World Cup torture

Well, I didn’t watch England slowly torturing the All Blacks to death yesterday, because I could not bear the thought of watching what I was sure would happen, viz: the All Blacks slowly torturing England to death. I merely recorded it all, in the unlikely event that England won and I would then want to see it all. While England were, in fact, winning, I had a Sunaturday morning lie-in.

The thing is, England are pretty good this time around, and watching all the hope being squeezed out of them, and experiencing all the hope being squeezed out of me, was more than I could have endured. I just wanted one nice, humane bullet to the head, with no messing about.

The thing also (see above) is, England never beat the All Blacks at the World Cup. Never. It just doesn’t happen. They always lose to them. Not necessarily by much, but by enough, every time. The French, yes, they beat the All Blacks at the World Cup, every other decade. But England? Never. As Shakespeare would have put it had he been a rugby fan: Never never never never never. So, why was this game going to be any different?

Now, my problem is that I, along with millions of other real rugby fans (such as I clearly am not) by no means all of whom are even English, now think that England are favourites to beat South Africa. South Africa only just beat Wales this morning, and Wales only really really care about beating England. England beat South Africa at the World Cup quite often, just as South Africa beat England at the World Cup quite often. More to the point, England have now beaten the All Blacks at this World Cup, and the All Blacks beat South Africa at this World Cup in the group stage. So, logic says that England will accordingly beat South Africa. So I probably will watch the final. At which point all those South African backs will go crazy and beat England by twenty points. Deep down, however, I only say that to stop it happening. What I really think is that England will win, and very possibly by quite a lot.

It really would be something if England could dump the three senior Southern Hemisphere teams out of this thing, bang bang bang, one after another. Trouble is, this has not happened yet, and with sport, you never know. Sport is not, to put it mildly, always logical.

I mean, I imagine all those All Black fans got the shock of their lives, as it gradually dawned on them that England were, yesterday, better than them, and were going to beat them, at the World Cup. For the first time. Ever. Ever ever ever ever ever. They should have stayed in bed or gone to bed early, or whatever they would have needed to do in their time zone, to spare themselves the grief.

Stephen Fry once quoted Vincent Price saying: exquisite agony. That about sums up what I’m trying to say in this.

6 thoughts on “World Cup torture”

  1. I am not a rugby fan but would I be wrong in thinking that this is England’s greatest ever rugby achievement?

    You’ve got to feel sorry for the Kiwis. There they are, stuck at the end of the world, only good at one thing and keep losing at it.

  2. Next Saturday could be fun.

    If England don’t quite make it over the finish line, that’s ok. I’m not a bad loser.

    Thing is, if they do, I might not be able to be a good winner.

        1. My neighbours are very understanding people. That said, if I should want to rub it [an England win] in a bit, I would certainly make it unavoidable for them. đŸ™‚

          Jokes aside, an SA win would be a much-needed tonic for this beleaguered place right now. Looking at it from that from that point of view, I can’t really lose.

  3. Times New Zealand did not win the world cup:

    1991: Australia beat New Zealand in the Semi final, then beat England in the final.
    1995: South Africa beat New Zealand in the Final.
    1999: France beat New Zealand in the semi final then lost to Australia in the final.
    2003: Australia beat New Zealand in the semi final then lost to England in the final.
    2007: France beat New Zealand in the quarter final and then lost to England in the semi-final, who lost to South Africa in the final.

    Knocking New Zealand out of the world cup does not appear to be strongly correlated with winning it.

Leave a Reply to Patrick Crozier Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *