Rob Andrew opens his mouth to change feet

I am in total disagreement with the New Zealand press who were going on and on about how crap England were at Eden Park on Saturday. They were not crap! If they train much harder this week, get their tactics right and get Rob Andrew to stop whingeing we can upgrade that performance to crap. They aren’t that good yet.

They were horrible.

Andrew can count himself very lucky that it was 37-20, because from where I was sitting it looked like a hiding of note was on the cards. In fairness I’ll put England’s handling errors down to the weather, but the eagerness of their players to get rid of the ball every time it came to them smacks of something else. Other than brief periods at the start and at the end, they looked out of their depth.

Brian Moore, former England hooker, says that the back row was about the only area where England can take any comfort. The rest was shoddy and second best to everything thrown at them by the All Blacks.

The Times of London was even less flattering, accusing England of lacking focus and making far too many mistakes.

This was followed by Andrew taking on the referee, Richie McCaw and Graham Henry for criticising the English forwards and anything else that came to mind. Needless to say, it would have sounded far better after an England win.

Mind you, I shouldn’t make fun of the All Blacks — the day after watching them exit I went and bought a car with a choke. You know that thing you pull out to start the car when it’s cold, it’s called a choke. Chokes are very useful in older cars … where was I? I must be smoking something — look at me waffling on about All Blacks, World Cups and chokes, wonder how that got started?

Mind you between them and Aussie, they reignited the battle for seventh versus eighth place. Who won? I won’t spoil it.

Get a copy of last year’s Bledisloe Cup.