Three in a row
I’M WRITING THIS in Grasmere in the UK. The Lions have just assembled in West London to get their kit [and their Thomas Pink scarves and underpants] and Greig Laidlaw has stepped in to replace the unfortunate Ben Youngs who is staying home to be with his family – his sister-in-law has been diagnosed with terminal cancer.
The UK media are full of the All Blacks injury list [Kieran Read, Dane Coles, Jerome Kaino and Israel Dagg] and are already blowing the trumpets of best team to leave Britain since 1971...a huge edge over the All Blacks in goalkicking... the lessons of [the one off ] Irish victory in Chicago and, as ever, the scrummaging and mauling of the monster forward pack.
You’ll be reading this in June with the all-important first week already history. The Barbarians, Blues, Crusaders and Highlanders will have taken the field and reduced the British media hype to reality.
I’ll have been at the three Super Rugby games and will know a lot more than I know now about how competitive the Lions will actually be.
So I don’t want to speculate now about what might have been – we’ll wait until the next edition where we can ‘expertly’ [!!!] pick over what actually happened, rather than run the risk of predicting the outcome in advance and getting it horribly wrong. [We’ll leave that to the editor, who gets paid the big bucks.]
Instead I want to talk about the other big news that came out on May 10. The draw for the Rugby World Cup – and the pathway to a world record three-in-a-row All Blacks victory.
The draw is a solid one for the All Blacks. A tough group game with South Africa who, hopefully will put aside their Super Rugby woes, political machinations and inconsistent coaching appointments, and recapture the Springbok power and menace of old, to give us a real challenge – along the lines of the 2015 RWC semifinal.
Italy are a decent band-three option and should give the tight five a testing time; and they have two years to get better under Conor O’Shea. So we exit the group as winners. The quarterfinal promises a match up with the runners up in Pool A – Ireland, Scotland and Japan are the contenders, and despite Scotland’s resurgence, their recent victory over Ireland, their No 5 world-ranking and the editor’s passion, I pick Ireland to go through as group winners – leaving them a tough date with the Springboks and the Scots to face the All Blacks.
At the time of writing these teams have met 30 times, the All Blacks winning 28 and drawing two.
The All Blacks should then rock up to [the inevitable] tough semifinal. No easy-beats make it to the semis.
In the rest of the groups, Pool C is the
The draw is a solid one for the All Blacks. A tough group game with South Africa who, hopefully will put aside their Super Rugby woes, political machinations and inconsistent coaching appointments, and recapture the Springbok power and menace of old, to give us a real challenge...’
so-called Group of Death. England, France and Argentina – any one of whom could beat one or both of the others, and spiced up by either Canada or the USA, and Fiji/Samoa/Tonga. A Group of Death indeed, but if you make it through, you’ll be rolling in top gear.
If you follow today’s rankings, it would finish England one, France two, Argentina three. Leaving England to face Pool D runners-up Wales [or Georgia!] in the quarters, and a mighty clash in the fourth quarterfinal match-up between the Wannabies and Guy Novès’ rapidly improving France.
That would deliver two big semifinals. The top two ranked teams in the world, the All Blacks versus England and semifinal two – Ireland or South Africa [I fancy Ireland] versus France or Australia [I fancy the French].
Then – the final. How about a 1987, 2011 RWC final repeat in Yokohama on November 2, New Zealand versus France.
See you there.