Tell me about it. My two cats thought it was 5th November with all the Sofa thumping and yelling that was going on. Beer for breakfast isn\'t a habit I intend keeping to, but on this occasion I felt it compulsory.
What a game!
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Quite simply FANTASTIC!
Stu.
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Yup! An amazing win, by an amazing team, exemplified by JW's incredible drop goal seconds from time.
Thanks for this thread. It's something we've been waiting for since 1966, and even on a motoring site, for once, this deviation really deserves a mention.
England World Cup Winners - never thought I'd write that.
HF
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Lost the "other" rugby world cup though.
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So many girls here in the Philippines now converted to Rugby. Also it kept our men out of the girlie bars for a while! Here we have hundreds of expats of every kind so lots of rivalry in the pubs. But now it's over what we gonna do? We got 4 sports channels in Manila and we get another 2 from S. Africa and 4 or so more from Taiwan and Japan: all they show is tennis and golf and dumb stuff like skateboarding. Growler he hates soccer says its for pansies.
Really I miss the Rugby now. Can't wait for the Hong Kong Sevens and the Manila 10's...
OK I better stop this is not about cars.
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Yup, can't say England motored through; still, congrats from Haggisland!
Rudolf
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rugbyheaven.smh.com.au/
Enjoy the Aussie view.
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And they say football is the beautiful game.
The match was superb, some great running, bone crunching tackles, inspired defending from each side and those two 45m penalties from Johnny W were simply world class. You couldn't have scripted the game any better. It was heart in gob stuff. Australia gave as good as they got but England had most of the possession, the only downside to England's game was that 20 minutes when nothing seems to go their way and they started making errors.
What impressed me was our ruthless attitude, they never lost sight of victory and kept plugging away. It was evenly matched and took a bit of genius to get the winning points.
I think what summed it up to me was Jacques Chirac of all people saying it will go down as one of the best games of Rugby ever. I admit I've not seen many games like that and I think he's right.
I enjoy watching Rugby especially at Twickenham, lots of good-natured support in the pubs before the match, you can drink your beer and watch the match in the stadium, you notice sons and dads, kids in pushchairs at the game, its got real family appeal and then after the game; more celebratory drinks.
And not one bit of aggro, a bit of needle maybe but its all good-natured fun.
England, world champions.
I don't think it's really sunk in yet.
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..and now of course cheap politicking begins, Blair and Jowell want to leap in on the act and make capital out of it to bolster their sagging images. Like they made any contribution to the result......
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"and took a bit of genius to get the winning points"
From the team.
The last winning play was like watching American Football. The last play of the game, Quarterback using the clock, controlled, well drilled, practised smoothness. No panic. The team got JW to that postition, and in the end it was relatively easy. He was in a pocket (American Football again), protected. The team gave him the position, the space, the time. You could see the play coming, the Aussies could see it coming, but everyone knew there was nothing you could do to stop it except give away a penalty.
Ok it takes bottle to do it, but it was team points.
Give JW his due tho. 45 metre penalties? what a choker. Give a penalty away anywhere in your own half and its 3 points? What a burden to bare, constantly nagging away at you.
I am off to Aus for xmas. I shall wind them up in person for you all.
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Whereabouts RF? The good lady and I are off to the Southern Hemisphere for three months from this Sunday 30th. A couple of days in Sydney and a week in Melbourne before spending the rest of the time in New Zealand.
I may mention the rugby a little while in Aus! As you may guess I won't be posting until the end of Feb 04 after this week.
It was great the way we let the Aussies believe they had a chance then just decided to put them out of their misery when it suited!
Paul
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Liverpaul
Leave UK on the 13th. Few nights in Sydney, then to Adelaide meeting family, then to Perth meet family, w/e on Rottnest, trip up Northern WA, swim with dolphins at Monkey Mia, then home 10th Jan. I have then copped two weeks Jury service the following Monday.
Last time we were out there, did Melbourne, Perth and a week on Tassie
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I particularly liked this review.
rugbyheaven.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/23/1069522...l
No sour grapes then.....
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I don't neccessarily blame him, but he did hammer it a bit much in the interview.
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Apparently, Chirac has hailed it as a great victory for EUROPE!
Standing room only on the bandwagon soon.
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Chirac's another one. Blown any cred he might have in the polls not to mention worldwide so let's see if we can score a few points out of the Rugby.
Well, if we can all wait that long in 07 it'll be in the Land of Les Grenouilles. One thing that really should work well will be Poms Aussies and Kiwis all burying their differences in the fine art of Frog-bashing.
In Manila there is a sizeable French community some of whom pitched up at the pubs to watch their side. They were terribly polite and crooked their little fingers over their Pernods and while the Victoria Bitter and the San Miguel flowed. But I have two French near neighbours who ride Hogs like me and are quite decent chaps so fair's fair.
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As an expatriate haggis I echo Rudolfs congrats - they didn't 'motor through', but, as a non rugby fan, I would have put my house on the result when I looked at the expressions on the players faces in some of the close ups - well before extra time.
To get a motoring link in - I had a call at 1pm Saturday from an Associate I have been working with to tell me he had passed the IAM test.....while the game was televised.
'Matt - please dont tell me the result, I want to watch the video - I passed, thanks for your help!'
Got his priorities right.
Matt35
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Oh here we go again - England win something and we will never hear the end of it. Apparently you won another cup in 1966 as well but you have managed to keep that a secret as well - very rarely do the English media ever mention it!!!
Mind you, if my football team could only win by scoring dubious penalties and never actually succeed in scoring an outfield goal, then I think I would switch off very soon...
So that means we will now get the book, the tabloid serialisation, the talk shows and, no doubt, the knighthood, for the guy who can kick a ball in the air!!!
Keep motoring .... :)
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And Scotland won what at world championship in the last x years?
Just a gentle poke ;)
they do produce good racing/rally drivers tho
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Em, give me 10 years and I will get back to you..........
Oh, what about the "British" curling team at the Olympics, all Scottish lassies. Now that IS skilful, placing a stone to the exact millimetre........ :)
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By the by..........
My SIL spent the morning, today (Tuesday)on the phone and the internet trying to buy tickets for the game on December 20th between England and the All Black Barbarians.
The phone was continuously engaged, despite redialling every 10 seconds. The internet site for the ticket agency was saying "not yet on sale", then at about 12 noon the message came up "sold out".
But; immediately on Ebay tickets were on sale at £150! A little smelly possibly, or what? I will email the RFU and let you know if there is any meaningful response.
Regards
Don drbe
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My South African pal tells me the word is there that penalties were deliberately given in favour of England (see re-plays) because their game had only one attacker and 15 defenders, so littlke chance of tries, and the win was pre-engineered from the get-go (and almost didn't come off because of England's incompetence and the bookies had to have a word) so that the RWC can be brought to Europe where it has more visibility and less redolence of Empire. This also is part of a long-term strategy to commercialise the game's up till now unexploited potential.
Sour grapes, urban myth, grain of truth, who knows?
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Oh dear. Exactly the same type of story goes around Brazil everytime a large event happens - I didn't know anybody actually paid attention to them.
France v Brazil World Cup - one was sponsored by Nike and the other by adidas (or some such) and the two companies agreed that France should win and the BRazilians were told to lose.
>Sour grapes, urban myth, grain of truth, who knows?
Are you serious ? If you are, I've got this bridge in Brooklyn you may be interested in buying........
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My South African pal tells me the word is there that penalties were deliberately given in favour of England ...
Not in my neck of the woods it isn't, G! Here in Cape Town we are all slagging off Watson the ref (who is well known here as being and incompetent, inconsistent git) for giving penalties to Oz after England allegedly collapsed the scrum... How can a side in possession and scrumming forward collapse it???
The fact that Winker Watson (deliberate mis-spelling) has had a hand in Western Province's defeats on numerous occasions might have something to do with it ...
But the big story here is the pre-WC 'training camp' - blokes forced to strip naked, sit in a dark pit, have water thrown over them, having God Save the Queen and the Haka played to them at full-volume, leopard crawl through the bush naked, made to swim in a freezing pond, at gunpoint etc.
Heads will roll, allegedly.
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Ian with your approval I will forward your remarks to my mate (also in CPT)!
Actually I think the "boot camp" is a fine idea......
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Throughout the world cup some fairly terrible refereeing has been evident, always in favour of the bigger nations. Whether this is a subconscious thing on the part of the ref, or part of a more structured plan to ensure that the world cup makes as much money as possible, is open to debate.
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There were so many 'referees' about at one of the establishments I frequent, during the group stages, that I agreed with a fellow patron that I would print out a set of the Laws of the Game, and leave them behind the bar ... for consultation purposes. This after brandy-and-coke fueled eejits had ended up thumping each other over a silly argument concerning the charge-down-at-conversion rule.
Settled a fair few arguments afterwards, that did...
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Take the final score 17:20 and add this together = 37
then take the year the match was played 2003
subtract 37 from 2003 = 1966
Hugh
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Who was watching breakfast TV then?
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There is some mileage left in this tread yet.
cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=236215...7
But will the Aussie sense of humour survive?
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Nice link henry, thats gone straight off to most of my mailbox, with a credit to you, obviously ;-)
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