Posts by Peter Darlington
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Having seen that haka from the Maori game you really do realise what a bunch of numpties the haters must be, eh?
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RED. I was seconds away from organising a group booking for this yesterday, and it opens in October. How, HOW has it taken so long to give Helen Mirren a BFG?
Oooo, that looks shit hot. Great cast, must add it to the list.
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There's only a handful of teams that have gone through the table rounds unbeaten and *not* made it through to the next round. But well played Slovakia, they were obviously up for it today and you can't argue with a score like that against Italy.
Commiserations Gio, although I suspect you're not too shocked by the end result.
The only other thing I would have liked today would have been for Wood to come on a bit earlier. Play got looser once he came on and we got some action in their box. But hey, can't take away the enormity of this performance from the All Whites. In 1982 we went down 5-2, 3-0 & 4-0 without a single point so this team should just be so, so proud.
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Gutted I missed the Maori game, trawled some of the rugby newsgroups and Twitter later in the evening and realised I'd missed a classic.
Bit of sport overload going on in our house....
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Well that was a hell of an interesting morning, results-wise. Only managed to catch the England-Slovenia match in full but I think Capello got it pretty much spot on today. Upson looked much better than Carragher and Milner had a very good middle of the match including setting up the goal with a very nice cross. Defoe took his chance and finished, something Heskey wouldn't have managed to do. Thought the substitution of Rooney for Cole was a bit too late and wasn't particularly impressed at how early they closed up shop but there's no blame on Capello for that, this really is a poor England side.
For their (lack of) efforts they'll now face Germany and f they survive that (probably) Argentina. If they'd got the 2nd goal they'd be facing Ghana and then (possibly) Uruguay. So they're into the murderous side of the draw now and while Rooney is so completely out of form it's hard to see them progressing.
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"4am hook-ups"! Who the hell is getting those?
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So, by my reckoning it was equivalent to a draw between Ireland and Romania, or a draw between NZ and Italy or Fiji. I prefer the Ireland comparison as Italy are not ranked no. 1 in the football world and from my maths Ireland has equivalent points in the rugby rankings to Italy in the football rankings.
A draw between NZ and Italy has a nice symmetry to it :)
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"Italy continues to disappoint - only 1-1 vesus New Zealand". And the report is more about Italy's deficiencies than New Zealand's heroics, as you'd expect I suppose. The All Whites painted as a tall, muscular bunch, booting the ball forward to their towering strikers, to which Italy initially responds in kind. Notes that both the goal the penalty were iffy, gives credit to New Zealand for creating the best chance in the dying stages (the title of the last section of the report is "Assault and terror"). But mostly it's about Italy's shortcomings. Indeed the headline of the other article is "It's not just Lippi's fault, we're just poor..."
I take my hat off to the AW's, they just keep surprising me. This result was massive, mainly for the defence display right across the field, Italy may have hammered away at us all match but we never gave them much in terms of quality opportunities, and when they did get into position they were usually met with Ryan Nelsen or one of the of the other defenders to snuff it out.
We've known for a long time how good Nelsen and Vicelich can be but what a revelation Tommy Smith and Winston Reid have been this year. Just unbelievable....
Italy are missing Pirlo big time, and Totti as well IMO.
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I can try a little summary...
That's brilliant Gio, thanks for that! Brown the Kiwi Pirlo eh? Awesome.
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Ha ha, just reading back over my predictions so far. I'm such a crack up. Hope my streak continues for the NZ pick :)