RugbyWrap: Kiwis Not Happy When They Win, Either!

Two Fijians, yesterday

There were certainly better games this weekend than Sunday's strolls for Australia and New Zealand. The Aussies were pretty direct to record a 55-12 win over a Fiji side which did nothing to justify its ranking of 11th in the world. Tonga aside - mainly because they've got a fly-half in Pierre Hola who has the right skillset to put the ball in the right place with his boot - both Fiji and Samoa have suffered from being not good enough at putting a structure on the game and then too confused to really give their traditional game a lash. Think back to the Fiji-Scotland or Samoa-England games in 2003; both sides were a constant threat. Nobody's fault but theirs that they've got the strategy wrong and underperformed.

The Wallabies go into their final group game against Canada next weekend with the possibility of still being a bit underdone against either England or Tonga, who will have an eliminator in Paris on Saturday night. John Connolly is also taking some hits in midfield: with Stirling Mortlock still injured, replacement Scott Staniforth is now crook and will need a scan on his A/C joint after colliding with Adam Ashley-Cooper. Berrick Barnes is nursing a corked, ie. dead, leg. No one will be too excited about Julian Huxley starting at inside centre, and Qantas could be shipping in some fresh meat early in the week. We'd like to see Lachlan Turner on the plane.

Before the NZ v Scotland match at Murrayfield, a 100 point hammering for Scotland's wilted flower was on the cards according to all sorts of commentators. It didn't materialise; not because the Scots B side as fantastic, but because the All Blacks were... well, just not as good as everyone said they'd be. Daniel Gilhooly in the NZ Herald says that they "outlined their intentions" by "performing their valued Kapa O Pango haka for the first time at this tournament". Dylan Cleaver says that the ABs were scrappy... but Hadden has much to answer for. Sounds like a bunch of excuses by a bunch of journalists who are too used to New Zealand justifying puffed-up predictions. As any English, Irish, French - and now South African - supporter will tell you, you've got to put your A game on the pitch, or shut up.

South Africa's Cape Argus gets straight to the point about the Springboks' scramble to clear the bench after 50 minutes on Saturday: 'B Team Not Good Enough'. "The premium on goalkicking accuracy can't be overstated. Get field position, retain the ball, force the penalty, kick the points, build a lead and dictate the flow of the match." Andre Pretorius played himself back to third choice after missing a slew of easy goals early in the match; as soon as Tonga came back to lead 10-7, Jake White had seen enough and on came Victor Matfield, Habana, Percy, Juan Smith et al to right matters. 27-10 seemed enough and then Tonga stormed back. SA ended up with 13 players and Tonga were a fingertip away from Tonga tying the game up at 32-32 when the whistle blew. Springbok supporters will be pleased to hear that Danie Rossouw's injury - feared to be neck or spinal damage - is not as serious as first thought.

There's still a section of the South African media which wouldn't need one half of a pair of glasses. The Star gets behind new golden boy Frans Steyn, who said "Ek was die m**r in!" about his yellow card for punching. According to Mike Greenaway, both Steyn and Habana were innocent. Of course they were. Steyn himself isn't as blindly partisan: "We are not as good as we think we are and have been brought down to earth with a bump."

More mentalism in Wales as Barry John says that GJ must drop Shane for the final pool game. So what are they going to do if they ditch Plan A and Plan B, Barry? Gareth Jenkins is pretty certain about the merits of Dwayne Peel over Mike Phillips; but does this mean that the Fiji game is for the big guy or the quick guy? I'd still go with Phillips, as long as he makes sure that he carries out his primary duty; running the game from the base of the scrum.

In the wake of the France... debacle, Ronan O'Gara decided to come clean and confront reports about his out-of-control betting and marital problems. Fair enough, ROG: you're not in hock and your wife hasn't left you. All we said is that you're a talentless eejit who mouths off about other sides and got caught on camera feeling up someone's breast in a nightclub. It could happen to anyone! Ireland won't be pleased to hear that Juan Martin Hernandez should be back for the crunch game, and all of Argentina's other injury problems have healed.

Interesting piece by Paul Ackford in the Sunday Telegraph setting out how England are light years behind the southern powers in playing heads-up rugby. The thrust of his piece is that England players don't want to play the heads-up rugby that Brian Ashton, still wonderful in most peoples' eyes, promotes as the tactical choice to his players; but they're happier with structure. Isn't everybody? You get to set piece, you've got to start somewhere. It's like chess openings: you might think you've invented something new, but it's just another set of moves that some geek has given a name. Same thing with rugby: if everyone thought "ah, I'll run a decoy here", you'd have 14 players in front of the ball and one poor bloke running sideways with 5 tacklers bearing down on him. When you make 100 changes to personnel in just 13 matches, you're not promoting innate understanding of "rugby without numbers on your back". It's just soft focus bullshit and doesn't help 15 blokes gel together to do something useful with the ball. What's wrong with a fly half calling a double scissors, anyway?

Brian Moore writes a mini-eulogy to Andy Gomarsall - be careful what you wish for, Pitbull - and then gets stuck into the sense of picking a lighter player like Mat Tait to do the inevitable clearing out of bodies when Olly Barkley got snagged trying to break the line. Fair points all. 

More great comment from the south's answer to Stephen Jones: Chris Rattue. Apparently, Rattue is not a happy man. OK, that's not exactly news, but what's giving him the hump this week? It's the amount of teams who are in with no chance of winning the World Cup, but who have had the temerity to turn up and give it a shot - against the All Blacks, even! The cheek of it. Apparently, the "The 2007 tournament has struggled, despite the fabulous crowds, because it has been full of poor, kick-oriented rugby and lopsided results." Like Ireland 14-10 Georgia. This seems to Scrumbag to be a bit harsh - I mean, we're all for extending the rugby family, making it a World in Union (TM). But luckily, even Ratters can make an exception for... yep, Tonga, Fiji and Samoa. This is Samoa, who managed to kick themselves out of the Cup under the too-structured guidance of Michael Jones. Anyway, our favourite one-eyed Kiwi's "strident plea ... is for the New Zealand Rugby Union, the 2011 hosts, to make it clear that Tonga, Samoa and Fiji must all be part of the next tournament." Don't worry mate: as long as the All Blacks are there, the best of Polynesian and Melanesian talent won't be far away. With a funky new passport and a decent excuse, if experience is anything to go by.

John Connolly goes further than just a wind-up: he thinks that Samoa, Tonga and Fiji should come into the Super 14 immediately. Sounds great to an Aussie, but imagine the Islanders being paid to live and play rugby in NZ for their national teams. I wouldn't think that the NZRU would welcome that idea with open arms; it would hit their recruitment if Samoans could make a financially feasible choice to play for Samoa, etc.. Maybe he's just trying to offload Lote back to Fiji?

What does everyone else think? Bang us out a post or an e-mail!