Speaker by Various Artists

Monday the papers were full of praise for the All Blacks. Highest points scorers ever (309) almost 100 points ahead of Australia (215). New Zealand also ran in a record 46 tries, 16 more than the Aussies.

Of course these are things you can glean for yourself just by looking at the points table.
Other stats easily viewable but not reported include:
• Fiji was outscored 114 for to 136 against and made it through to the quarterfinals
• New Zealand had the best points differential with 274, again 100 points clear of the Aussies
• Of the four pools, five teams didn’t win a game (USA, Japan, Canada, Portugal, Namiba)
• Canada and Namibia were the only teams not to earn a bonus point.

But as we say, these are easy stats. So let’s make it harder.

After extensively trolling the internet we constructed ourselves a data set from which we gleaned the following moderately interesting stats:
• Number of games won by the team with the least possession: 12
• Number of games won by a team trailing at the 60 min mark: 1 (Romania over Portugal)
• Least amount of total time spent in the opposition 22 during a game: 22 seconds (Canada against Australia)
• Team that spent the least amount of time in the opposition 22 (summed across all games): Tonga – 12 mins 29 seconds.

It's a trainspotter's delight out there, if you know where to look.

So now down to the serious business. How do the All Blacks stack up against the other teams in the Quarters, in the places it counts? We've compiled stats about gameplay, and broken the important stuff down into four main areas, Possession and Handling, Scrums, Kicking and Lineouts, and Defence.

And we're thinking it does not tell a positive picture.

Possession and Handling

We know that New Zealand has been making handling errors. We made the most in fact: 58 in total (followed by Romania and Scotland on 49). But you'd argue that this was because we had the ball more often right? Our average possession was a very average 54% (France had the most at 60%), so that means we were bound to have more handling errors?

Team	Average Possession %
France	60%
Australia	57%
Argentina	55%
New Zealand	54%
Scotland	50%
South Africa	48%
England	45%
Fiji	44%

Well, you'd be right. We mishandled about as much as the other major teams, per minute of possession that is. New Zealand’s rate of handling errors per minute of possession is 0.3, too large a number to be discounted. In practical terms, that means on average for every three minutes it holds it the ball New Zealand will mishandle it at least once. In comparison, France will only mishandle once every five minutes.

Comparing the handling error rate of all teams in the quarters, we are, in fact, among the worst.

Team	Handling Errors, per Minute of Possession
New Zealand	0.34
Scotland	0.30
South Africa	0.27
Fiji	0.27
Australia	0.25
Argentina	0.25
France	0.22
England	0.21

Hopefully our large number of tries should balance this poor ball handling out, right? After all, our rate of tries per minute of possession was 0.27! The next down was South Africa on 0.16. But we think relying on this number is just being optimistic.

Team	Tries, per Minute of Possession
New Zealand	0.27
South Africa	0.16
Australia	0.16
France	0.13
Fiji	0.10
Argentina	0.09
Scotland	0.09
England	0.08

Scrums

We're concerned because, what happens after a handling error? That’s right, a scrum, so perhaps we can counter our poor handling by winning scrums against the head. Unfortunately, the All Blacks have only won 7% of opposition scrums, while the much-maligned Australian scrum is winning 16%. Still the All Blacks can take some heart that in one game they packed down against the best scrum at the rugby world cup: Italy.

No really, Italy.

The Italian scrum won 97% of its own put ins (equal with England) and 22% of the opposition’s put ins. This awesome scrum power is the reason Italy is also the second team most likely to win back the ball after a handling error. Italy recovered the ball 18% of the time behind the awesome might of England with 23%.

But, when comparing our rate of winning against the head with other quarterfinalists, we're faring poorly.

Team	Scrums Won (%)	Scrums Won Against the Head (%)
France	92%	21%
England	97%	16%
Australia	90%	16%
Argentina	97%	13%
South Africa	90%	10%
New Zealand	92%	7%
Scotland	82%	5%
Fiji	70%	0%

Kick it or Run it?

Still, as we know the game is often won through the boot not the scrum, so how’s our kicking? Well we have an accuracy of 76% for place kicks (penalties and conversions). This is better than our biggest rivals, Australia has 67% and South Africa 73%, but nowhere near as good as Scotland (100%!!!)

If we decide to kick for touch rather than take the points we win 95% of our lineouts. Nice. But if it’s our opponent’s lineout we’ve got a meagre 18% chance of getting it off them. Unfortunately our southern cousins are much better at snaffling the lineout than we are, with Australia and South Africa winning 34% and 30% of opposition lineouts respectively. Here's the table.

Team	Lineouts Won (%)	Opposition Lineouts Won (%)
Australia	96%	34%
South Africa	91%	30%
France	93%	29%
Scotland	88%	28%
England	86%	21%
New Zealand	95%	18%
Argentina	88%	17%
Fiji	72%	7%

Defence

Ok, ok. No need to panic. “Defence wins championships” and we’ve got the best defence right?

Our tackling percentage (tackles made divided by tackles attempted) is 90%. That’s pretty good. Of course... Australia’s is 94% and France have 91%.

Team	Successful Tackle (%)	Turnover per Tackle (%)
Australia	94%	7%
France	91%	4%
New Zealand	90%	8%
Argentina	89%	6%
South Africa	85%	7%
Scotland	85%	4%
England	84%	4%
Fiji	81%	5%

But we do have the edge in the most important stat: turnovers. 8% of all successful tackles result in a turnover, and we have a high ratio of turnovers lost to turnovers gained (We have lost the ball 15 times and gained it 23 giving us a ratio of 1.5).

Once again though, we're outpaced by the Aussies who have a ratio of 1.8 the second best behind the monsters of Tonga (2.9, they got the ball 23 times and only lost it 8). South Africa are on 1.7.

But hey! Don’t look glum! We still scored lots of tries in our pool of minnows.

The Dropkicks

Some Foreign Field is sponsored by Whisky Galore

People are praying for Daniel Carter, but I think we could win the thing without him, especially after Nick Evans' swift, skilful perfomance over the weekend. You'd be deprived of Carter's defensive qualities, and his frequently useful contribution as a spare loose forward, but you'd still be sending a bloody good first-five onto the field.

It's not that I'd want to lose Carter, but I don't think any of the All Blacks' most vital players are backs. There are no players, not even Carter, who are irreplaceable. Up front, it's a different story. Heading into the knockout rounds without Carl Hayman would be a nightmare, and losing Woodcock wouldn't be much better. Ditto for the loose trio: you wouldn't want to lose any of them, but It would be hard to contemplate a really big match without McCaw playing.

I'm struggling to separate Hayman and McCaw at the top of the list of Players to Pray For, but I guess you'd have to go with the captain. Next tier on the list: Collins, Woodcock and So'oialo. We're flush at hooker, where any of the three could credibly run on for a test match, and with Robinson fit, we could lose a lock without it being a complete disaster.

Anyway, Ted's calm, so I guess I should be too.

By contrast, the Australians are likely to be severely caught short without Latham (and now Lyons), and it's terribly bad luck for the Fijians that Nicky Little is gone for the tournament, after his capable and mature display in that cracking match against Wales. I would expect them to bruise, but not best, South Africa.

Argentina, on the other hand, should beat Scotland and progress to the semi-finals. They were far too strong and structured for Ireland this morning, and Scotland didn't show anything much in qualifying over Italy in their Six nations borefest. Can we call the Six Nations a second-tier competition yet? Well, actually, I wouldn't be completely astonished to see England creep pat Australia in the quarters: mildly surprised, but not astonished.

And yes, I think the All Blacks will run right over France in Cardiff. It won't even be close. Apart from the relative merits of the two teams on the field, there will be the crowd. The winner of Pool C was always goingto proceed to Cardiff, and that team was always going to be the All Blacks, as I'm sure many fans worked out long ago. The French on the other hand, never even considered the possibility that they'd finish second in their pool. It's an away game for France, and they're not that flash at those.

Meanwhile, over at Sport Review NZ, Richard Irvine has some humour. Oh brave, brave England …

Some Foreign Field is sponsored by Whisky Galore

PS: Congratulation to Auckland for the way they wrenched the Ranfurly Shield out of Canterbury's grasp and took it home. I do feel bound to observe that the carried-back call against Ward was possibly the worst TMO decision I have ever seen.

The sun was setting as we entered the outskirts of Kingman, Arizona. Holiday in Cambodia was playing on satellite radio -- which we each silently noted as weirdly appropriate for a sojourn through John McCain land.

Nobody has ever heard of Kingman, Arizona, so, suspecting that those who enter might never leave, we circumnavigated the city and headed north, figuring that the incredible time we were making justified a side-trip to Vegas, where we aimed meet up with a porn girl named Tank, who, I was assured, would prove an endless source of entertainment.

True to the word of many warnings posted along the way, crossing the Hoover Dam into Nevada involved first a mandatory checkpoint and, in our case, vehicle search. Here's a tip to those anarchists wishing to blow up the Hoover Dam: don't show up looking precisely like the type of anarchist who might wish to blow up the Hoover Dam. And don't have a driver with a funny accent.

"Why don't you three just get out of the car there and pop the trunk. We'll just take a look at what you got in those boxes there."

Happy for an opportunity to stretch, smoke and get friendly with the cops, we obliged scamperingly, and began to unpack the already precariously stacked cargo.

"What've you got in this one then? Let's see...." Reading down the scrawl on the outside of the box so attentively that I began to suspect it was to impress us with his literacy: "Nintendo, comics, socks, toys, camera.... Well, let's just open it up, and maybe if we find these things in here we'll just let you people be on your way."

Using the keys to the Dodge as craft-knives, we hacked into layers of tape and all felt slightly relieved -- in the way you do when you've successfully made it through customs without discovering that somehow your toilet bag has become packed full of heroin -- when a Nintendo game peeked out at us under the glare of cop-torch light.

But our man wasn't satisfied, wanted to be sure....

Now, America is the land of the artfully delivered anecdote, so I'm attempting here to do justice to what has no doubt already been told and retold better and more vividly by the cops involved, by other drivers on the scene, and by any attendant wildlife taking note of proceedings. But I'll make the attempt anyway, because courage, as Atticus told Jem, is "when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what."

While the cop was pulling out a stack of Plasticman comics, their leaves creating a susurrus in the desert wind like the expectant murmur of a crowd, Zak began looking slightly nervous.

"Um, you know how it says 'toys' on the box, well,...."

"Look, buddy, it's like I told ya: if I find the things in here that you say are in here then you folks've got nothin to worry about."

"Yeah, I know that, it's just...."

Here's how I came to the conclusion that America is the land of the anecdote. Towards the end of a day that took us from Memphis to Albuquerque, Zak Smith [link not work-safe] kept me awake at the wheel with a tale that involved fellow artist, Sean McCarthy, winning a wager of a week's fried chicken by managing to tell fifty good stories, in one night, about his insane Texan family. There were, that is, fifty subordinate anecdotes within Zak's main anecdote -- and, when his recall of the former failed him, Zak had hand-written notes, at the ready, to consult.

And yet, while our highway patrolman is rummaging among Zak's socks and laying them out on his special search-without-a-warrant-handy-cop-tarpaulin, I can tell you that it was in fact Mandy Morbid [link not work-safe], representing Canada, who provided the award-winning anecdote of the trip. It involved a girl, no different, really, from you or me, who, house-sitting for friends, found on the second day of this duty that the rather large dog she had been entrusted to feed and walk had a diminished appetite and no enthusiasm for exercise -- because it was, well, dead.

Managing to ascertain that there was a municipal body given over to the disposal of dead dogs, our heroine, in her confused state, believed that she was obliged to personally deliver the package. Finding a capacious suitcase, then, she installed the corpse and called a cab.

When the cab driver, heaving the luggage down the stairs, learned the details of its contents, he refused the fare and left this poor young girl in a frantic state, realising that she'd have to take the dog on the subway.

Struggling to find her platform, negotiating the escalator in high-heel clogs, and willing her failing strength to continue bearing the load, she finally broke down in tears -- as anyone would. Luckily, she was rescued by a man of chivalry and charm who offered to help her with her burden. When he, as inevitability would have it, enquired as to the source of the suitcase's inexplicable density, she remembered the ungracious cab driver and, for the first time in her innocent life, was "economical with the truth," essentially replacing "dog" with the word "electronics." At this, the gentleman went from being her rescuer to becoming her salvation: accelerating rapidly, dispersing commuters with violence and threats, in seconds he had disappeared into the crowd. He left behind a tear-stained, mascara-tracked face cracking an unlikely smile while behind it a mind wondered vaguely whether this was what they meant by irony.

I imagine there's some similarity between the feelings experienced by the chivalrous gent, when he eagerly opened the suitcase on his unmade bed and found the shit-smeared remains of a family pet, and those of our patrolman when his hand, deep within the now near-empty box, closed around a long, smooth object and emerged holding an impressive purple dildo.

"Oh Lord, what is this?"

"Do you want me to show you?" offered Mandy.

Feeling the impotent rage of one who's been fooled by no one but fate, while his fellow cops were sniggering in delight and Mandy began briefing him on the various qualities of the specimen that he was still waving like a baton, this cop, like many an officious buffoon, felt he had no option but to continue his inspection with fastidiousness.

Having retrieved the larger items (two more dildos, a piercing gun, something that looked like a hairdryer but wasn't, as well as bondage ropes and a hood), he tipped out the remainder onto the tarpaulin: an assortment of creams, gels, butt plugs, clit-ticklers, vibrators, nob-nooses and scrotal moulds.

We even heard him trying to convince his superiors that some of these items might contain "plastic explosives."

But to any rational mind we now appeared more than ever the typically Vegas-bound, and, when they'd managed to disperse the crowd that had gathered to hear Mandy's disquisition, they kindly, even eagerly, helped us repack the box and sent us on our way, over the Dam, into the true heart of America.

The Dropkicks know that in little old New Zealand there's a tendency to fall either side of a line where people either love or hate rugby. We couldn't actually tell you how many people actually fall to either side, but if you conduct a vox pop in your workplace it'll definitely be there.

I mention this because you may well know that the Dropkicks are no fans of yachting. When the America's Cup rolls around we merely roll our eyes and look for something approximating 'real' sport on the telly, competitive eating for example. Cricket is also a bit of a stretch some some of us, but it is another country's national game, so you can hardly point the finger of hypocrisy there.

I mention all this because one of the team recently met the father of a 1990s All Black. 17 caps his son had. He played most major nations and was a well-known name. It is New Zealand of course, so meeting an All Black or one of their extended family is hardly an event in itself, but one thing that occurred to the Dropkick talking to the old guy is that rugby is so much bigger than just the players. Besides the guys themselves there's also the cadre of people who bask in the reflected glory of their personal sporting hero.

"So what?" I hear you ask? Plenty of parents are proud of their children without the bruising and machismo of full-contact sports. And some of these things add greater value to the world, like art, music, philosophy, gastronomy. Incidentally, "gastronomy"? Doesn't that sound like "the science of giving one wind?"

Like most nations we New Zealanders are a parochial bunch. There's things we like, and things we don't. And those two things are rugby, and Australians. While there are all kinds of things we also like, it's hard to find so much of the national psyche wrapped up in them. Sure, we're stoked when someone discovers a new vaccine, or writes a great and well-recognised novel. But you can't put 45 minutes of advertisements into a new vaccine, can you? No, you can't. If you could, TV3 would have found a way to do so already.

OK, that leads to another digression. TV3 get the rights to the World Cup, right? This is viewed as a good thing, because it means that people who can't afford Sky get to watch the games for free. But. TV3 have to squeeze advertising into the replayed games in order to pay for the cost of the rights. This is all standard fare.

But how the hell are people who can't afford Sky going to afford all the stuff advertised in the replayed games? The working-poor driving brand new Fords? Yeah, Right. All that advertising is really doing is pissing people off. People who would rather pay to watch an ad-free game on Sky. The same people who can probably afford the stuff on the ads. It's also pissing off the poor because they can't afford all that shit and it's getting in the way of the game.

Gripe over.

It was after speaking with Dad of the All Black that this puff-piece was put into the paper. It reinforced our point that international sport, as combative as it might seem, is really all about pride. Pride that our wee country is bigger than just the islands we stand on. Bigger than our meagre 4 million people. Pride that our national effort is put into something that doesn't result in the hurt or humiliation of anyone.

You could see it in the way the old guy put back his shoulders and lifted his head a little when he spoke about not only his son, but the team itself. It was a pride in taking part in something greater than the sum of himself and his family. A pride that we, a small place far from anywhere, could be measured in the collective greatness of a few men on some far foreign field. The childish pride of riding atop the shoulders of black giants, a view from the top of the world.

Unless they lose. In which case we sack the coach and belittle them for at least six months.

The Dropkicks

The Herald obviously didn't secure online rights for its excerpt from Tana Umaga's book (which reads more like a very long interview with his co-author Paul Thomas than an actual autobiography) but key sections have been picked up by newspapers around the world. And they reveal quite what a competitive bugger he was on the field.

The Times is still calling what happened to Brian O'Driscoll a "spear tackle" in its headline, providing a cue for whiny comments from readers, while Ireland Online goes with Umaga's description of O'Driscoll as a "sook", and Stuff has big chunks of the text, including his description of the "tackle", which actually wasn't a tackle:

"I went into a ruck and cleaned out Brian O'Driscoll. I was standing over the ball trying to protect it when he bounced back to have another crack at disrupting our possession. We were tussling as he tried to get through and I grabbed his leg to try to unbalance him, a technique I'd used before and still use to this day.

"What I didn't realise was that Keven Mealamu was doing the same thing on the other side of the ruck. As I got one of O'Driscoll's legs up, Keven hoisted his other leg and drove him back. He ended up with both feet off the ground, not in control of himself or the situation, a position rugby players often find themselves in. When we let him go he came down and what happened, happened. I didn't think anything of it, I just took off."

But I liked the description of the game that followed, the justifiably legendary second test against the Lions in Wellington:

"As a ruck broke up, Paul O'Connell loomed over me ranting and raving. As I got up, their props Julian White and Gethin Jenkins started pushing and shoving. I knew it was going to happen at some stage so I just said, 'Come on, any time, just bring it.' I backed away slowly looking at them and saying, 'Are you going to start playing soon or what?'

"Later, when O'Connell went down, I went over to him as he was rolling around the ground and said, 'Mate, don't give up now, we're just getting started.' He jumped straight up.

"When Stephen Jones came on for Jonny Wilkinson he took the ball up yelling, 'For our captain!' like something out of Braveheart. I said, 'Are you serious?' You could see how they were trying to motivate themselves but it became quite laughable.

"I got into some of their forwards about being a bit chubby and after the game Jenkins said to Steve Hansen, who'd coached him when he'd been with Wales, 'Can you tell Tana it's nothing personal, it's just the game.' That was a bit rich coming from them. I told Steve I didn't see any of it in personal terms."

Apart from the princely performance of Dan Carter that evening, the thing I recall most clearly from the All Blacks' play that evening is the ceaseless low-to-the-ground industry of Umaga and Mealamu -- they were everywhere.

Meanwhile, in Europe the Allez Les Noirs crew's newsgathering technique -- hanging out in bars -- pays off again:

Jonesy again found a celeb: this time he cornered pig hunter and part-time All Black Keith Robinson in a pub (he and Mils had pass-outs for a night). I think the big guy was there with friends or family for a quiet catch up, but he was kind enough to accept a five minute inquisition from us ... though the strange swing of topics that we were unleashing, from hunting, to training, to injuries, to where he and the boys can find the best pizza in Aix-en-Provence must have been daunting. I think we were pretty boozed by then. Robinson said he was itching for a run at Romania and things were looking good for that. Can’t wait to see him unleashed again and back in the sort of form that used to see him torment the English at HQ.

Tracey Nelson reports from Murrayfield, where she had just as much trouble telling the Scots and All Black jerseys apart as we did on the telly. And so, she says, did the All Blacks themselves:

The most notable thing about this game, in contrast to the two previous pool games, was the apparent failure of the All Blacks to be able to put the man into the gap and let the passes go. Initially there was a degree of frustration about this, but as the game wore on it became apparent that like the spectators the players were having problems sighting their team mates when the two backlines met. While this could be taken as a negative, there were some positive outcomes too - the All Blacks have conceded quite a few intercept passes in the last two games, one of which led to a try, but in this game they did not offer up the same chances to Scotland and overall against a fast defensive line, there were very few 50/50 passes thrown.

Meanwhile, The Dropkicks are running a poll on the likely outcome of Ireland vs Argentina, the game that will be of more interest to New Zealand supporters than the ABs' run against Romania, given that it will determine who we'll be facing in the quarter-final at Cardiff. (England-Tonga should be fun too.) They also have a completely bogus news story about Carl Hayman. Silly boys.

And … I need some ad copy and I'm offering free whisky again. Go and scrutinise the Whisky Galore ads on all Public Address (not System) pages and offer me up no more than a dozen words to run across two slides. Post them in the discussion and you're a winner. Possibly.