Rugby World Cup: Wales could be in with a shout, but Ireland must dream…

Mick has sent me to New Zealand for the RWC (in my sweet and wonderful dreams…). Anyway a wonderful opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald (required reading for the next month or so):

“While we are on the topic of RWC lunacy, how did Quade Cooper escape with no punishment after the obviously deliberate kneeing of McCaw last week?

At the risk of sounding an All Black paranoid, if it had been McCaw’s knee on Cooper, the world would have echoed with the cries of pain and blood-lust from the All Black-haters. McCaw would have been sent to the electric chair and then sentenced to work in the salt mines.”

The romantic in me sees Brian O’Driscoll holding the cup before becoming Taoiseach…as, I’m sure does Liam Toland:

For all the sad words of tongue and pen the saddest are these, ‘it might have been.
JOHN GREENLEAF Whittier stumbled across these words in the 1800s and for Brian O’Driscoll and his squad I truly hope that’s where they’ll stay. I admire every aspect of O’Driscoll’s persona, none more so than his rebirth when all and sundry had written him off. For that and much more he deserves to bow out on his fourth Rugby World Cup with a win rather than a whimper. We too, the ever-growing support base, deserve a performing World Cup, realistic in the knowledge that even when performing at our best we may struggle.”

As usual we’ve gone a bit bonkers here in Wales.. I personally think Gatland should leave the mind games alone:

“Insisting the world champions had limitations to their game, Gatland said: “They don’t play any rugby, they don’t do anything.”

Yeah right..

Favourites? That Australia victory last weekend was a wake up call for the Blacks and France in their usual despairing mood can do anything ….but for me Wales to beat the all Blacks in the final!

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