Random Sports Babbling Post 2

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England have been awful in the whole tournament so not much of a surprise. They were just lucky they were in such an easy pool. If they'd been stuck in a pool with anyone playing well, like Wales, Ireland, or Samoa, they wouldn't even have made it to the quarter finals. France are super lucky to have such poor QF opponents, compared to unlucky Ireland. What a draw - you beat Australia and end up having to play the form team of the tournament, Wales.

 

A deserved loss. Outclassed in every aspect of the game. I don't think England were ever going to win the tournament anyway. I think Wales Vs France will be a cracking semi-final.

 

Australia vs South Africa was the most bruising and epic match I've ever seen, what a game. SAF should've won, no doubt about it.

All Blacks starting to have a few injuries mount up... gonna be a massive game vs Australia next week.

 

Losing to Wales was very disappointing. It'll be a long, long time before we have such an easy route to the final again. Not meaning to take from the other teams but they were around our level. Normally we'd expect there to be at least one team better than us that would require a shock for us to go through. Never going beyond the quarters in a tournament with only about 11 decent teams in it isn't a great record.

204 countries tried to qualify for the last world cup in 2010. The UN only has 192 members. Really puts soccer's popularity in perspective.

 

Man. How many more injuries can we get? We now have three key players out of the tournament and Richie McCaw, Kieran Read, Adam Thomson, Cory Jane, Richard Kahui, and Israel Dagg clearly carrying niggles. Such tough luck for Carter, Muliaina, and
Slade. If we can rustle together fifteen fit players to take on Australia this week, it will be a minor miracle.

 

How's that choke-a-meter, Harbs?

 

My expectations have plummeted in the last couple of weeks. The biggest positive is that Australia have been ordinary so far in the tournament. But it's going to take plenty of ticker for the All Blacks to recover from these setbacks.

 

If Weeps or Richie get injured, we are royally screwed. Especially vs Australia.

 

Congrats Sweden! I'm glad they join the Euro2012.

That was a nice match. If I were a Swede I think I'd have pissed my pants. Some nice goals as well.
IIRC, Denmark and England will be there as well and hopefully Scotland will make it. Too bad Belgium won't be there.

 

Indeed congratulations to Sweden. I'm glad you managed to beat Holland and qualify directly as the best runner-up . Especially because Denmark managed to beat Portugal and take 1st place, otherwise we'd have had to go to the playoffs with your victory .

 

Or Kaino or Nonu or Dagg! And if Cruden goes down then we'll have to put our faith in the mighty Stephen Donald!

 

0:1 to Wales on our terrain. WSAU - but this is really getting absurd. I don't think I've ever seen our football team play as bad as they are playing now, and the dramas around the team are even worse.

Seriously, this is a joke. If it goes like that, I wonder if we shouldn't sack everyone involved and make a totally new team.

 

Ireland made it into the playoffs after a scrappy 2-1 win over Armenia. We had massive luck with their goalie sent off for handling outside the box after half an hour. Our striker handled it first before he shot! They then scored an own goal just before half time.

For some reason we're seeded, so we're avoiding Portugal. We should have a 50/50 chance against the teams we could face, though I imagine our opponents will fancy their chances too. It looks like our Keane Doyle striking partnership will be out for it so everyone here is really looking forward to brandishing our Long Cox.

Bulgaria had been #2 seeds in the last qualifiers for the World Cup with us. That's some fall to finishing bottom of the group.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if Wales end up winning the whole World Cup.

 

That sounds familiar....

 

Haha.

Long is a decent player, not so sure about Cox.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

NZ looked unstoppable again, can't see any way that France could beat them.

 

Somehow I noticed that the Netherlands have won the Baseball World Cup. Since it's not a big sport here and newspapers hardly give it any attention, I have no idea whether this is a big thing or not. When players win the Olympic Football Tournament, nobody gives a rat's ass, 'cause it's all about the FIFA World Cup or the UEFA Euro Championship.

So I wonder: Is the IBAF Baseball World Cup a big deal?

 

Let us just add that it is the first European nation and they had to defeat Cuba twice.

 

We've been there before many times and screwed up royally! The Aussie game was a real grudge match, probably means more to me than winning the world cup!