Rugby World Cup: The favourites take action

After yesterday's upsetting result in the opening match when France lost to Argentina the top favourites of New Zealand played their first game against Italy. Now taly have recently been enjoying some success in the Six Nations tournament although I guess you could still label them a 2nd rate team. The All Blacks had no problems with them whatsoever crushing them 76-14. The 2nd half of the game saw the Italians get a little grip on the ball though with the All Blacks looking as though they were trying just to hold up their lead. Man of the match was Doug Howlett who scored three of the total 11 tries.
Next up were the Wallabies against the "Cherry Blossoms" from Japan and anything but a convincing victory by Australia would have been a surprise. So you have to give credit to the Japanese team when they held the Australians in check over the first few minutes. But then they gave in and lost terribly 3-91. This leaves Australia as one of the top prospects for the trophy. I was surprised they still have Gregan, Larkham and Mortlock in the squad but their performance was really good so although they might be a little older they still seem to have the skill to control the game. The best player in this game was Rocky Elsom who scored a hattrick, the fastest in World Cup history.
The toughest match came third today when England played the Eagles from the States. England are the defending champions and they had quite some problems with a very compact and fierce American team. It was only shortly before half time when England scored a couple of tries and got ahead of the USA. The 2nd half was much closer with the Eagles even scoring a try themselves in the end of the game. The final result was 28-10 which shows how close a game this was. England might have found a replacemnt for their injured super star player Johnny Wilkinson who almost single-handedly won the title during the last World Cup with his kicking skills. His replacement Olly Barkley had quite a few nice scenes in today's match.

Tomorrow will see the last of the big five, South Africa, start their campaign. The Springboks will be up against Samoa. The other games will be the Welsh Dragons against Canada, Scotland will face Portugal and Ireland will take on Namibia.