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Humbled All Blacks find an unlikely ally in Matt Giteau
By Ian Cameron
The All Blacks have found an unlikely ally on Twitter with Wallaby Test great Matt Giteau coming to their defence in the wake of their humbling defeat at the hands of England.
Giteau, who won 103 caps for Australia, and spent most of career trying to find ways to beat New Zealand championed the men in black following their 19 -7 defeat.
The Wallaby - who even had a Rugby Australia selection protocol named after him - pointed out that it has been the dominance of New Zealand that has pushed professional rugby union on over the last decade.
Giteau, tweeted: "Hasn’t been touched on but the reason teams around the world continue to grow and develop is because the All Blacks have set a standard for so long that has driven the other nations to try and chase down.
"12 years of dominance is super impressive. One loss doesn’t change that"
His Tweet wasn't met with universal praise, with a few 'salty' England fans getting into a back and forth with the ten.
"Again for those salty England supporters. I acknowledged after the game how amazing England were. Taking nothing away from their ultra dominant performance.
"It was one of the most impressive performances I’ve seen. However I felt the need to applaud NZ’s dominance from past".
Giteau also weighed in on the notorious third place play-off, a fixture many feel is a waste of time for all involved.
"Do players want to play off for the 3rd place medal? Personally once I’m knocked out of the tournament I’d want to just go home and get away from it all."
All Blacks captain Kieran Read was quizzed on playing in the fixture that no side ever wants to find themselves playing: "It will be a little different for us but we'll prepare as best we can and go out and perform as best we can. We're All Blacks. So it's a chance for us to pull on a jersey again and, for maybe some of us, it might be our last chance.
"So there's a few things we'll work through this week and come Friday we'll be ready to go."
"We're a team that is talented, hard-working. We're so well connected that you take a loss like this and you see how much it hurts us. We'll bounce back as well as we can but the thing is that we'll stay tight.
"The younger guys, I'm sure they'll have opportunities to come back in four years time, they'll be able to hold on to this feeling, this emotion, and think, 'I don’t want to be here again'."
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Latest Comments
The boy needs to bulk up if wants to play 10 or 11 to handle those hits, otherwise he could always make a brilliant reserve for the wings if he stays away from the stretcher.
Go to commentsIn another recent article I tried to argue for a few key concept changes for EPCR which I think could light the game up in the North.
First, I can't remember who pointed out the obvious elephant in the room (a SA'n poster?), it's a terrible time to play rugby in the NH, and especially your pinnacle tournament. It's been terrible watching with seemingly all the games I wanted to watch being in the dark, hardly able to see what was going on. The Aviva was the only stadium I saw that had lights that could handle the miserable rain. If the global appeal is there, they could do a lot better having day games.
They other primary idea I thuoght would benefit EPCR most, was more content. The Prem could do with it and the Top14 could do with something more important than their own league, so they aren't under so much pressure to sell games. The quality over quantity approach.
Trim it down to two 16 team EPCR competitions, and introduce a third for playing amongst the T2 sides, or the bottom clubs in each league should simply be working on being better during the EPCR.
Champions Cup is made up of league best 15 teams, + 1, the Challenge Cup winner. Without a reason not to, I'd distribute it evenly based on each leauge, dividing into thirds and rounded up, 6 URC 5 Top14 4 English. Each winner (all four) is #1 rank and I'd have a seeding round or two for the other 12 to determine their own brackets for 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. I'd then hold a 6 game pool, home and away, with consecutive of each for those games that involve SA'n teams. Preferrably I'd have a regional thing were all SA'n teams were in the same pool but that's a bit complex for this simple idea.
That pool round further finalises the seeding for knockout round of 16. So #1 pool has essentially duked it out for finals seeding already (better venue planning), and to see who they go up against 16, 15,etc etc. Actually I think I might prefer a single pool round for seeding, and introduce the home and away for Ro16, quarters, and semis (stuffs up venue hire). General idea to produce the most competitive matches possible until the random knockout phase, and fix the random lottery of which two teams get ranked higher after pool play, and also keep the system identical for the Challenge Cup so everthing is succinct. Top T2 side promoted from last year to make 16 in Challenge Cup
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