Gagger has written a nice piece debunking the myth and I was pleased to see one of my photo’s featuring as the key piece of evidence in the case against the try. Just for the record I’ll rehash the key facts that the unwashed seem to be missing.

• When you look at the front view of the ‘try’, you’ll see that his right elbow touches the ground a quarter-second before he grounds the ball. Pics are here and here.
• When you look at the behind shot, his foot is clearly on the line (which is out) and his elbow is clearly above the ground (Pic with this story). As such, he could not have possibly grounded the ball and consequently it’s not a f’ucking try!
• Toby Flood in all honesty should have received a yellow card for pushing Percy into a massive TV camera at full speed. Percy was quite lucky not to have been seriously injured in the incident.
• The final score was 15-6, so even with a converted try they’d still have lost

Here’s the youtube video of the piece of play in question. No Try!

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s cricket, rugby union or rugby league, we all hate England”.

Personally I don’t think he’s gone far enough by neglecting to mention Lawn Bowls, Sailing, Netball, Soccer (especially at Upton Park), Darts, Snooker, Surfing, and how they shafted us in the war. To be fair though, they did take Rolf Harris. I can only assume that he’s attempting to galvanise public support for the Wallabies by encouraging a bit of old fashioned pammy bashing, lets hope it doesn’t have the opposite effect and stir the Poms to an upset in the quarters.

Do it for the Kingdom
Tonga are tapping into the worldwide hatred of the Poms and urging supporters from all rugby denominations to get behind the kingdom in their knockout match against the unwashed on Friday night (AEST). Here’s a few inspirational words from their captain Niki Latu.

“It’s the biggest game in our history. We have a great chance of getting into
the quarter-finals. We don’t want to be going home next week. England is a
one-off match and the losers won’t get another chance to put it right.”
“We’ve got the best team we’ve ever had and have done really well. We
haven’t got the greatest facilities or equipment in Tonga, but we’ve shown here
that you don’t always need that. This is going to be our biggest moment, for all
Tongan sporting history.”
“I know that everyone will be cheering for us, Scotland, Wales, every country … even Iraq. It’s just a massive game, we’ve got nothing to lose so we’re going to give it our best shot.”

Who’s got the biggest balls of them all?
Daniel Carter and Johnny Wilkinson are not happy with their balls, feeling that they are heavier on match day than at practice.

Both were very heavy, they shifted quite a way, right to left, which is quite unusual for me, with no wind.” whinged Wilkinson.

Perhaps the team policy of no WAG’s on tour should be relaxed to improve the respective kickers’ swagger.

What’s all that aboot?
Following up on my blog last week where I suggested that Spreadbury was a tool, this interview between John Taylor and South African Referee Craig Joubert confirms my suspicions.

Video referee, Craig Joubert, claimed his hands were tied by referee, Tony
Spreadbury.

“When he consulted me he indicated he was going to disallow the try
but just wanted to check on the double movement. There was definitely a stop and
then a second attempt to get the ball over so I confirmed it.

“But what about the fact that he was never held and therefore he was not tackled (which means he is perfectly entitled to go again)?” queried John Taylor

“Ah, that’s the problem. We spent hours discussing the protocol relating to the
television match official and it was decided that he should be very specific in
answering the referee’s question. I did not have the right to raise the matter
of whether or not the tackle had been completed because he had already made that
decision.”

Had the try been given Canada might well have won the match and
that could well have given them third place in the group and automatic
qualification for the next World Cup under the new rules for this tournament.

I will of course give the Springboks their dues and congratulate them on beating not only England, but also Argentina and rugby powerhouse Fiji in their dream run to the trophy and in doing so becomming the second most successful nation at the Rugby World Cup.

This week has been all about handing out accolades to the South Africans, and it’s good to see that in addition to being crowned the ‘World Champions’, they have been named ‘IRB Team of the Year’, Bryan Habana has taken out ‘IRB player of the Year’, Jake White ‘IRB Coach of the Year’ and they have climbed to Number 1 on the official IRB rankings! Surely it’s only a matter of time before they are crowned ‘Greatest team ever to play rugby’, not to mention ‘Immortals’ and ‘Intergalactic Champions’.

Team of the Year
Personally, I believe this title should be awarded to a standout team for the year as a whole, rather than winning their last three games. Clearly the All Blacks were a standout in 2007 as this table shows.

It’s interesting to note that despite playing 2 fewer games the Kiwi’s ran in 1/3 more tries while only letting in 2/3rds as many.
Wallabies defence matched that of the Kiwi’s however gave away more penalties

Number One Ranking
I’ve long been a critic of the IRB’s team ranking system, which is essentailly a points swapping system between teams matched to a curve, but never more so than after reading this caveat:

RWC matches count for double in the IRB World Rankings and a team can gain 1.5 times the standard amount if they win by more than 15 points.

So the Boks overtaking the Blacks massive lead in a matter of weeks was due to several events occuring, all of which were doubled during RWC rankings time.

• France lost to lowly ranked Argentina at home, causing them to plummet and Argies to shoot up rankings
• New Zealand lost to lowly ranked France causing a big points drop
• Argies beat Ireland giving them another favourable boost
• South Africa beat the now highly ranked Argies by 15+ getting 3 times the usual rankings bonus
• South Africa beat Poms getting 2 times usual bonus

For the Boks to be called number 1 team despite having in the last 12 months a 100% failure record against the All Blacks in addition to losses against Australia, Ireland and England is just a little crazy. Perhaps they should beat the All Blacks (at least in SA, they’re too good at home) before talking it up too much.

Well done to Habana on player of the year, he would have got some tough competition from Sheridan, Matfield, Hernandez, Delasau and Tuqiri the try scoring machine.

“It doesn’t matter whether it’s cricket, rugby union or rugby league, we all hate England”.

Personally I don’t think he’s gone far enough by neglecting to mention Lawn Bowls, Sailing, Netball, Soccer (especially at Upton Park), Darts, Snooker, Surfing, and how they shafted us in the war. To be fair though, they did take Rolf Harris. I can only assume that he’s attempting to galvanise public support for the Wallabies by encouraging a bit of old fashioned pammy bashing, lets hope it doesn’t have the opposite effect and stir the Poms to an upset in the quarters.

Do it for the Kingdom
Tonga are tapping into the worldwide hatred of the Poms and urging supporters from all rugby denominations to get behind the kingdom in their knockout match against the unwashed on Friday night (AEST). Here’s a few inspirational words from their captain Niki Latu.

“It’s the biggest game in our history. We have a great chance of getting into
the quarter-finals. We don’t want to be going home next week. England is a
one-off match and the losers won’t get another chance to put it right.”
“We’ve got the best team we’ve ever had and have done really well. We
haven’t got the greatest facilities or equipment in Tonga, but we’ve shown here
that you don’t always need that. This is going to be our biggest moment, for all
Tongan sporting history.”
“I know that everyone will be cheering for us, Scotland, Wales, every country … even Iraq. It’s just a massive game, we’ve got nothing to lose so we’re going to give it our best shot.”

Who’s got the biggest balls of them all?
Daniel Carter and Johnny Wilkinson are not happy with their balls, feeling that they are heavier on match day than at practice.

Both were very heavy, they shifted quite a way, right to left, which is quite unusual for me, with no wind.” whinged Wilkinson.

Perhaps the team policy of no WAG’s on tour should be relaxed to improve the respective kickers’ swagger.

What’s all that aboot?
Following up on my blog last week where I suggested that Spreadbury was a tool, this interview between John Taylor and South African Referee Craig Joubert confirms my suspicions.

Video referee, Craig Joubert, claimed his hands were tied by referee, Tony
Spreadbury.

“When he consulted me he indicated he was going to disallow the try
but just wanted to check on the double movement. There was definitely a stop and
then a second attempt to get the ball over so I confirmed it.

“But what about the fact that he was never held and therefore he was not tackled (which means he is perfectly entitled to go again)?” queried John Taylor

“Ah, that’s the problem. We spent hours discussing the protocol relating to the
television match official and it was decided that he should be very specific in
answering the referee’s question. I did not have the right to raise the matter
of whether or not the tackle had been completed because he had already made that
decision.”

Had the try been given Canada might well have won the match and
that could well have given them third place in the group and automatic
qualification for the next World Cup under the new rules for this tournament.

Item 1: The Wallabies flight from Australia to Portugal for our pre-RWC training camp. It took 36 hours to get to Portugal via Heathrow, and during transit some equipment was lost. According to Stephen Hoiles, “a few blokes who have got some very minor soft tissues injuries, purely because it took us about 36 hours to get here”.

With the Wallabies major sponsor being QANTAS surely they could have flown a charter flight direct? Even if the extended squad didn’t manage to fill up a plane there would have been plenty of fans on their way over who’d have jumped at the chance to share a plane with the Wallabies. It is possible to fly direct from Sydney to London, with flight times being around 22 hours. Why then couldn’t they fly Sydney to Lisbon in around 21 hours, organise a connecting flight and they could have been at the destination in say 24 hours.. a vast improvement on 36!

Item 2: Northern Hemisphere coaches and teams underperforming and then crying like little girls. “It’s unfair. How do you expect us to compete against players who have been preparing for seven months?” said France’s coach Bernard Laporte. Didn’t seem to bother England this time in 2003.

Item 3: Schalk Burger’s high tackle:

• Initially not being yellow carded when it was right in front of Paul Honiss, who gave Samoa a penalty
• being cited for the incident when Lima wasn’t for a much worse offence taking two days to cite him
• the citing commissioner taking into account Burgers “good” disciplanary record, yet still handing out a 4 game sentence
• having the sentence halved on appeal halving it ; why did it need to be appealed to realise that he was going for the ball?

Item 4: France doing underhanded deals
Wales and Scotland traded their votes for hosting rights. I thought this was bad until I read that Ireland opted instead for a cash settlement! Surely this is bribery? It’ll serve those bloody frogs right if they end up playing their semi-final in Cardiff against the choice bro’s.

Item 5: Kiwi’s being precious
They haven’t really ramped it up on the presconometer yet.. but you know it’s coming. Just wait till they get knocked out then it’ll be open season..

Item 6: Minnows.
The term refers to “a small freshwater fish of the carp family”. It is also used in Cricket but it bugs me cause no-one has the detail of what minnowism involves. How does one become a minnow? How does one revoke their minnow status? Once minnoism is revoked, can it be re-applied?

Item 7: Media claims that the Argies beating France was an upset.
Going into this game, Argentina had won 4 out of their last 5 clashes, with the exception being a 27-26 loss last year. 5 of their players have Stade-de-Francais as a home ground, France were under enormous pressure from the press… I know I picked the Argies!

Item 8: Adam Ashley-Cooper’s toe.
What a softc’ock! He should take a leaf out of Brumbies team-mate Jone Tawake’s book and chop the bloody thing off!

Item 9: The Channel 10 coverage.
Impromptu commercial breaks during play for hair care products, “cheap-cap” Tune leading a woeful commentry team, and Rupert McCall’s squeky voice. Give yourselves an uppercut, seriously sh’ithouse.!

Item 10: Standard of Refereeing.
Specifically Spreadbury the English twat. Is he a coach of a ref? Canada were robbed against Fiji the other night with an incomprehensible decision to not award a try, changing the result.

“[playing in Auckland was] the best thing I could have done. I would have been able to handle it, but I would have been in a different mindset going into the first game on September 8 if I hadn’t climbed that mountain and played in that Auckland Test.”

Is this man from Narrabri in New South Wales really that important to the Wallabies chances of bringing home Bill? Well.. yes! He’s been a solid performer for the Wallabies for many years, though has endured a bad run of selection conflicts with Matt’s, having missed the 99 world cup for Burke and the 03 world cup for Rogers! Latho is a player who can regularly release bucketloads of pressure with unbelievable deeds.

I remember seeing him field a kick completely isolated on our own goalline, with chasers almost on top of him. He steped through three of them to palm off another to work his way back towards our 22 then boot a massive torpedo to set up a lineout on the oppositions 22. The Wallabies have sorely missed those get out of jail opportunities that in the Latho’s abscence Fuxley has done everything in his power to turn into valuable points for the opposition.

He has the biggest boot in World Rugby, and combining Northern Hemisphere conditions with Knuckle-draggers gameplan expect to see plenty of kicking for field position. His heart is the size of Pharlap’s, and he is an inspiration to those around him ; a true leader by example.

This could very well be the New South Welshman’s World Cup. We were good enough to beat the Kiwi’s in Melbourne without him, now watch the Wallaby juggernaut regain momentum as Latho retakes his place at 15.

The major missing piece in our world cup puzzle is now a quality kicker. Can Mortlock step up to the plate? Giteau perhaps? Too late to call up Schicofske?