Just came across this little gem of a video over at Breaking the Gainline and thought it rounded off a day of rugby quite nicely. Enjoy.
Unique highlights of the Autumn Internationals 2012: In Lego.
So it’s my birthday this weekend (thank you) and this year my long suffering other half gave me a choice of presents – tickets for Fulham v Swansea at Craven Cottage, or Harlequins v London Irish at Twickenham. Now I normally love going to the football – I used to have a season ticket at Fulham, and the White Horse pub in Parsons Green is worth a trip to West London in itself. But this year I decided to throw ourselves at the mercy of South West trains (and their ability to read a fixture list), and the somewhat patchy allocation of ladies’ toilets at Twickenham, and check out the ‘Big Game’.
I will be honest and admit that the main reason I opted for the rugby over the football was to check out some of Quins’ England contingent in the flesh, namely (deep breath): Chris Robshaw, Joe Marler, Ugo Monye, Danny Care, Jordan Turner-Hall and Mike Brown. (Plus perhaps one or two for the future – fly-half Ben Botica might have been born in Takapuna but he’s been widely tipped to join the likes of Brad Barritt, Dylan Hartley, and Manu Tuilagi in the ‘plastic English’ corner of the dressing room in TW2.) Quins are the reigning Premiership champions so perhaps it’s no surprise that their best players are no strangers to HQ.
Then there’s London Irish, who aren’t having a great season, and who haven’t been quite the same since losing attack coach Mike Catt to the RFU. They’ve also lost some pretty good players since I last schlepped out to Reading to see them play (the Aviva Premiership names some of its teams in the same spirit of geographical accuracy as Ryanair advertises its ‘destination airports’). Former captain ‘Big’ Bob Casey has retired. Nick Kennedy and the Armitage brothers now earn big bucks playing for Toulon, Shontayne Hape for Montpelier. Current England interest is in the likes of centre Jonathan Joseph, wing Topsy Ojo, and prop Alex Corbisiero (part of the front row that asked the All Blacks some serious questions in December).
Unfortunately, despite the potentially high quality of the teams, both struggled to rise to the occasion in the awful conditions. The game never really matched the pyrotechnics that greeted Quins as they ran out on the field in front of a sell-out 82,000 crowd. It was pretty cold, but worse than that was the rain, a sort of swirly mist that managed to rain upwards into the stands where we sat. It was never really a stage for champagne rugby of any sort, and the wet and slippery ball let to a multitude of handling errors from both teams. Both sides traded penalties to end the first half at 6-6.
Twickers through the rain.
Some of these errors notably came from Nick Evans, probably because I jinxed him shortly before kick off by proclaiming him the best fly half in the Premiership. Fumbles and missed kicks apart, however, I would stand by that, and he also did much that was good, including one beautiful reverse pass that showed a tantalising glimpse of what this team can offer on a good day.
Conditions such as these often favour the big boys on the field, and, a well taken try from Danny Care apart, today was no exception. What was exceptional was the extent of the dominance exerted by the Quins scrum. Loosehead prop Joe Marler may have lost his England place of late but he has to be one of the most consistent performers in the Premiership. Quins got a good half of their penalties from the scrum, and then in the dying minutes scored a well earned penalty try, denying the Exiles a bonus point as they again demolished the set piece.
The result leaves London Irish in pretty poor shape – and sees their third consecutive Premiership game without scoring a try. Second from bottom of the league table, they are a mere point ahead of fellow strugglers Sale, and eight behind London Welsh. They put on a spirited display, and their determination and hustle may prove more profitable against mid-table teams – but they still seem worryingly poor at the fundamental skill of putting points on the board.
As for Quins, the win means they finish 2012 at the top of the Premiership table, the same position they were in last year. It’s often said that a sign of a good team is being able to grind out results like these – and based on the character of this display I would think that Quins are again strongly in the running for the Premiership title. They’ve come a long way since the relegation issues and ‘Bloodgate’ of even a few years ago. I imagine those with longer memories than me are pinching themselves in disbelief.
Before yesterday’s match, England hadn’t beaten the All Blacks for nearly ten years, and very few people expected that to change.
What were you doing in the summer of 2003, when England last beat New Zealand? It was a pretty different world back then. It was the summer I graduated from university and was cast adrift into the big bad world. The war in Iraq had started only a few months beforehand and still had popular support – from memory the truth about the ‘dodgy dossier’ about those pesky WMDs was only slowly starting to come to light.
In other sport, Arsenal won the Premier League in some style, while Fulham, returning to the top flight after 33 years in the lower leagues, finished 13th. Roger Federer won his first career Grand Slam title at Wimbledon, in what was to be the first of five consecutive Wimbledon titles. In music, Evanescence were number one in the UK singles chart in June with Bring Me To Life, which no one now remembers (eventually knocked off the top spot by Beyonce and Jay-Z singing Crazy in Love, which is probably more familiar – it wasn’t all bad). The big film of the year was Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, which swept all before it at the box office and at award ceremonies.
Much more strangely than all of this, however, back in 2003 were England were a genuine force in world rugby. Their 15-13 win in Wellington, en route to a thrilling World Cup win some four months later, confirmed their reputation as then the world’s number one ranked team. It was certainly enough to inspire a bit of tall poppy syndrome down under, with England being labelled ‘boring’ and, more memorably, a bunch of ‘white orcs on steroids’ (like I said, Lord of the Rings was big).
After that World Cup win, coach Sir Clive Woodward left the RFU, drop goal hero Jonny Wilkinson suffered the first of his many, many injuries, and England started to lose their way a bit. Their Six Nations Grand Slam triumph of 2003 started to look a distant memory as they toiled in northern hemisphere competition. Somewhat strangely, they did make the final of the 2007 World Cup (and could even perhaps have won it, had Mark Cueto’s try not been wrongly disallowed), but even that didn’t distract from the fact that England had played like a drain in the early stages of the competition and the heady days of 2003 looked further and further away.
The All Blacks, on the other hand, went from strength to strength. They were flexing their muscle most noticeably by 2005, with the ‘Blackwash’ of the British and Irish Lions on their tour of New Zealand. The only chink in their armour seemed to be their considerable mental frailty: not always the best on big occasions, they most famously choked in the quarter-final of the 2007 World Cup against France. They also did their best to choke against the same team in the final of the 2011 World Cup – but held on to lift the trophy on home soil and in doing so cap an impressive period of dominance against, well, the rest of the world.
The All Blacks have definitely made their mark on the international rugby landscape in recent years.
New Zealand had delivered much of the same in 2012: winning the inaugural Rugby Championship, and dispatching Scotland, Ireland, and Wales with ease. Unbeaten in their previous 20 test matches, they then came up against a disjointed, demoralised England side, looking very much a side in transition, and seemingly on the slide after defeats against Australia and South Africa.
Who promptly went on to inflict the All Blacks’ second biggest margin of defeat ever.
My partner is from New Zealand and so we watched the match on TV expecting it to follow a well-established script – gutsy English defence scythed down by New Zealand’s sparkling skills and dynamic backs, with maestro Dan Carter pulling the strings with decisive kicks and big tackles. New Zealand aren’t used to losing. When it all started to go horribly wrong, part of me felt like I’d accidentally taken a small child to see Reservoir Dogs.
So what does this very unexpected blast from the past actually mean (apart from my possible impending divorce)?
Well, in the long run, possibly very little. After all, England’s recent history has largely been one of false dawns and untapped promise. While England played very well, and deserved the win, New Zealand were far from their usual efficient selves. Very far. It is hard to think of even northern hemisphere opposition that will miss kicks, make tactical errors, and fluff tackles to the extent that the All Blacks did on Saturday.
Also, while England have shown that a young, inexperienced side can go into a match as underdogs and play like they have nothing to lose, when it comes to the Six Nations in the spring they will now start amongst the favourites. Good luck playing at the Millennium Stadium in front of the rabid home support in Cardiff with that weight of expectation on your shoulders.
There are however signs that England could use this as a launch pad to go on to greater things.
Could England aspire to return to happier times, like this victory parade in 2003? Check out a young Ben Cohen and Lawrence Dallaglio with the William Web Ellis Cup – and some hair!
The first indication of brighter things to come was the performance of Owen Farrell at fly-half. Tom Wood was, deservedly, Man of the Match, and there were so many amazing individual performances, it may seem a bit odd to pick out Farrell. But I will, because I thought he played a blinder. A somewhat bewildering inclusion on the shortlist for the International Rugby Board’s Player of the Year award before Saturday, he was of England’s best players and contributed a healthy 17 points, including a drop goal of which Jonny Wilkinson himself would have been proud. He’s young and has oodles of talent – and I like the look of him to make the England number 10 shirt his own in the coming years.
The second is that the England squad are starting to show some great strength in depth, as demonstrated on Saturday by a bench containing James Haskell, Courtney Lawes, and Danny Care. There’s some real competition for places and early indicators are that a well-respected coaching team are making that pay dividends.
The third, and most encouraging, is the relative youth and inexperience of the team. Before the game this was seen as a weakness. Much was made of the fact that New Zealand’s captain, Richie McCaw, has more international caps than the entire England pack combined. But when someone like Joe Launchbury is making those sort of tackles and playing with that sort of maturity at just 21, and showing signs of improving all the time, you have to think the future looks bright.
Elsewhere in West London, Fulham followed a solid if dull draw with Chelsea midweek with an uninspired 0-3 second half capitulation to Spurs. But somehow, watching New Zealand score two tries in the space of three minutes and then seeing England immediately respond with two beautifully taken tries of their own, it just didn’t seem to matter.
Even if I’m wrong, and that England result is just a blip, it doesn’t take away from the fact that yesterday was an awesome achievement, and England fans can enjoy every moment. Sorry darling.
theoutofoffice 