Rugby World Cup 2011

I don’t often comment on sport but sometimes you just have to.

I enjoyed the Rugby games over the weekend, admired the plucky efforts of Italy to be 6-6 with the Wallabies at half time then breathed a sigh of relief as the Wallabies climbed back on top in the second half. I thoroughly enjoyed the USA v Ireland game and feel that if the USA could manage to play some more meaningful internationals each year they will become a force in world rugby, especially as the US have two Olympic Gold Medals for Rugby⁽⁽¹⁾⁾.

Japan, always entertaining, the island teams – Fiji, Tonga and Samoa – exciting to watch as always. I am curious to see the efforts of Russia, Georgia and Namibia.

It is the All Blacks though that I am interested in at the moment. They won the very first Rugby World Cup and, well, that’s it. They’ve almost won the Webb Ellis trophy a couple of other times but heroically have managed to fail. The following sums it up:

1. France won the first and Australasia (Austrlaia and New Zealand) won the second [↩]