The Wallabies are still 6 months off being good enough to be World Cup champs but they're progressing beautifully. The forwards are better than they showed last night, the ref was playing under slower Northern hemisphere scrum feed rules making the scrum packing very slow which neither team was used to...hence the silly scrum penalties for pushing early. They'll be a better unit after the Euro tour. There's still some problems in the backs...Quade Cooper still has to direct his sideline kicks a lot better and learn that possession is often better than field placement..in other words passing the ball instead of looking for touch when in the opposition half. Beale, O'connor, Ashley Cooper and Pocock are world class. Last nights Irish ref was right on top of McCaw and Nonu's breakdown violations so it'll be interesting to see if they still get away with it on the tour with Northern hemisphere refs interpretations of the ruck and maul regs.
Methinks Dingo Deans World Cup plans are right on schedule. By next August the All Blacks will be entering their quatro-annual choking fit while the baby-Wallabies should be coming on the boil at the absolute right time.
As far as the so called Rugby League Four Nations Championship .....what a crock of shit. As much as I love Rugby League, if the best they can scrape up is a bunch of New Guinea amateur yam farmers, a Pom team with only two players that's make first grade in Sydney (and they have coincidentally!) and New Zealand which is mainly made up of Tongans and Samoans..the International aspect of league is in deep doo doo. As a kid I remember those great battles between Australia and England. Players like Alex Murphy, Billy Boston, Malcolm Reilly, Tommy Bishop and many more had England dominating or at least equalling Australia for decades. Now, the game is only really played in one UK county (Yorkshire), the North Island of NZ and NSW and Queensland and all of the power and talent is in the Sydney comp. As an International game it's up shit creek....almost as bad as the ludicrous Australia v Ireland Aussie rules circus act. Rugby League needs to fix its game in the UK before they can think to match Rugby Union (or soccer) as an International game.
