How to have a terrible day out: England 38 - All Blacks 21

Just following up on the breaking news story from last week. Unfortunately its taken me a week to calm down and compose some notes on the game at Twickenham between England and our mighty heroes the All Blacks.

Heading to the ground

As venues go, there is probably no better stadium than Twickenham to see rugby in the world. Getting to it is easy; all measure of buses, trains and roads lead there. I headed in on a packed train in the morning, in a pile of England shirt wearing fans intermixed with bemused young girls heading to London for Christmas shopping. Popping up from the platform on to the road above, throngs of people were already gathered and it was just 11 in the morning. The majority were heading to the stadium so me and my friend headed off that way as we were guests of Twickenham and were doing the whole fancy hospitality thing. This seems to be the norm these days. Most people head to the stadium early to avoid the over packed bars and pubs in Twickenham town and because there are now loads of 'fan facilities' (ie. booze joints) in and around the car park of the stadium.

Twickenham pre-match

a bunch of blokes all sitting round
eating grub and listening
to Justin Marshall

Up to the Churchill room for lunch and a few pre-match aperitifs courtesy of the good people at Twickenham. The atmosphere was convivial. Most talk was about Robshaw's (the English Captain) decision not to go for a try against the Springboks the week before. The rest were all hopeful that England would try to perform and hopefully not be embarrassed by the ABs.

We had Justin Marshall as a speaker, who was funny and convivial as speakers are supposed to be at these events. He themed his talk on intelligence. Doing things cleverly. It had resonance around the room. He ended with a tale about him and former England half-back and general annoyance Matt Dawson on the town in London in early 2000s. Stuck at the door of a nightclub and unable to get in, Dawson had used the 'Do you know who I am?' line on the bouncer who had quipped back to his colleagues, 'Mate, we've got someone here who doesn't know who he is?!' We all laughed. Then I got in a line to meet Justin.

Former AB halfback Justin Marshall is super excited to meet me

After Justin's pep talk, a glass of some gorgeous Kiwi wine (from Wairau River), and a few more lagers, we were pumped up. Roll on game time.

The English put one of these on
everyone's seat (the banner, not the
be-hatted bloke). Not a good omen.

Somebody forgot to tell Dan Carter to play though. I've never been Dan's biggest fan. I think he goes missing when the pressure is on. He's never made it through a World Cup for instance. But regardless, even I expected he would be able to kick penalty goals from directly in front of the posts 15 metres out! Those early misses set the tone for the day.

15-0 at halftime and looking bloody awful. I couldn't get a beer at halftime due to the queues and every third word I said seemed to require a 'fuck' added to it.

Second half started better. Clearly Hansen had given them a 'How to play rugby' Golden Book, and the ball was shifted at speed for Savea to cross.

Kieran Read got the second after some more excellent rugby. 15-14. Was a comeback on?

Was it heck! All we did was rile them up. Three tries in about that amount of minutes did for us and our ABs were a smashed up lot. Second to everything and missing so many tackles. Tuilagi was especially impressive, busting holes through Nonu and Carter constantly.

This is mostly what the ABs did all day - watch Owen Farrell score more points.

At the end we'd been smashified out of existence 38-21, but it was a pretty good game to watch. The crowd  response to England winning was amazing. They were genuinely surprised and sang their 'Swing Low' song over and over.

Were the All Blacks just knackered after a huge season? Playing too many games? Three against Australia...is that necessary? Did the norovirus reported earlier in the week really take so much out of them they couldn't compete?

Who knows. What we can say is that England were awesome. They were so freaking good that after I'd stopped swearing, gnashing my teeth and being cross, I actually applauded their tries. Passing with such gay abandon doesn't come naturally to English rugby so whoever's been coaching them to play deserves a huge pat on the back. Even when they were successful in 2002-3, there was little attractive rugby being played. This was good stuff. A very solid, totally deserved win. A little bit worrying in that it may give them hope for the future.

Excited English fans all around me. This is what it looks like to beat the All Blacks.

As far as the ABs are concerned, well it was one game out of a hell of a lot this year. We've played some truly fantastic rugby, all the time bringing in a new wave of ABs to carry on for the future.

Looking forward to 2013.

In the meantime watch this. The Bane rap is hilarious.