A day of shocks

Well, along with many other far more respected pundits I predicted an all Southern Hemisphere semi-final. Now we're guaranteed a North v South clash in the final.

England v Australia was anything but pretty. It did, however, prove in a game which was quite error-strewn and had a more international scrum-half as referee (someone who's pretty used to standing next to a scrum and seeing what's going on therefore) the Wallabies "massive improvements in the scrum" were shown to be smoke and mirrors AND the scrum became the road by which England's forwards generated self-belief and dogged out the match. It was nice to see the dominant scrum not get whistled off the park for once!

France v New Zealand always had the potential to be a banana skin for the All Blacks, if the French turn up to play, they can beat anyone. Let's hope that same passion pushes them through the next two matches and they stuff the English out of sight and beat the (probably) Boks - although a France v Argentina rematch is plausible and could be very exciting! I've got to say, on this one, I was a bit surprised. France dogged it out with resolute defence, helped a bit by a few shocking refereeing decisions at crucial times, but fair play to France, because they were dogging out, the forward pass from Michalak, the lack of a penalty for taking out the kicker as he chased (especially when compared to the yellow card for MacAllister, which from some angles looked terrible, from others looked like a wonderful dive from Jauzion) were able to make that difference at the end of the day.

I'm going to guess today will be a lot less dramatic, can Fiji stuff the Boks? It's possible, but I doubt it. Can Scotland upset the Argentinians? Ditto. But then, if I was a betting person, I'd have put money on Australia to beat England and (less but still some) on New Zealand to beat France yesterday.