England's worst tour yet?

The 1997 'Tour from Hell' of the English rugby team to the Antipodes may be about to come against some competition in 2008.

It's business time. Ireland V New Zealand

Test time has rolled around and the knives will be out once again in the British press as Ireland prepares to play the All Blacks.

Hopefully, all the moaning about how NZ poach and plunder our way through the Pacific nations will not be such a talking point this time as half the All Blacks have now been poached and plundered to play in Europe.

In saying that, IMHO the only player the All Blacks will genuinely miss is Carl Hayman (and Nick Evans but that’s a whole other blog). Because let’s face it, Anton Oliver, Byron Kelleher, Chris Jack and Aaron Mauger were not exactly spring chickens knocking on the door of youth.

I do have a kind of theory as well that Chris Jack has always been our Achilles heel. Watch this space but maybe the era of shaky All Black lineouts could well be over now that Jack is out of the picture.

So perhaps the great European clean out of our rugby stocks is going to be a good thing in the long run. We will see come Saturday. It could be a clean break or it could be a disaster all over again if the Irish eat us for breakfast. (Don’t laugh, anything is possible). Especially looking forward to seeing how Anthony Tuitavake takes to the field. After so many years of Howlett and Rokocoko it is going to be great to have some fresh legs on the wing.

The Rugby Blog thinks that Ireland have their best chance yet to claim their first All Black scalp. And they could be right. Read it here.

A new day....

So here we go again. A new look All Black team in light of the world (don’t mention the) cup disaster.

One gets the feeling that it has taken the New Zealand public eight months to start venting their spleen after the quarterfinal calamity. It was a slow boiler but sure enough, we’re bubbling over now showing ourselves up in all our glorious light and ahem, sophistication.

Those one-eyed Cantab supporters lead the fracas with their very balanced opinions that they will now be supporting the Wallabies as it’s just not fair that Deans goes to Australia and Henry stays. What a loyal and level headed bunch they are.

Meanwhile, Chris Rattue, New Zealand Herald journalist and Stephen (lord Sphincter) Jones wannabe is claiming he will find it hard to support the All Blacks ever again because the administration and the coach have really, really, really annoyed him by basically not reading any of his herald articles and taking heed. Well diddums Chris.

The person really getting the brunt of it is Henry and I’m not envious of the man at the moment. He has made some stupid mistakes. Putting the boot in as Jerry Collins exited through the NZRFU front door was a horrible thing to do to a person who has given his all for the All Blacks. And yes, Henry can come across as pompous and smug, not to mention dour oh did I mention smug?

But he is still a good coach.

Ok, ok. I can hear you screaming. He lost a World Cup but surely the blame doesn’t completely rest on his shoulders. What about the players on the field? Yes, there were bad decisions made with rotation and super 14 players being rested but it is time to say bygones to all of that. His record to date (bar one terrible match in October and the odd random loss) has been more or less exemplary.

I’m not going to turn my back on the All Blacks. Unlike half of the New Zealand population, I am not a fair-weathered fan.

Sheesh, why do we have to be such bad losers all the time?