8 Hours of Rugby and Three Ass Whippings

Saturday saw me pretty much spending the enitre day watching Rugby. Yeah, perhaps there are better ways to be spending my time, but it's the off-season in football and I need my sports-aggression fix.

The Southern Hemisphere looked firmly in control of things as they laid out three sizeable whippings, each of them at home, to the three European teams who came to challenge them.

The biggest disappointemnt came when a lacklustre and undermanned France lay down to a New Zealand team who executed precision passing at higher speeds then ever before. The only word that really fits the bill when talking about the All-Blacks these days is 'Dynamic'. It is hard to see how anyone can stop them in their march to the World Cup this year. Having said that France, considered to be one of the key challengers along with Ireland and (alledgedly) South-Africa, didn't really turn up for this one. Final score: NZ 42 - Fr 11

It's always nice to see the Welsh get shut-out and embarrassed and Australia duly obliged by beating them convincingly 31-0. Let me just reflect on that for one more second... *ahhhhhhh...*

Next it was Englands turn to face the onslaught. In the press this week the South African team, sportingly and in typical fashion, have refused to accept that England are being forced to play 3rd and even 4th string players due to a bout of Virus and Injury the likes of which have never been seen before.

Once again they threw out their first team and waited for the ass kicking to commence. Thankfully England made them work for it and thanks to some inspired play from Johnny Wilkinson, Toby Flood and Ben Scarborough, actually went in at halftime leading by 19-17. Unfortunately the English forwards simply refused to win any of their lineouts, which lead to the final score of 55-22 in the Springbok's favour.

These results should all be taken with a pinch of salt however, as none of them reflect a decent outing by any of the European teams. We will see how things look closer to the World Cup in September.