George North
Picture from http://tinyurl.com/32jbv47
Italy 16 - 22 Argentina
England 35 - 18 Australia
Wales 25 - 29 South Africa
Ireland 20 - 10 Samoa
Scotland 3 - 49 New Zealand
France 34 - 12 Fiji
If I can start with a whinge. Just the one. And that’s to be thankful that the rugby bosses are only responsible for the rugby calendar, and not the whole of the calendar. Otherwise we’d have Christmas, Easter, and Fathers Day all on the same day. With Halloween/Guy Fawkes that evening.. That’s why they organise Wales, Ireland and England to be playing on the same day at the same time, followed almost immediately by Scotland. OK, Sky plus helps a bit, but watching a match when you know the result is half the fun. Two on a Saturday, two on a Sunday?
Starting off with Irelands patchy performance against Samoa – the Sunday papers are about as cheerful as a morgue with Ireland’s prospects. In the famous word’s of Italys coach Nick Mallet after another disastrous 6 Nations ‘Look…nobody died’ Ireland made 11 changes from last week – rightly so, to prevent injuries to frontline players, and give the rest of squad a chance.
Coherent team play was thus never going to be the order of the day. And to concentrate too much on Ireland’s shortcoming does a massive disservice to Samoa, who a big mean skilled team who are going to give any team in the world a decent match on their day. We won by 10 points, defended well, time to bank the win and move on to next week. If anything was disappointing it was that none of the fringe players put their hand up. Devin Toner had a solid match, so did Sean O’Brien, that was about it. If scrum resets float your boat though, this match was manna from heaven.
England put in a stonking performance to rout Australia. What is it with the Aussies, put the All Blacks away and then slip up to England? I only caught the highlights, but it looked like there were several stand out performances for England, with Ben Youngs and Chris Ashton the stars of the show. England’s faithful at Twickenham finally had something to celebrate, back to back victories over a top three side home and away.The Springboks must be in their sights as well now.
South Africa picked the pocket of Wales to come away with another win – I’m judging this on my twitter feed, and by the bitter tone of the Welsh tweets. Steve Walsh didn’t have a stand out performance by the sound of things, he won’t be getting the commemorative DVD for his collection. But it does sound like Wales let it slip as they were 17 -3 up at one stage.
As a Bok supporter, I’m pleased, they haven’t been playing well, and to be two out of two at this stage is a turn up for the books. And they haven’t disgraced themselves either –yet- no gouging, biting, no commemorative scrotums – not even any citings. Wales are going to have to turn over the All Blacks to turn their season around now. No pressure then. At least they had a stand out debut for wing George North.
The match I did get to watch most of, to my good fortune, was Scotland versus the All Blacks. Apart from the first 28 minutes, in which time New Zealand had scored 28 points. After that, it was like a cat playing with a mouse – a mouse who couldn’t catch the ball, pass the ball, or run with the ball that is. I know it’s easy to write this in the comfort of my lounge without a 20 stone centre breathing down on me, but I just hope that Ireland really run at the All Blacks, and not just jog meekly into tackles like lambs to the slaughter. Where was the fire we saw from the Scots at Croke Park?
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