Hey it's a world cup in rugby code - I'll take it!

The Kiwi league team pulled off what is unquestionably the upset of the century for Rugby League last night by toppling the Kangaroo's in the league world cup final. It was only 12 or so months ago when I attended the centenary test in Wellington where we got pummeled 50 odd nil (i did steal a souvenir ball though that day so it wasnt all bad). All throughout this 'World Cup' I had been bitching about what a joke it was and that only one team could win and that the whole thing was really a play off between England and New Zealand to see who would have the honour of losing the final to Australia. But I was sooo wrong and as the Sun Herald in Sydney have said - the Joke (of a tournament) became the Choke! Finally I have something to throw back at the Aussies when they bring up choking at world cups!

The All Blacks also went well against Wales and are only one win away from another Grand Slam. The most impressive thing so far is that in the three Grand Slam tests (Scotland, Ireland and Wales) and the Hong Kong test against the Wallabies, is that the All Blacks haven't conceded a single try - would be great to see them hold that against England this week. But anyway, aren't we just loving all the Haka hijinks - first we had Tipoki, Howlett etc doing a haka to the All Blacks before the Munster game and then we had the Wales stare down contest - loving it!

The Phoenix also did their darnedest to butcher a win against Newcastle tonight - with two red cards against Newcastle before half time you would assume victory was inevitable - especially since the star Phoenix recruit, Fred from DC United and formerly of the Victory (MVP of the 2006 A-League), was playing. But oh no - we had to fuck up as many opportunities as possible before spluttering to victory late in the game. I shouldn't be quite so harsh I know - but I'm losing enough hair as it is!

Speaking of harsh I could take the easy option and bag the NZ Cricket team for not taking their opportunity to beat Australia when they had the chance. But I'll be honest - I had incredibly low expectations and I actually thought the performance was an improvement - I'll explain what I mean in a second. But basically we don't have the batsmen to beat Australia - we have the bowlers - but not the batting so our chances were always fairly remote. How and Redmond are clinging on to their slots for dear life. Of the two (and I know Im kinda biased) How does look the most likely to get a score - but like Daniel Flynn - he needs to deliver on that at some point. Redmond is hopeless and out of his depth - but really we've tried all the other options (Bell/Papps/Cumming) so he may as well hang around. Ryder and Taylor look good but need to protect their wickets more, McCullum isn't a number 5 and doesn't look comfortable there - he should drop back to 7 with Flynn stepping up to 5 and being pushed for runs. I know Grant Elliot is only there to make up the numbers but he is just painful to watch and should not be there - he can't bat and he can only barely bowl - so why bother? Why not just throw Kyle Mills back in at 8 - at least he can bowl and his 15 or 20 runs late in the innings would be more use than another 6-ball duck.

But anyway as I said, I thought it was an improvement and I say that because we actually dominated a whole days play (day 1), which I can't remember us doing for a long time against Australia. We put Australia in, bundled them out for a low score and then didnt lose a wicket - all you could ask for out of day 1 of a test. Honours were split on day 2, we won the last session having lost the first and second sessions badly. Day 3 was Australia's and was enough to take the test. But despite a poor day 3 it was still better than the last time we faced Australia in a test. During that series we might do ok during the odd session - but we could never maintain that pressure throughout a whole day. We would either start well by picking up wickets only to butcher the game with a poor second session - with Symonds, Ponting or Gilchrist piling on runs or we would have another middle order collapse if we were batting. Either way we would be unable to maintain the pressure we had built up into the next session. But in Brisbane for a whole day we had the foot on the throat of Australia and we were competitive. So yeah its still disappointing to lose again, but it showed progress and hopefully during the next series against them we can start winning consecutive whole days... and who knows if we can start scoring runs - maybe even a test.