Tuesday 2 October 2007

Rugby World Cup: France Or New Zealand?

A quick look at the points table show that New Zealand scored the most points out of every group (309) followed quite some distance behind by Australia (215) and then World Cup favourites South Africa on an abysmal (189) WUM.

New Zealand also did ok coming in second to the Pumas magnificent defence of least points scored against (those guys on looks are the form team of the tournament and have to be a serious contender). Of course, as a New Zealander I don't have any right to be cocky or wind up any ardent Springbok fans as we did only play two teams that fight it out for the wooden spoon in the Six Nations every other year, and the er, might of Portugal and Romania, those world renowned rugby nations.

Also - playing France is a worry. A lot of water may have gone under the bridge since the All Blacks shock loss to a rabid Les Bleus team in Twickenham many painful years ago. We all know what the French can do when they have their day. The question is, will their day be Saturday in Cardiff. We'll have to wait and see.

5 comments:

Nursedude said...

I've had a mixed World Cup on the prediction front, doing well on the Pumas,and not so great at placing Tonga among the 5 worst.(But hey, at least the Eagles were better than Namibia and Portugal) I pick the All blacks, in a big way. After the way Beauxis looked against Georgia, I think he should get the nod at 10 to at least make it a competitive match.

Ferdy said...

Nursedude - yet again your powers of prediction are correct!

david lowe said...

NZ ..."Land of the long black cloud!". Your players are gracious in defeat, which is more than the nation of NZ can accept ... blaming the referee ... gee grow up guys! Go Springboks and Tricolors!!

Ferdy said...

I think David you might be generalising the whole New Zealand public for a minority that don't really have a life.
I agree with you on one point however, - I think the players were very gracious in defeat and that is very admirable.

Anonymous said...

The opening round of Six Nations fixtures certainly didn’t disappoint. We had a tense thriller (Ireland 16 – 11 Italy), a shocking upset (England 19 – 26 Wales) - which must have cost the bookies in Wales a few quid, seen as though the Welsh were massive underdogs and not to mention the Taffies like a bit of Rugby Betting UK. Then there were the brave Scots; who went down 27-6 to France. So many parts of Scotland’s game were working well and all three of the French tries came from schoolboy errors by the Scots... I hope their confidence is still in tact because they actually played really well.