Evidently the board did get the message

One lesson from the Rugby World Cup was that the "minnows" aren't that little a bunch of fish. Fortunately, the International Rugby Board has realised that a) the only way to grow the game is to give the best of these "minnows" a chance to play in the Rugby World Cup, and b) they aren't "minnows" anyway.

Argentina will also now definitely be playing in the Southern Hemisphere (Quad Nations?) tournament, rather than an expanded Seven Nations.

It's over.

Bugger.

It wasn't a try, as well. The BBC News article has the photo that shows my solid five minutes of Anglo-Saxon invective at the TV referee were misplaced, as technically - technically - he was right.

Can you barbecue humble pie?

I take it all back. Brian Ashton, I questioned your judgement - I stand utterly corrected. Thank you and congratulations.

On the Aussie side of things - I wonder if some Australian journalists need to barbecue some humble pie today after their articles in the run up to the match. Mr Smith clearly knows rugby - he identified that 'hanging on like grim death is what [the English] do better than anything else' and he did identify the pack and Wilkinson as the England strengths. Amongst his declarations about how the Wallabies would easily defeat England, there is the one prescient line

There might be only so much you can do with a nasty, big pack and a goalkicking genius, but one thing that's possible is winning a World Cup quarter-final.

Hey, Smith, cut the arrogance and you could be a very good journalist...

Ah... diddums

Those gentle little flowers, the Aussie Wallabies Rugby Union side, are worried that England might try that unsporting tactic of having a stronger pack than them at a World Cup, and want to make sure the referee blows for any underhand tactics (hitting, pushing, not falling over and handing the ball to the aussies, etc), as was done in the last World Cup final (which the Aussies still lost).

Good to see that the England team has risen so fast from their absolute drubbing by South Africa that the Aussies coach feel the need to put pressure on the referees. Shame I still don't expect England to win, even if the Aussies attempt to ban all the bits of the game that England are expected to be better at fails.

RWC2007 so far

Well, if like me you're an Englishman with sufficient Irish ancestry that you could qualify to play for Ireland if you weren't utterly crap at rugby (I did once score a try at school, and for the team I was on, but it was by accident) then this year's tournament has been rather depressing. OK, I expected England to be poor - the draw that pretty much set us up to lose to Australia in the QFs is annoying, I'd have rather got the All-Blacks and been able to accept defeat without being gloated at - but Ireland's poor performance has just made things worse. At least England showed against Samoa that they do appear to have some inkling that there is a modern game out there. It's not enough to beat Australia, quite possibly not enough to beat Tonga, but it's a start.

Why won't they beat a good team? Because too often the ball is being passed to a stationary man, who then runs forwards. Or they kick the ball deep to a waiting opposition player who has all the time in the world to kick the ball into touch. Against a team that is actually good at lineouts (or merely adequate), then the middle half of England's play would see them lose.

A further improvement in their game by Friday might see England get past Tonga. They'd need an even further improvement to get past the Aussies, but that's asking for too much.

List of countries England could learn from in Rugby Union

I'm not going to type it all, it would take too long. But to be blunt, it now includes Portugal, who at least managed to score - and score a try - against a strong Southern Hemisphere side.

The All Blacks were showing "sensitivity" in the scrum, but if there were any plans for sensitivity elsewhere on the pitch got quickly thrown away when the Portugese scored to make it 12-3 after 22 minutes - the Portugese had shown they were here to play Rugby. All credit to them.

So why don't the likes of Portugal - and Georgia, who nearly beat Ireland - get more games with the Six Nations teams? That's the only way Rugby Union can expand.

Outrun, out-thought, out-kicked, outclassed

It seems a lot longer ago than four years that England could claim to be the best Rugby Union team in the world.

I just spent a highly painful evening in the pub watching England get taken apart by a South Africa team who didn't appear to be engaging top gear. I couldn't decide whether England looked like a minnows team of amateurs or something from the 1980s. Apart from Jason Robinson, who went down fighting to his last, none of the England team appeared to deserve to hold their heads up high after this one.