Alesana Tuilagi (picture from http://bit.ly/qwwDRm )
Sunday , July 17
Australia 23 - 32 Samoa
Everybody (except the Australians in this instance) loves an upset don’t they? Samoa has a population of 230 000, and they must all still be partying right now. Imagine if they had a population the size of Australia? What can we learn from a defeat like this though? Well first of all, don’t feck with the Samoans. Actually, Wales could have tipped the Australians off there, but they obviously kept schtum. Secondly, no real news, but Australia don’t have a B team. They can just about scrape together 22 world class players, and some of them would make a world 15, but after that the cupboard is bare. Finally, Monsieur Giteau, even if he got a poor service from an out of his depth Phipps, is not a particularly good fly half, and is going to be lucky to make the team at all at this rate.
Samoa are going to have this match on DVD forever, and why not, they absolutely smashed Australia, they physically dominated them so thoroughly the Aussies must have had 15 stretchers on stand -by for the final whistle. The Samoans won every collision, every tackle was savage in intensity, they were hungrier, sharper, and played as a cohesive unit. How the Australians got it so wrong is a mystery, they turned points down several times to go for the corner, and basically showed the Samoans no respect at all. There were half baked combinations all over the pitch, and several players showed they are nowhere near international standard, Davies, Phipps and Hodgson in particular. But with Beale and Genia on the pitch, things did look a lot brighter for the Aussies so i wouldn’t write them off just yet.
For Samoa, Alesana Tuilagi and 9 Kahn Fotuali'i were outstanding, but they all were, take a bow the islanders!
Agreed! Aussie have no depth. Everyone strting to feel that Samoa, Ireland, Tonga ... even Japan could step up and ruin someone's day at RWC. Just hope its not the ABs. Again. Cheers, Slugso.
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