Not for the first time of course.
The New Zealand All Blacks are the best team in world rugby, although they have two monkeys on their backs (not English alas).
One is that they can’t win the World Cup abroad (although they’ll be the hottest favourites ever to win in Kiwi-land in 2011, where they won the first competition in 1987) and they’ve never managed to win in South Africa.
None of this will worry Dan Carter and co when they face England on Saturday at Twickenham.
So far they’ve wiped out Scotland, Ireland and Wales (even though Wales played quite well) on their tour of the UK.
England by contrast have been diabolical, chucking it away against Australia and somehow contriving to get stuffed 42-6 by South Africa when they had 60 per cent of possession.
Now the first law of any ball game is that, if you’ve got the ball, they can’t score but England against South Africa seemed to prove the contrary. Some people (including Blatherskite’s valued external commentators) blame this on the daft experimental rules introduced by the International Rugby Board and they have a point.
But your start point in a game of rugby is getting the ball, then all you’ve got to do is do something constructive with it. Which England have been woeful at.
There’s no obvious sign that this will be any better on Saturday.
England manager Martin Johnson has brought in Toby Flood to play fly half in place of the accident-prone Danny Cipriani, which is sensible, and also brought Ben Kay (who’s either brilliant or useless) into the second row. Leicester centre Dan Hipkiss, who can play, is on the bench and the sooner he’s brought on for outside centre Jamie Noon the better.
Frankly anything less than a 30 point defeat will probably be regarded as a result for England.
But that’s pathetic when you consider that this isn’t a great All Blacks team by any stretch of the imagination.
But, like South Africa, they take at least one chance to score out of every two that are offered. England need about ten and even Wales against New Zealand last weekend couldn’t turn try-scoring opportunities into points.
“Pass and move” is what they say to footballers. “Pass, move and catch” is what they should say to rugby players.
But can England do it?
[Image Attribution: Brad Cross]
2 Comments
“and they’ve never managed to win in South Africa.”
Think you better check the stats’. We win there all the time
Who in the hell wrote this report, do your work right and then you’l see that nz always win S.A at their home games.