Wallabies 27 – England 17
There’s a famous episode of Fawlty Towers in which Basil Fawlty said “Don’t mention the war.” Let’s not mention the scrums. Let’s ignore the elephant in the room and assume that if two guys get healthy and two others get called in it will be hunky dory.
I was enthused about the Oz forwards otherwise. I can’t remember when they have been so aggressive defending their goal line and they did it in a simple way. They rushed up at the right moment and then tackled low, which meant the ball carrier would at least fall over the tackler.
This is more effective than a tackler, or two of them, attempting to stop a big bruiser by aiming shoulders at his centre of gravity. If you don’t get it right the ball carrier can pinball out of the tackle still on his feet. Much better to speed bump him in a low tackle and have your team mate come in to fetch.
That was a huge step forward for the lads and I hope to see that again next week – and if it is a definite coaching ploy, next Tuesday for the Baas as well. Looks like there has been a bit of good work on restarts also.
Oz were more interested in hitting the rucks than Oz A were the other night and the counter-rucking was rewarded. The Clever Dick not committing to the contests was gone and yet they kept enough bodies out of them to stop attacks a few metres wider.
As for the mintie eaters behind the pack: I liked the new scrumhalf. He looked sharp and didn’t try to hatch the ball as the other guy did last week. His pass was a lot crisper also and didn’t he snipe well when Cooper had everybody’s attention? They should get his phone number and call him up some other time if Genia is hurt again.
The hair combers did well in the first quarter but all that was a function of what the forwards were doing. When the Poms held the ball for so long in the 2nd Qtr and the Oz forwards tired defending their line, the backs were not served so well when it was Oz ball. So it was for much of the 2nd half also.
In that first 20 minutes of the test match Oz left a try or two on the park and principally from dropping the pill. You have to convert periods of dominance into points as you know that the good times are not going to last. Nor did they.
As for the elephant: the high risk strategy of Deans did not work and Oz rugby was embarrassed and will lose ground. It’s scrum reputation will be damaged with referees again and, like judges in skating and gymnastics, they will assess the Wallabies harshly on reputation in 50/50 scrum situations, as in the bad old times.
The inexperienced props were on a hiding to nothing and it didn’t help that they didn’t have a decent tight head lock. Sharpe played TH lock for the Force this year and against Fiji and England until Mumm got replaced and he couldn’t wait to move over to the left hand side. Horwill is sadly missed and ideally the 2nd lock should be a Super14 TH lock also. Mumm is too light to be an effective scrummaging lock on either side.
The Poms were pants as we thought they would be. A decent team would have beaten us. Tindall is still a cracking player and keep watching Foden at fullback. Him and his mate, winger Ashton, ran rings around folks for the Saints in the GP this year and we could see a bit of that in the 2nd test.
If the Oz forwards are physical like that again and players catch the ball when the Wallabies have chances, the team should do well this year.
But they had better get a vet for the elephant.
Qantas Wallabies 27 (Rocky Elsom, Quade Cooper 2 tries; James O’Connor 3 conversions, penalty; Cooper penalty) defeated England 17 (2 penalty tries; Toby Flood 2 conversions, penalty) at Subiaco Oval in Perth. (Half time: Qantas Wallabies 14-0) (Crowd: 32,228)
This old blog is being used Worpress exercises
Test of b r tag with tag only in front of line and not closing line.
“Hopefully we put a few smiles on the faces and we’ll get a few more people back on Friday and we can all go shoot a few ducks on the weekend.”
The ducks wouldn’t have been smiling at that prospect.
I doubt they ever do anyway, though once a duck went into his local chemist’s shop to buy a Chapstick –
and asked the assistant to “put it on my bill”, so you never know. OK, that was
and asked the assistant to “put it on my bill”, so you never know. OK, that was
and asked the assistant to “put it on my bill”, so you never know. OK, that was
Exercise to use Table of one row and two columns instead of normal 1/2 – 1/2 text columns – with right hand column having side panel look
|
Left side heading Left side Heading – once table is set up go into Visual and create extra lines and centre and bold heading etc etc Left Left Left 60% wide 60% wide 60% wide 60% wide 60% wide 60% wide Right hand padding 8px. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. |
Right side heading Right side Heading – once table is set up go into Visual and create extra lines and centre and bold heading etc etc Right Right Right 40% wide 40% wide 40% wide 40% wide 40% wide 40% wide Black border — coloured background — text %%% reduced — text height reduced. Padding of 5px x 4 sides. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. |
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
The above 60%/40% split in column width seems to work in a table of one row and two columns – yet using the non-table two column for text method is affected by %%%%s – [although standard 1/2, 1/2 or 1/3, 1/3, 1/3, or 2/3, 1/3 as fractions usage is fine.]
Using fifths as fractions does not work.
Note – In the 60%/40% split (example above) make sure that col style instruction after first table instruction still appears in the text tag. It seems to disappear from the text tag sometimes when the blog is updated (and maybe before publishing when a draft is saved also). Otherwise the blog may be at the mercy of browser zoom use after you update.
Therefore it may be a good idea to save the Text screen in the word processor before the update.
