Of all the northern hemisphere teams touring southern hemisphere countries, Wales were the most confident. A number of factors were stacked in their favour: their players are well rested, due to the Welsh clubs’ lack of success in European competition [even those players based in France like Mike Phillips and James Hook had no involvement in the business end of the Top 14]; they had an almost entirely injury-free squad, with the notable exception of Big Bopper Jamie Roberts; and they were Grand Slam champions. They should have represented the Six Nations teams’ best chance of a series victory against an injury-ravaged Australia. Instead, they haven’t even been able to take the series to a third test. Continue reading
Category Archives: Match Reaction
Match Reaction: New Zealand 42 – 10 Ireland
Ireland started their three test series against New Zealand with enterprise and verve, but the All Blacks were able to stand up well to the twenty-five minute onslaught, bought a lead with a couple of long-range Dan Carter penalties and then utterly took over, wrapping up the game before half-time. Continue reading
Match Reaction: South Africa U20s 19 – 23 Ireland U20s
A win against a Bok U20 team on home soil is an enormous result – normally at this age-group, the physical advantage of the South Africans over their Irish counterparts is even more pronounced than at test level, but a hard-nosed Irish pack got down and dirty and showed outstanding toughness, effort and discipline to take the game away from the Boks. Continue reading
Match Reaction #3: All Kinds Of Everything
This was an oddly splintered sort of match, which suffered quite badly from the spectator’s point of view from innumerable breaks in play. The Mole doesn’t want to belittle the injury suffered by Scottish winger Lee Jones in a clash of heads with Andrew Trimble; while that provided for the longest delay, it was a fair and correct call from referee Pollock in order to safeguard the health of the player. Continue reading
Don’t Make Me Watch It Again: Scotland 6 – 13 England
The Mole’s neuralgic reaction to the mere thought of rewatching the Scotland vs England game precludes any attempt at detailed analysis of ‘where it went wrong’ for Scotland. I’ll give you a hint, though. Continue reading
Match Reaction: NZ 20 – 6 Australia
The Wobs: to quote Dennis Green, “they are who we thought they were.” Continue reading
Match Reaction: France 9 – 8 Wales
Funnily enough, the Mole sat through that entire game without thinking, “Awh gee whuz Smuddy, Awh-lund wud beat this Fraahnce team.” That came later. Continue reading
Match Over-reaction: Ireland vs Wales
There’s a bit of a mope to the papers today. Journalists can’t wait to tell us that it’s the end of an era, and that Ireland’s World Cup has ended in failure. Continue reading
Gareth and JPR would have been proud
Mole woke up this morning with an excitement only felt at Christmas time as a nipper. Wales had looked good against South Africa but hadn’t won and didn’t have a rake of Heineken Cups in the locker back home. Surely they’d run out of puff at some stage and make some stupid decisions running laterally and offloading in the ‘Welsh Way’. Continue reading
Match Report: Tonga 19 – 14 France
Tonga put a beating on France that wasn’t reflected in the final scoreline. Vincent Clerc dotted down in the last minute of the game to put a bit of a gloss on what was a horrific defeat for a French team utterly lacking in heart and direction. Continue reading