On Saturday the XVIIIth, There was Rugby on TV (Round 1 of the 1st ever Rugby Championship which saw the Pumas of Argentina join the Comp with 3 Tri-Nations teams, consisting of Australia's Wallabies, the New Zealand All Blacks & South Africa's Springboks) that I can only remember on this blog that I'm doing today when Dad & the boys where off to sleep, the match (Being held at ANZ Stadium, the Summer Olympics 2000 host venue for opening & closing ceremonies, athletics events & of course, the men's under-23 football final event) started already when Berrick Barnes of the Wallabies nailed a penalty goal putting them into the lead 3 - 0 before Dan Carter also nailed another penalty to 3 - 3 as well as Israel Dagg scored the 1st try of the match (Although Dagg managed to get past the Wallabies danger man, Kurtley Beale) in the 12th minute with Carter's conversion proved successful as the AB's now lead at 10 - 3 although Carter landed a 3 pointer, bringing the score to 13 until the returning Cory Jane had scored a try in his 1st game back from injury (+ Beale was the victim of this time, to Jane) then nek minit, Carter missed a conversion with the AB's were trailing by 15 points only for Nathan Sharpe dodged the AB's bullet with a try & a successful conversion from Barnes before halftime with 8 points down (The halftime score was New Zealand leading 18 - 10).
And then, the 2nd half just got underway with Half French-Irish born referee Alain Rolland awarded the penalty to Australia before Barnes scored 3 points but closed the gap to 5 (AB's lead 18 - 13), however, Carter re-opened with an 8 point lead (NZ 21 - 13 Australia) then Barnes did hold his nerve to once again close the gap (21 - 16 to the AB's), although Carter has kept NZ moving with a 24 - 16 lead moments before Barnes got the Aussies within striking distance, hoping for a win (1 try & conversion to spare the game, fair.....and square) but until when the AB's where in possession of the ball, The Wallabies got penalised according to Rolland (The French-Irish ref) allowing Dan Carter to take the 3 pointer.....and he did, bringing our 1st victory of the all new 2012 Rugby Championship season with a score of 27 to 19
P.S. South Africa proved to be too easy by beating newcomers Argentina 27 - 6 + 'the real' Quade Cooper is returning to play for the Wallabies (In order to restore or reignite his demons from last time, although.....they have dropped Beale according to this weekend's starting lineup, being replaced by Adam Ashley-Cooper for good as well as David Pocock (The stand-in IT skipper/captain) is injured by getting smashed in a tackle by Kieran Read during the match (The ref ruled that Read was offside so they gave Australia a penalty), being replaced by a Wallaby newcomer Michael Hooper (With Will Genia expected to captain Australia) and Sekope Kepu, who is also succumbed to an injury) against us in a rematch of the 2011 RWC semi-final at Eden Park (Well, we never lost at Eden Park since the good ol' days of '86 against the Wallabies & '94 was our last loss), so.....let's hope we could win by retaining the Bledisloe because we are the current holders since 2003 (for like, 9 years + Wyatt Crockett already confirmed to start, replacing the injured Tony Woodcock with a rib problem according to the coach, Steve Hansen, who still has his 100% winning record (He's 4 - 0 at the moment) but his perfect record is still in danger/in jeopardy but will his record end with a 4 - 1).
No comments:
Post a Comment