The FAT Website est. 1999
Couldn’t be bothered to do a pregame preview thingy since the All Blacks weren’t in the final but I thought I would do a recap of the match for posterity and before Matt writes some biased account of the whole game (I think a recap from someone who equally dislikes both teams would be better).
ENGLAND 20 – AUSTRALIA 17
Coming in to the game, people expected the match to be boring. Hell, even Clyde Woodward said something to that effect in the post-semi press conference. The rain at the start of the game didn’t make things seem much more promising neither.
Surprise surprise then, as we got one of the best World Cup finals ever with 120 minutes of captivating (though not always quality) football.
Hot start for Australia ala the semis with Taqiri making Robinson look foolish in the ingoal area catching a bomb for the first try. From there on out, it became the Jonny Wilkinson show (sticks butt out, clasps hands).
Taqiri played out of his skin in the first thirty minutes. One of the highlights was when he literally back dropped a charging England defender. I thought that move only worked in wrestling (sticking your head down and then suddenly lifting it up causing the other person to go flying over your head).
Around the half an hour mark it became the Wendell Sailor comedy act as he starting screwing up pretty spectacularly. Plenty of dropped balls, missed tackles and running in to his own players. Give this man his own show~!
It was also fun seeing Matt Gitteau get obliterated by the England defence when Larkham went to the blood bin.
England looked to have run away with it at half time only for a Wallabie fightback that pushed the game in to extra time. I was hoping for it to go all the way to the penalty dropkick contest just for the chance to see some props and hookers go for drop goals. But it wasn’t to be and Wilkinson put England in the books as the first Northern hemisphere side to win a World Cup.
They still suck though. So do the Wallabies.
IRB named the All Blacks the Team of the Year.
That is all.
Posted by Edo @ 11:35 PM AST [Link] [3 comments]
Replies: 3 comments
I shed a few tears watching England lift that trophy and watched game highlights all day.
Damn Straight…thats so Awesome for England
Posted by Pat @ 11/23/2003 11:03 PM AST
Damn straight. To the very end.
Posted by Edo @ 11/23/2003 08:19 PM AST
bitter like lemons
Posted by Matt @ 11/23/2003 07:58 PM AST
