Put that in the papers

Well what a fantastic day Saturday turned out to be. There really is nothing quite like beating the English and the Wallabies really put on a fine display of test match rugby to do so comprehensively. As you know, certain members of the rugby press over here spent the entire week building up to the match vilifying the Australian scrum and Al Baxter in particular. Baxter and his pack can leave England with their heads held high after not just competing with the England scrum, but outplaying them entirely. They won 2 tightheads and forced 3 scrum penalties; Andrew Sheridan was forced off injured and Phil Vickery was pedestrian.

The rugby press in England should be eating up large slices of humble pie this week but have largely shown no contrition for their pathetic pre-game attacks on the Australian forwards. The one-eyed monster that is Times columnist Stephen Jones, who was the author of the worst comments during the week, could barely bring himself to credit the Wallabies with the win. Even in one of the 2 sentences he devoted to acknowledging Australia’s win, he prefixed it by saying the Wallabies were the weakest of the 3 teams in this year’s tri-nations. Given that South Africa secured the wooden spoon with still 2 games to play, and Australia were only 4 points short in the final test match of winning the competition, the comment is inaccurate to say the least. While he begrudgingly states that by the end, Australia were comfortable up front, he spends more time suggesting the officials didn’t have a clue about refereeing the scrum and goes on to say that Australia actually had a “scrummaging escape.”

None of this really comes as any real surprise. All the column inches printed pre game just made the win even more satisfying. The continued petulance of Stephen Jones since then just shows what a narrow-minded fool he really is.

The articles in the English papers obviously focus on England’s performance rather than Australia’s, which is to be expected; but not all of the writers feel the need to make things personal. David Hands, who is also a Times rugby correspondent, offers a good analogy of the match without the petty comments about the Wallaby team. Robert Kitson in The Guardian does the same. Kitson does however suggest that the England front row were due to be served “a colossal helping of humble pie,” which I feel is a poor comment to make. Andrew Sheridan had actually stated during the week that he respected the Australian scrum and knew they had improved from the World Cup quarter final loss and he didn’t expect to dominate in the same way. It’s the journos that should be eating their words Robert, not Sheridan.

Of course it doesn’t really matter to me what the journalists say about the game over here. There are some who will never give Australia credit for their rugby exploits, no matter what they did. The Wallabies could win the next world cup without conceding a single point along the way and it still wouldn’t be good enough. All that matters is what happens on the pitch and what happened on the pitch on Saturday was fantastic. We’ve suffered at the hands of the English plenty of times, especially at Twickenham, which is one of the reasons to savour victory even more. 5th time lucky for Dad; it make the whole trip worthwhile I’m sure.