h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Tis true. Though not so much "going through" as "going with" and you'll get the picture.

On the downside, several of the French tries were equally impressive.

He scored two tries.

Graham Mourie would make a good All Black coach. Look what he achieved with Wellington this year.

I was watching telly tonight.
France?
FRANCE?
This is the team that was beaten by TONGA!

Our Aussie side is a bit concerned by this, according to the media and the Kangaroos coach. What they mean is, we were ready to fight the good fight against the All Blacks (traditional rivalry and all that fun stuff) and, well now we have to play against FRANCE. And if they're going to play the way they played against the Kiwis... we might ALL be laughing stocks.

This will simply NOT do!

Mourie - good call, who would have picked wellington for the final at the start of the season? and without their all blacks too.

I'm sure this will have the Wallabies worried. The ABs getting beaten by the Ozzies or the Springboks (or any combination of those three teams), that's to be expected because they're so close. But France? France is very much the Jekyll & Hyde of rugby, and as such they're an unknown quantity. How can you plan against a team comes out of nowhere with a performance like that?

I did notice they were winning with a kicking style of game and it's certainly been the trend in this world cup.

i would like to remind our australian correspondents that it is not oh so long ago (although before i personally can remember) that Australia was very much the poor cousin of basically everyone in the world in regards to rugby

i'm undecided yet over whether to support the australians or the french, i still can't quite get over the rainbow warrior and associated events so at this stage i'll be supporting the wallabies. not of course that that means they'll win - i've been supporting north harbour faithfully for years and we've only made the finals of the npc once


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I wouldn't mind if the French turned it on and savate kicked the Wallabies' collective a@@es, mainly because opens the competition up. Who wants to see a World Cup game where only three teams win?

Apart from the Americans perhaps. World Series? Bismillah, there're only TWO countries that play in it!

for anyone interested in taking part in a worm poll over whether or not hart should get the sack try this:

http://survey.catalyst.net.nz/survey.php3?no_include=1&qn=9

hope that works
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btw it would be good to open the world cup up a bit, but because it's played so rarely i fear the french winning wouldn't do it

hey and this forum is now in the five most busy - yay

I don't want to say I told you so, but...I said the French could do it! (Alright, so I also said they were awful - come on, until yesterday, they were!) I think this changes nothing in the great scheme of things (i.e. Tri Nations head and shoulders above all others) but I think it's saved the credibility of this World Cup. And come on NZ, give yourselves some credit also. It was a great match, between two teams playing very well (Alright, so NZ lost their nerve a bit in the last 20). One freakish result does not make John Hart a bad coach, or the All Blacks a bad side (but it made my day!)

I went to the fateful game, and I have to hand it to the French, they capitalised on our mistakes (a lot), they stood very firm in defence (more than us), they paid for their constant offside infringements (which we failed to capitalise on) and were generally a lot louder than us in the stadium.

What we really need is some song we can start singing to lift the boys when they need it.

We looked shocking out there, and made a whole bunch of simple mistakes which we're supposed to be good at not doing.

France really took us out of our running game, but as one of the best offensive running teams in the world, we ought to have some alternatives for when a team shuts us down.

Is it illegal to 'take out' a player who is coming from an offside position to clear a path for the man with the ball? Not trying to take away anything from the French, we played the best game on the field on the day. They knew what they had to do, to win, and they did that very well.

According to some papers over here, the French win was a good win for European rugby (European - that's a laugh). How can it be good when the winners of the wooden spoon get through to a final, in a competition in which all the other five nations teams were well beaten by the Southern Hemisphere teams.

Admittedly they beat the best side, are you sure they didn't swap jersey's at half time?

Hardly. As one disgruntled Kiwi fan leaving the game said "It was a game of two halves, and we lost both!"

Spanner Grrl, On behalf of Aussies everywhere... we know where we stand in world rankings (but then everyone thought they knew where France stood). But a good point was made earlier - it gets boring when it's only between three sides.

If the boot was on the other foot, I know a number of Kiwis who'd be laughing fit to kill themselves...

A Frenchman, a New Zealander and Elle McPherson are sitting in a train carriage together. The train goes into a tunnel and there is complete darkness.
Suddenly there is a kissing sound then the sound of a really hard slap.
When the train comes out the tunnel, the New Zealander and Elle are sitting as if nothing happened and the Frenchman is holding the side of his face.
The Frenchman thinks "the New Zealander must have tried to kiss Elle and she missed him and slapped me by mistake".
Elle thinks to herself, "the Frenchman must have tried to kiss me but accidently kissed the New Zealander and got slapped for it".
And the New Zealander is thinking "Brilliant! Next tunnel I'll make another kissing noise and slap that French bastard again."

didn't mean to offend, just bitter - we've lost to australia in almost everything this year which is actually not as bad as i thought because you guys are actually really good at everything now - something to do with funding sports over there or something

i've been in seclusion studying and i had no idea what a huge impact this has all had on the rest of the country until i saw the news last night. it's like there's this big black cloud and it's raining all the time (the weather changing for the worse hasn't helped).

looks as if hart will go all on his own - his contract was always only until the end of the world cup and it must be one of the worst jobs in the world - when you win you didn't win by enough and when you lose people start polls about whether or not you should be sacked. the pm lies to the people on a regular basis and even she doesn't get that kind of treatment. (oops how did that slip in )

just heard (although i think it may be old news) changes to the teams for NZ and South Africa:

All Blacks will be:
Starters - Taine Randell (captain), Andrew Mehrtens, Christian Cullen, Alama Ieremia, Jonah Lomu, Justin Marshall (Kelleher injured), Tana Umaga, Jeff Wilson(vice-captain), Royce Willis(replaces Robin Brooke), Kees Meeuws(comes in at tighthead), Josh Kronfeld, Norm Maxwell, Craig Dowd(shifted to loosehead, replacing Carl Hoeft), Mark Hammett(replacing Anton Oliver), Reuben Thorne.

Reserves – Anton Oliver, Pita Alatini, Tony Brown, Rhys Duggan, Carl Hoeft, Ian Jones(last all black match and his 80th), Dylan Mika.

South Africa has also made four changes to their team for the match.
Jannie de Beer has been moved to the bench to allow Henri Honiball to play in his farewell international. Injury forced three other changes with new wingers Breyton Paulse and Stefan Terblanche, and number Andre Vos coming into the side. (Nz media so of course they didn't give me the whole team).

And the game will be at 9am nz time on friday, which is just over five hours before my last exam, so although it is on at a decent time i still can't watch it arrrggggh. (sorry that was awfully self-indulgent)

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Uurgh! Do away with the 3rd place play-off; It's the game no one wants. I remember England v France in '95, which was easily the worst game of the tournament. That wasn't the players fault of course, they'd spent the whole year(s) building up to winning the Final, only to see their hopes shattered. The last thing they want to do is play this meaningless fixture instead. SA v NZ is normally a massive game, but this is just about the tournament organisers wanting to make more money.

Normally I'd agree with you, but I think that this game is going to be much more contested than the final, likly to be the most enjoyable to watch.

Of course, I'm biased.

Could be fun.