All Blacks One Game from Perfect Season after England Triumph!

The All Blacks are on the brink of completing the unbeaten season after coming out on top of a thrilling and at times, brutal encounter with England in front of a capacity crowd at Twickenham.

With the plucky Irish who have never beaten the All Blacks in their history to come, this game was always going to be the last major challenge for Steve Hansen’s men in their quest to finish the season unbeaten for the first time since 1997 and with a 100% record for the first time since 1989.

England showed that they will be a force to be reckoned with when they host the Rugby World Cup in 2015. They have tremendous depth and strength in the forwards and their young pack showed they were more than a match for the experienced  ABs pack which must surely now be considered as the best pack ever in world rugby.

It’s a shame their backs weren’t quite up to the ABs when they needed to be. I think they badly missed the X-factor of the injured Manu Tuilagi who ran through the ABs defence last year like knife through hot butter – had Tuilagi been available I would have no doubt that this game would have been even closer than it was. 

Billy Twelvetrees showed he can find gaps and run through them but he hasn’t quite got the vision to find his wingers and fullbacks to put them in space like Tuilagi can and that enabled the All Blacks to recover and snuff out the next threat.

The winner of the X-Factor competition this afternoon was not a back but rather a forward.

Who needs Sonny Bill Williams when you have someone like Kieran Read who is able to draw 4-5 defenders and throw the difficult offload to a teammate in space?

The ABs have had many great number 8s like Sir Brian Lochore, Graham Mourie, Murray Mexted, Zinzan Brooke, etc.  Kieran Read should be in that list if he isn’t already and I might dare say he could be the greatest of them all. He might not be able to drop goals like Zinny – as far as we’ve seen – but for a complete player, no one comes close.

As for Dan the man, our latest centurion, his century game was rained off early after he limped off with an ankle injury – he was Dan as we know him before he came off, with a 100% record with the boot.

But as has been the case for the last two seasons, his absence was hardly felt with Aaron Cruden – and Israel Dagg from fullback – taking the reins and leading the backs with aplomb. Cruden’s goalkicking was near faultless – hitting the post once and it was like Carter never left.

In the end, it was the result that Dan Carter in his hundredth test deserved and while it appears that he probably may not add to many more to those caps, Southbridge’s finest can take heart that he has managed to inspire the next generation of great All Black first fives.

As a long season comes to an end next week, perhaps it’s time to start working out what to call this year’s All Blacks class. Only certain AB teams deserve a tag, i.e. the 1905 Invincibles, and after the season we’ve witnessed, I think Richie, Ready, et al. have earned that status.

As for England, they will take heart that they’ve pushed what is undoubtedly one of the greatest international sides right to the end but realise that they’re going to need a bit of luck to overcome this team in the future.