irony of the anthem wrangle was that the anthem was first sung way back in 1905 when the Welsh public responded to the haka by singing some Welsh ditty.

Fair enough, but back then most countries didn’t give women the vote and we don’t seem to want to change everything back to the way they were.

The AB’s do like pompous but I don’t doubt for a moment that it was an attempt to dismantle some of the All Black mystique.

There’s no rule that says the AB’s have to do it.  If they don’t want to play along with what has become the custom for many decades, it’s their loss.

You’d think the Welsh would be keen to focus on their playing performance.

It must be true because the Guardian says so!

Mind you, it must be some relief that the AB’s only cheat in three areas of the game:

• breakdown
• scrums
• and the midfield

Strangely, they’ve forgotten to add that the NZRFU has special agents with nets trawling through the South Pacific dragging innocent brown bro’s off the streets (I think they have streets in Apia) and into an All Black uniform.

The Welsh are dreaming surely???

Jeez Wayne! I wish I’d written this: England in a spin as All Blacks lead the revolution.

Funnily enough – ha ha ha – it picks up on the point I’d made a couple of days ago about the AB’s ability to counter punch.

However, as the article notes, there’s a massive difference between good intentions and the results the AB’s are getting.

Yes size is one thing but the skill and the ability of the forwards sets the AB’s apart from the others.

And, if you ask the Taffies, the honest cheating is the other thing.

OK, very immature title but I’m not the one talking about silk pyjamas.

It still worries me, the Aussies losing all these games.

It only takes one game and those green and gold pyjamas could sneak a win against the Men in Black (note – uniform, not pyjamas).

Twelve months out, I’d even feel a little happier if the Men In Black (not pyjamas) had lost a game on tour.  Just a little tho.

Let’s hope the Aussies are still sleeping through games in 12 months time.

Tony Veitch’s on Radio Sport managed to make a cerebral point without actually thinking about it.

Talking about the AB’s he said something alone the lines that “the All Blacks’ best form of attack is their counter attack”.

When you think about it without really thinking about it (not that that is worth thinking about!!), it seems to make sense.  The AB’s ARE the best at counter attacking.

But that’s the problem.

When you live off the counter attack, you rely on the opposition kindly giving over possession.  Or make mistakes.

If there’s no mistakes, there’s no counter attack.

I’m not saying that the All Blacks shouldn’t counter attack.  Hell no!!!  It is a real strength of this team.

But there must be a plan A – attack – based on using the ball that they earn, not the ball that’s coughed up.

Who would have thought the little bloke could have such a big idea???

I doubt that I will get much support out there, but wasn’t the second test against the Froggies (or as they are better known: cheese eating surrender monkeys) BORING??

OK, so accuse me of heresy or being somehow a commie reactionary lefto Nazi.  Or something like that.

But the game never reached any heights unless you dream of scrums being reset in the the middle of the night.  Actually, if you do dream of scrums being reset by some officious Pommie whistler, then you may have thought that today’s game was exciting.

Even the French players were bored.  Their whole intent was not to win but to limit the damage and this was summed up loud and clear when they kicked a penalty with 2 minutes to go and 15 points behind.

Was this a paid advertisement for the NRL or the Tri-Nations??

Oh dear, how sad, England won the World Cup and are now officially crap.

The Guardian (I spend too much time reading news web sites) analyses the slow decay in full in this article.

There is a particular message for New Zealanders tho:

Best insists that “the rebuilding process should have begun the day after we became world champions. But we spent a year parading the World Cup around the country, patting ourselves on the back and telling each other how wonderful we were while doing nothing about reshaping the team or attending to the very flawed structure of rugby in this country. So this long barren period is not surprising. It was inevitable.”

We spend the year BEFORE the World Cup parading the Cup that could have been.

Yet another example of life being stranger than fiction (actually, there’s a lot of good Split Enz titles with a sports twist … I See Red, Six Months in Leaky Boat (about the Knights)).

Anyway, I digress.

You can now get flavoured golf tees.  You know, so you can suck on them.

I don’t need flavoured tees because my game sucks as it is.

Actually you’d then the tees will complement NZ courses well – the mint will go well with the sheep shit

Read about it here.