The Phantom

Well it’s been a big weekend of action in the rugby world cup. Thankfully for Tyler I did not see much of the England vs. South Africa game so I won’t laugh too much. But from what I did see and read, England now need to realise where they actually are in the rugby standings. No longer are they up there with Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, they are in the second tier of the first division, so to say. They should beat Tonga and Samoa, but there is no way they’ll beat Australia in the quarterfinals.

The Millennium Stadium was my destination on Saturday for the Wales vs. Australia group match. Now I’ve been to many rugby internationals over the years, but this one was truly unique. I was more or less pitch side for the match (as my pics will prove) so I could feel the intensity of the match at first hand. Wales lost it in the first half, by not having a proper pattern of play. It seems as though we just want to get through the first half and then play some open rugby in the final third of the game… and by that point we are usually playing catch up. Pivotal moment in the tie was right after half time, we’d scored pretty much straight away, and had the momentum, then after a big up and under Steven Jones missed the flight of the ball and the Wallabies touched down for that vital try which made our jobs even harder. I swear everyone in the stadium could see that Jones was going to miss the ball, it was as if it happened in slow motion! Wales ended the match pretty strongish, and with Australia loosing their discipline towards the end of the match (going down to 13 men) if there’d have been another 10mins I think we could have snuck it. Although it wouldn’t have been deserved. Overall it was a really enjoyable match, the banter in the crowd was good too. There was a helluva lot of Australians and they were a good laugh.

Oh Ireland… what has happened to you? They were a shambles. Full credit to the Georgians, they made Ireland work hard, I was willing them to score a try right at the end. Ireland didn’t deserve the win. They failed to get that crucial bonus point, which I think will deffinatly come back to haunt them. Next up for them is France. If I was an Irishman, I’d hide behind the sofa whilst watching that one!

I was back at the Millennium Stadium on Sunday to watch 2 of the other teams in Wales group play, Fiji and Canada. There weren’t many people there, and I blame that on the RWC organising committee and the way they priced these matches. I picked up my ticket for a bargain £10. The match was a pretty good one, with Fiji dominating the first half and Canada dominating the second half. Canada had many chances to kill the game off, but their decision making was very poor. They squandered at least two chances of certain tries. In the end the Fijians turned over the ball on their own line, and ran the length of the pitch to deprive Canada of a possible win, and seal up a bonus point win for themselves.