Potent Pommies pulverise imperfect All Blacks
1 Dec 2012
MARK KEOHANE writes that England, at least until the teams next meet, are in the penthouse and all of New Zealand’s rugby world champions will be made to feel like home for the next six months is closer to the shithouse.
England won a Test that was more a non contest 38-21 and they won it in a manner surely only their players could have believed was possible.
England also ensured international rugby remains a game of hope for those who play the All Blacks and not merely an opportunity for the game’s self proclaimed Messiah to deliver an exhibition of the supposed idealism of the game.
The rugby gods have a way of ensuring this is a game meant for mortals that appreciate the triumph and fallibility of mortals. New Zealand, in recent weeks, bemoaned the imperfection of their mortal performances and turned their attention to an indulgent and self-absored inner search for rugby immortality.
It was painful to listen to how no win was good enough as the game’s best players bemoaned their vulnerability in making mistakes, but it will never be as painful as the beating inflicted on them by an England team apparently lacking in ambition, belief and of inferior playing pedigree.
The All Blacks, strained at the continued imperfections of every Test victory, spoke of finishing the year with the perfect performance but got only to know the feeling of a non-performance.
No English team has ever been as uncharitable, brutal and belittling when hosting the All Blacks. How wonderfully entertaining of the English to finally show some mongrel and to do it with a poise more befitting of the pending immortals wearing black.
England played as if sent by the gods to remind the All Blacks that reward comes from beating the opposition and not the romantic notion of a perfect rugby performance.
Playing the perfect game will never be possible, but the All Blacks who took a beating at Twickenham will know there is something like the most painful game.
Celebrate England and smile. The result was perfect, which is very different to a performance assessed on a belief that it has to be perfect.
The sport needed this result as much as the All Blacks needed a reminder that beating the opposition is still the greater reward and reason to play the game than the self indulgent notion that victory comes not in who they beat but in their ability to play the perfect game.
Players, who have made New Zealand the best team in the world in the last 20 months, will never know what it feels like to be perfect in 80 minutes of Test rugby, but they certainly will speak with authority about how it feels to be pulverised and made to feel pedestrian, pathetic and pulverised.
England, expected to play with passion but no poise, precision or perfection, were ruthless, adventurous and never reckless in taking the game’s champs and for 80 minutes treating them like chumps.
The hosts, heroic and inspirational, led 15-0 at half-time in the most emphatic domination of the All Blacks in the history of the two teams. Don’t belittle what England achieved. Not since Jonny Wilkinson kicked the most famous drop goal in English rugby to win England the 2003 World Cup has a nation had as much reason to feel so bloody good on a Saturday night after a Test match.
This was never a contest. In the context of the 80 minutes New Zealand were fortunate not to concede 50 points.
It would do every England player a disservice to speak of New Zealand player fatigue as the reason for the defeat, and it would also do England a disservice to want to read anything beyond the 80 minutes into the performance.
This match needs to celebrated for a result that balances the world order, even if only temporarily, but more importantly for 80 of the finest minutes in England’s professional rugby history.
It reminded me of Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson as among sport’s greatest upsets. The more the England backs trampled over the limp New Zealand defence, the more surreal it seemed. It was a beating of the most emphatic nature and it showed what is possible in any one-off contest where adventure and belief match the physicality and commitment.
New Zealand in the professional era average just over one Test defeat a year. This was it. The unbeaten Test run of 20 ended with a knockout, but it was the All Blacks who were floored. Ultimately it may prove that the most humiliating of defeats proves the most inspiring of results in the push for a successful defence of the World Cup in 2015.
England’s win was their first against the All Blacks and Springboks in 20 Tests so there is no crisis in New Zealand rugby and there certainly should not be any talk just yet of England being world champions in 2015.
Celebrate what is possible when it all comes together for a team in 80 minutes. Call it magnificent and don’t be shy in using every bit of purple praise to commend a performance and a result that is a contradiction of the player pedigree of the sides and certainly of the results in the last two seasons.
England’s players will believe it is possible to win, even against the might of the All Blacks. And New Zealand’s finest will know it is possible to lose, even against a youthful England.
Twickenham on Saturday will be mentioned every time a team is dismissed as a challenger to the world’s best in New Zealand. It will also be the reminder to every All Black player and every New Zealand supporter that if the professional game’s two greatest players Richie McCaw and Dan Carter could so decisively be pummeled in 80 minutes, no match can be assumed safe on the basis of the black jersey and previous performances.
New Zealand produce the quality of England’s finest moment since 2003 three matches in four. Their domination of the game and standards of excellence often mean that their finest matches are not given the necessary accolades because of all the talk of playing the perfect game.
Perhaps New Zealand’s public will again appreciate what constitutes a fine All Blacks win because they again know what it feels like to be humiliated on at least one Saturday in the Test calendar year.
I expect there to be humility in the post match talk from both camps. England will talk of the need to back up this type of all-round win against the very best and deliver consistently in big tournaments. New Zealand can’t but acknowledge this was a day in which they g0t whipped in every aspect of the game.
New Zealand’s 2011 World Cup-winning squad peaked with the most decisive last 40 minutes against the Springboks at Soccer City. It was a match that defined the quality of the world champions. Twickenham will be the start of a building towards a younger side for New Zealand. That is not a bad thing because what Saturday showed is that if the legs are not there no amount of wisdom, experience of historical brilliance can guarantee a winning result.
England were passionate in everything they did, accurate, clinical and crushingly brutal in the collisions. The result and the flow of the game would have surprised no-one had the winners being wearing black.
Give England their due. On this particular Saturday, All Blacks wingers Cory Jane and Julian Savea were as good as they have been all year. For the rest England won at the scrum, the lineout, field position, ball possession and most importantly in every collision. They advanced metres. The men in black were manhandled and carried back with as much ferocity.
The black jersey is again the cape of mortals. Hooray for that.
The 2015 World Cup again has an appeal. Nothing can ever be taken as a given when World Cup glory is determined in 80 minutes.
England have players capable of playing rugby as it was meant to be played. New Zealand, the bench mark of excellence, have players capable of taking a beating. The challenger played with the authority of the champion and the champion with the confusion and bewilderment of a mere pretender taking a pounding.
Take away the identities of the players and the two teams and reflect on the rugby. It was deserving of a standing ovation.
England believed and the All Blacks were never given a chance to not believe. The blows, all legal, were landed in the first collisions and sustained for the duration of the contest. New Zealand were never in this game and the momentum was always with those blokes in white.
England flanker Tom Wood was named Man of the Match but centre Manu Tualigi will remember this day as the one in which greats were made to look like greying pensioners. England’s triumph was New Zealand’s humiliation.
Carter played with the hesitation of a general who wasn’t fit enough to be in battle. Not even the finest are exempt if the mind knows the body is bleeding. Not even the greatest of them all McCaw could match the intensity of England, individually or collectively.
The All Blacks, beaten up for 50 minutes, countered with a flurry that historically would have be followed by a fundamental lesson that this is a team that can be dazed but never regarded defeated. Jane’s footwork and fighting qualities inspired 14 points.
England, 15 points clear and on the rampage, suddenly led by a point and the assumption was the last 20 minutes would be theirs by default more than design. Every other opponent has imploded at the ease with which an hour of control is undone within three minutes.
England’s players, unlike every other opponent in the last 18 months, simply played with greater adventure in response to New Zealand’s terrific two-try cameo and scored a brilliant try of their own. The confidence of England led to more chaos within New Zealand and the reality of circumstance for once proved more influential and defining than the mystique of the might of the black jersey.
England believed they could not lose. The All Blacks knew this was a day they could not win. They were courageous in trying to summon something but England’s reward for refusing to succumb to history and play the situation on merit was the most comprehensive English win in the history of battles between the two countries.
There was nothing fortunate about the win, but there was something particularly fabulous. England played the near perfect blend of rugby New Zealand talks about, in appreciation for width but with precision and not recklessness, in respect of 80 minutes and not 60 and with regard to an opponent who never lacked in desire but never threatened to terrorise.
This was a day when England looked like a team of wonderfully conditioned international rugby players and New Zealand looked bemused, battered and beaten by the refusal of a team to be beaten by a jersey worn by players who had not lost in 18 months, but who on the day were taken a beating.
The best team won at Twickenham on the basis of 80 minutes. Enjoy it England because while no one can say it will be a once in a 100 performance against the world’s best it certainly was a once in 20.
As for New Zealand it was a once in 21 defeat.
Perspective? Not just yet.
All of England deserve to boast about this one. It was that kind of demolition job.
And all of New Zealand should replace the patronising talk of the All Blacks being a team in search of playing the perfect game to a team that was painfully pulverised in their last game.
Perspective? Not for the weekend at least.
744 Comments
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2 Dec 2012, 12:22 pm
Yup, and some saffas saying you deserved it and because you were so faarking arrogant the whole year alot of rugby fans loved seeing you get smashed. You see, if you were a little more humble then maybe you would have some sympathy, but no, not you faarking twats, you thought the sun shone outaya ars es didnt you??
2 Dec 2012, 12:24 pm
@Hurricane-547:
Over the last 10 or so years the Springboks are on 30% against the AB’s.
You would think, some of these arrse-holes would be a little more humble.
2 Dec 2012, 12:25 pm
@poppa69-514: sympathy for sheep is no joke…SPCA may have to invade…
Vatso katvis!
“Have some cheese with that whine?”
2 Dec 2012, 12:25 pm
Yup, and some saffas saying you deserved it and because you were so f aark ing arrogant the whole year alot of rugby fans loved seeing you get smashed. You see, if you were a little more humble then maybe you would have some sympathy, but no, not you faar king twa ts, you thought the sun shone outaya a rs es didnt you??
2 Dec 2012, 12:26 pm
@cane-540: And your true colours come out.Lovely language you lowlife.My comments obviously cut deep.
2 Dec 2012, 12:28 pm
The AB’s took a rogering,
Doo Dah, Doo Dah
The AB’s took a rogering,
Doo Dah, Doo Dah Day….
2 Dec 2012, 12:29 pm
@cane-552: swing low sweet chariot
2 Dec 2012, 12:29 pm
@whatever-551:
In all reality NOW whatever.
How humble would you be,
if the Boks had gone 20 without a loss?
You are a prize prick now. FFS.
All the Kiwi Posts I have seen, acknowlege a good English win.
This is not always the case when Your Lot go down.
Is it?
2 Dec 2012, 12:30 pm
Baa Baa…
All Black Sheep
2 Dec 2012, 12:30 pm
Well that’s interesting, the keo website on top form again!!
S u c k. It up Cane , the black machine was Pomped and I don’t think it’s gonna end here, it was great to see macaw get tossed around like a rag doll and carter looks like a stock car in need of a major overhaul.
2 Dec 2012, 12:32 pm
Oh yea, and cane, f uk you to you loser…
2 Dec 2012, 12:34 pm
AB Rings for the Roses
Fifteen arrogant posers
Atishoo
Atishoo
They All fell down…
2 Dec 2012, 12:34 pm
@snivelling little kiwi pricks-557:
Great English crowd as well.
A great occassion.
We look forward to next yr.
(By the way the NZRFU got 3 million $ for that game………………………….how much did The Boks get for their 4th NH game?)
2 Dec 2012, 12:36 pm
$3 mil and a losers medal
Hahahaha
2 Dec 2012, 12:37 pm
@whatever-560:
“suck it up cane………”
You have been sucking it up for yrs now Whatie.
2 Dec 2012, 12:40 pm
@whatever-564:
In that case we got TWO WINNERS MEDALS against the Once Mighty Boks.
Happy now……………………………….whiner.
2 Dec 2012, 12:40 pm
@cane-552: I have seen on numerous occasions when the Boks lose to another team besides the ABs that the New Zealanders on here real or fake come in droves to spew there bile. So now people actually have no leg to stand on
2 Dec 2012, 12:40 pm
Yup, swings and roundabouts, didn’t suck up anything in 07 or 09, but yup last few years it’s been like a draugh, but this is not about the boks, this is about seeing an arrogant, up themselves rugby nation take one up the naught!! Lovely to watch!!
2 Dec 2012, 12:41 pm
@cane-558te : When we go down we come on a predominantly SA sight and talk about what went wrong,when youlot go down you come on a predominantly SA site and be your usual arrogant selves and expect everyone to tell you lot you are wonderful,and then snivel and cry when it does not happen.
2 Dec 2012, 12:41 pm
@Heavens Game-562:
PORTUGAL.
2 Dec 2012, 12:43 pm
@cane-563: @cane-563: How much?Do tell.
2 Dec 2012, 12:43 pm
SUUZZZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE STRIKES AGAIN!!!!
Just kidding *nervous laughter*
Congrats to the Poms, gave us a hell of a lesson. Seemed like we’d turn it around when we scored a couple of quick tries but then the Poms did what the ABs usually do to other teams.
I’m not happy at all but glad that we were beaten by a team that can score tries rather than relying on kicking. Although the low light for me was seeing that smug pr*ck Ashton scoring. If there were any positives, and there weren’t many, it was good to see Savea dot down a couple of times. The boy has a long future for the ABs ahead of him
2 Dec 2012, 12:43 pm
You are only as good as your last game cane, we beat the poms and they kicked your butts…..happy loser?
2 Dec 2012, 12:45 pm
@cane-563: My My we are clever wooohoooo.
2 Dec 2012, 12:45 pm
Who is suzie?
2 Dec 2012, 12:48 pm
@whatever-575: I fink she is the abs dietician.
2 Dec 2012, 12:50 pm
2 Dec 2012, 12:51 pm
@snivelling little kiwi pricks-569:
This is the World Wide Web Sniveller.
Note ……………………….WWW.K_o. za
Not a Local Broederbond Laager drinking session.
Get with it.
Isolation is over.
Get Rockin in the free world.
2 Dec 2012, 12:52 pm
@whatever-575: She was the ABs reserve scrum half at the 95 world cup.
2 Dec 2012, 12:53 pm
Doubt the broeders drank larger, but anyway..
2 Dec 2012, 12:53 pm
@Heavens Game-559:
You should stop, out of everyone here the teams you back just havent got it too finish.
CC,Super rugby, RC and world cup….whatever you back fails.
2 Dec 2012, 12:55 pm
@heboric-567:
Read the 25 posts above heboric.
Then wonder why……………………………………………..on numerous occasions.
2 Dec 2012, 12:57 pm
ag i was only joking hurri and caner.
unlike poopsie i respect your teams achievements even if i dont particularly care for the ethos in which nz plays the game.
on another funny note i saw some kiwi halfwit claimed that “nz is tolkiens spiritual home”
now that one had me laughing til the tears ran down my cheeks. because tolkien was a saffa and set his books in the amatola mountain range of south africas eastern cape.
nz also claims to be rugby’s spiritual home after only having squared a ccenturey old losing deficit to south africa a decade ago.
thats quite amsing too.
2 Dec 2012, 12:57 pm
@cane-578: I am,Just not snivelling and whingeing like you lot.Grow up,roll with the punches and get a sense of humour.I know that is hard for a nzer to do,but try and your life will transform.Believe me i have helped many of you losers from nz to recuperate.
2 Dec 2012, 13:00 pm
@whatever-580:
Maybe not larger,
but perhaps largely.
2 Dec 2012, 13:03 pm
@snivelling little kiwi pricks-584:
Sniveller.
A great nik. Says it all really.
2 Dec 2012, 13:04 pm
Anyway have to go now.If you keeeeweees need help with anything i will ne back.
2 Dec 2012, 13:04 pm
this kinda article explains the “hurt” on this thread.
8 Reasons to loathe the Poms
OPINION: Andrew Mehrtens was the one
who let the slippery little cat out of the
bag.
If there was one team the All Blacks hate to
lose to, it’s England, he told assembled
media hacks. His reason was simple.
Nobody stuck it to a beaten side after a
game the way the English did.
Other All Blacks turn as shy as Bambi, and
steer away from similar public statements,
but there are actually any number of
reasons why England irritates New Zealand
rugby men.
Here are eight:
One. The British Empire is long gone,
Britannia doesn’t rule the waves, and there
hasn’t been a Colonial Office in London
since 1966. So someone should whisper to
the people running English rugby that
calling yourselves The Rugby Union, and not
the England Rugby Union, is really
tantamount to having the word “wanker”
tattooed on your forehead.
Two. Many will have heard the old joke
about a club rugby team so bad they did a
lap of honour when they won the toss. To
be fair to the 1998 England team the
players didn’t do that, but they came close.
To the astonishment of the All Blacks,
England took a lap of honour after a test in
Manchester was drawn, 26-all. “It was
peculiar,” Anton Oliver said later. “They did
a lap of . . . what . . . relief?”
Three. They sent off Cyril Brownlie. Yeah, I
know it was 1925, and none of us were
there, and there’s no video of the incident,
so anyone who says confidently he stood on
a leg is an idiot, and I can’t say he didn’t
either. But they sent him off at
Twickenham, the first person ever ordered
off in a test, and that’s enough to be
grumpy about.
Four. Now and again they get good enough
to beat us. You can put up with a lot of hot
air from a useless side, but as recently as
2003 England beat the All Blacks in
Wellington. Worst of all, they had two guys
sinbinned, and against just six men, the All
Blacks eight couldn’t get a pushover try. No
All Black has ever known what a winning
Irish or Scots team is like, and no All Black
for nearly 60 years has had to see how a
winning Welsh team behaves.
Five. They’ve had some dirty buggers play
for them. Yes, I know we’re supposed to be
the lowlife scum on the paddock, but in
Danny Grewcock, England not only had a
man with one of the worst names in the
sport (only rivalled by Ebbo ******* of
South Africa and Jean Condom of France)
but a serial head kicker too. He copped five
weeks for kicking Anton Oliver at
Carisbrook, and six weeks for kicking Dan
Carter.
Six. They’re sensational hypocrites. Danny
Grewcock was awarded the MBE for his
services to rugby.
Seven. Their media hacks are lousy
comedians. Stephen Jones tries, but, as an
English colleague of his once told me,
“Stephen’s psyche is so twisted the poor
man is Welsh, and he’s a fanatical England
supporter.” The only really funny English
writer was the dyspeptic John Reason, who
leavened his displeasure over all things All
Blacks with political views so hysterical it
was impossible not to laugh. During the
1981 Springboks tour he compared the
Christchurch Press to the Soviet Union
communist paper Pravda, and suggested
that the best thing about the 81 tour was
that it gave our cops the experience they’d
need when they later faced the social
terrorists at the heart of the anti-tour
movement. “They don’t have machine guns
yet. But they will. They will.” I am not
making any of this up.
Eight. Every now and again they’re so tricky
they produce a genuinely good bloke to
keep us off balance. Such a man is Bill
Beaumont, who the NZRU backed to head
the IRB. Beaumont is as unassuming as the
day is long. As just one example he tells
how, when a buxom topless woman ran on
to Twickenham during a test in which he
was captaining England, one his players
said to him, “Bill, don’t look now, but
there’s a woman on the pitch with your
bum strapped to her chest.”
2 Dec 2012, 13:05 pm
at least that other hore fest of a dead end thread has finally bitten the dust and gotten buried in a far more relevant expose of what rugby is actually about
Now Hansen is saying England to take the next WC.. how’s that for rolling over and playing dead all of a fake humility sardine
2 Dec 2012, 13:05 pm
@cane-586: I know,i got you spot on.
2 Dec 2012, 13:11 pm
@snivelling little kiwi pricks-587:
Run to mummy and get a hankie,
You snivelling little whiner.
And at the next Broederdond booze-fest have a laager on me.
2 Dec 2012, 13:16 pm
@Transformation-588: I especially love #7 about their media hacks. As if this journo is somehow better than the English. I thought Gifford was better than the likes of Rattue but it looks like Fairfax decided they also need to publish sensationalist cr.ap
2 Dec 2012, 13:18 pm
@Transformation-588:
Thank youTransie.
A good read.
2 Dec 2012, 13:20 pm
Good vintage whine here…
A Rose’ Roger…
2 Dec 2012, 13:21 pm
Definitely seems that England got better Samoans than the ABs…
2 Dec 2012, 13:27 pm
@Heavens Game-595: You think Tuilagi is better than Nonu and Savea?
2 Dec 2012, 13:31 pm
@Heavens Game-595:
They have better south africans than south africa have.
2 Dec 2012, 13:43 pm
@Hurricane-597: I know this will only add fuel to the kiwis-are-thugs fire but i was browsing for savea on youtube. Check out the haka theatrics at the beginning of this one! poor taste for school kids but pretty funny
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkdlJdFj3xQ
2 Dec 2012, 13:55 pm
Phew, I would say last time I saw that jubilation was after loss to France.
2 Dec 2012, 13:55 pm
@gonzo-598: not poor taste…we know slitting the throat indicates cupping the breath of life across the body
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