Funny old game

So, last week the Ospreys (who are basically Wales' Six Nations winning squad, but with a few Kiwis in places where the non-Ospreys were in the Wales squad) got dumped, unceremoniously out of the Heineken Cup by Saracens. Sarries aren't a bad side, but they're far from great.

This week they equally unceremoniously dumped Leicester out of the Angl0-Welsh cup final. Leicester may not be the all-monstering team of yore, but they're still appreciably higher in the league than Sarries, and they didn't field a no-name team.

What makes a team fire one week and fail the next? If there was an answer of course, I'd be the greatest coach ever!

Just to add to the mix, in the Super-14s the top team played the bottom team. At half time the score was 6-3, and not to the table toppers. Of course, by the end of the game the cream had risen to the top and the score was something like 32-6, with 4 tries including a couple that will probably get into "try of the year" contention. The Crusaders have some excuses for a poor start - there were 8 changes from their previous match's team, and their captain was taken off after 10 minutes with what it later turns out is a broken hand. Both of those will disrupt a team somewhat. Perhaps the more disturbing thing for world rugby is that, with that many changes, an absent Dan Carter, Ritchie MacCaw and others (through injury in the case of Carter) well, they took a little while to bed down, and then they played like the red-and-black machine that they can be.

But it just goes to show - sometimes you have to play the game, because the results that all the pundits predict get thrown out the window by actual results and how the players do.