rugby world cup
Nov. 23rd, 2003 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hnpccWe watched the rugby last night.
This was a bit of an event in itself - all of us are from Melbourne, and none of us had any idea of the rules. But we felt sort of obligated, so we made pizza and tried to get some idea of what was going on with a cheatsheet of rules we found on the internet somewhere.
There were a lot of jokes though. One of our players looks like Russell Crowe's younger brother, another looks like the winner of Australian Idol (no wonder he can't catch - he's been singing all week at the Sydney Opera House!) The tight white lycra of the UK team gave us the giggles quite a lot, as did the scrums and most of the other things in fact. The rest of the time was a "what? why did that happen?" series of moments, combined with AFL barracking ("In the back!" "Who the hell was that to you moron?" "White maggot!") which was mostly irrelevant. And giggling at the umpire (or ref, I dunno) explaining everything carefully to the players... we need that frequently in mixed netball I feel.
But the game sucked us in eventually. It was a great game. Yes, I'm disappointed the Wallabies didn't win - although they were definitely the worse team on the night they hung in there and gave us all heart attacks. Given that for most of it we were of the opinion that the English were just going to take off and dominate completely. But they held them back. And then scored in the last minute of normal time to level the scores. And again to level in extra time. And up until Wilkinson got that shot off in the last 20 secs of extra time, we all hoped and prayed and fervently believed that maybe they could do it (admittedly while simultaneously wondering if they were going to have to have a penalty shootout, in which case the Wallabies were probably screwed).
The better team won on the night, and good luck to them. See you again at the next one.
I'm interested by all the "oh the Australian media is so biased" shit going on though - hadn't noticed it in my local paper (and believe me I started looking after the first lot), and given the amount of shit being heaped on the Wallabies from about oh, day 1 of the tournament, I don't think most of the media had time to heap out shit on a team acknowledged as the favourites. There was a lot of egg on faces after they beat the All Blacks, and I'm guessing after last night's performance there'll be more. After all, most of the Australian media were convinced that the Wallabies couldn't make the semis, let alone beat first the mighty All Blacks and then come within seconds of forcing extraextra time (or a penalty shootout, we're still not clear on that actually) in what was a very close game.
Naturally the English media will have been a model of calm, unbiased, analytical restraint. After all, they never go off in a feeding frenzy... ;-)
Final point: the overall winner (after England) was rugby. I know it's a cliche, but in this case I'd have to say it's true. I couldn't have told you what a flyhalf was before last night and I certainly didn't think rugby was in any way an interesting spectator sport (well, unless you're into blood sports). But the game last night was truly magical and our mini-crowd of 8 AFL born and raised Melburnians all thought so. And will probably tune in for the next one. Just saying.
This was a bit of an event in itself - all of us are from Melbourne, and none of us had any idea of the rules. But we felt sort of obligated, so we made pizza and tried to get some idea of what was going on with a cheatsheet of rules we found on the internet somewhere.
There were a lot of jokes though. One of our players looks like Russell Crowe's younger brother, another looks like the winner of Australian Idol (no wonder he can't catch - he's been singing all week at the Sydney Opera House!) The tight white lycra of the UK team gave us the giggles quite a lot, as did the scrums and most of the other things in fact. The rest of the time was a "what? why did that happen?" series of moments, combined with AFL barracking ("In the back!" "Who the hell was that to you moron?" "White maggot!") which was mostly irrelevant. And giggling at the umpire (or ref, I dunno) explaining everything carefully to the players... we need that frequently in mixed netball I feel.
But the game sucked us in eventually. It was a great game. Yes, I'm disappointed the Wallabies didn't win - although they were definitely the worse team on the night they hung in there and gave us all heart attacks. Given that for most of it we were of the opinion that the English were just going to take off and dominate completely. But they held them back. And then scored in the last minute of normal time to level the scores. And again to level in extra time. And up until Wilkinson got that shot off in the last 20 secs of extra time, we all hoped and prayed and fervently believed that maybe they could do it (admittedly while simultaneously wondering if they were going to have to have a penalty shootout, in which case the Wallabies were probably screwed).
The better team won on the night, and good luck to them. See you again at the next one.
I'm interested by all the "oh the Australian media is so biased" shit going on though - hadn't noticed it in my local paper (and believe me I started looking after the first lot), and given the amount of shit being heaped on the Wallabies from about oh, day 1 of the tournament, I don't think most of the media had time to heap out shit on a team acknowledged as the favourites. There was a lot of egg on faces after they beat the All Blacks, and I'm guessing after last night's performance there'll be more. After all, most of the Australian media were convinced that the Wallabies couldn't make the semis, let alone beat first the mighty All Blacks and then come within seconds of forcing extraextra time (or a penalty shootout, we're still not clear on that actually) in what was a very close game.
Naturally the English media will have been a model of calm, unbiased, analytical restraint. After all, they never go off in a feeding frenzy... ;-)
Final point: the overall winner (after England) was rugby. I know it's a cliche, but in this case I'd have to say it's true. I couldn't have told you what a flyhalf was before last night and I certainly didn't think rugby was in any way an interesting spectator sport (well, unless you're into blood sports). But the game last night was truly magical and our mini-crowd of 8 AFL born and raised Melburnians all thought so. And will probably tune in for the next one. Just saying.
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Date: 2003-11-22 07:34 pm (UTC)It's a fairly new kit, is that (I think it might have been introduced at the start of the world cup). The idea behind it being that it leaves no loose shirttails for opposing players to grab at when trying to haul a guy down. It seems to rip quite easily. Maybe it's a tad too tight. :)
admittedly while simultaneously wondering if they were going to have to have a penalty shootout, in which case the Wallabies were probably screwed
My understanding is that if scores had been tied after extra-time, then there would've been a period of 'sudden-death' extra-time where the first to score wins. If no-one scores, then it goes into a rather complicated form of penalty shootout, which I can't pretend to understand totally. I gather each team has five players take a kick from five different areas in front of the goal - and as, I would presume, there would be five different players taking a kick then all bets would be off as us English wouldn't be able to count on Jonny saving us by slotting them all home. If after five kicks scores are still tied, then it carries on until one side scores and the other misses. I'm glad it finished in extra-time, though. I could barely cope with that as it was :)
Naturally the English media will have been a model of calm, unbiased, analytical restraint. After all, they never go off in a feeding frenzy...
*grin* Well, naturally the English media was full of patriotic fervour for our team, but certainly of what I read I don't recall it bashing any of the teams to the extent it's been reported that the Aussie media has bashed us. The worst 'bashing' I recall reading was that Australia taking a victory lap after they beat New Zealand showed how little confidence they had of actually winning the final.
Indeed, when we played the French the media seemed to make a point of saying how dangerous Michalak (the French flyhalf was) as he was the top scorer in the tournament at that point, yet in the game itself he crumbled under the pressure. :)
You're right about the ultimate winner being rugby, though. It was indeed the best World Cup yet.
no subject
Date: 2003-11-23 10:02 pm (UTC)Again, "reported". As I said, I went through the entire sports section of the Melb newspapers the other day and there wasn't any England bashing that I noticed to be honest - there was a lot of Wallaby bashing and some gloating (particularly from Roy and HG) about beating the All Blacks. Part of this is undoubtedly because Melb is not exactly noted for the quality of its rugby[1] (although the games are played here, and Melb is noted for taking sport, any sport, to heart), but I think at least part of it was because we were too busy bashing our own coach. As is traditional.
I dunno. Most of the reporting here said that Wilkinson was going to be pivotal, and he was. As to what the "sport""newspapers" were saying - dunno, I avoid them not least because they're (a) sport only and (b) filled with pictures of naked and semi-naked women that I find really kind of irritating. I'm not sure what the UK equivilent is to be honest.
[1] to give you an idea, yesterday's paper had the headline "Wallabies broken by Jonny on the spot" in large type, with a large, full page photo of two of the English team - and on the side, in the same size font, "AFL draft who your team picked". The football gods giveth, the football gods taketh away... ;-)
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Date: 2003-11-24 02:29 am (UTC)To a large extent, however, it's not been the media themselves but old - and current, but injured - players and coaches who have been highly critical the whole time. The media just quote them and build stories around them. Not their fault that there are all these nice quotes bouncing around, but I suppose they feel like they have to do something with them, no?
(I know that the DT is the Aus equivalent, more or less, of The Sun (http://www.thesun.co.uk) so it's not saying much...)