Just for the British/Irish

[Akiiryu]

BLACKWASH!!!!!!!!!

 

Take that "Sir" Clive, ya stuck up ********

 

9 Million quid, 51 players, 30 support staff (including a government spin doctor) and you couldn't even get close!!!!

 

21-3

48-18

38-19 (with the All Blacks scoring two tries whilst a man down)

 

Sorry guys, it not aimed at any of you...only that twit Sir Clive Woodward.

[Nevareion]

*is laughing his socks of at the idea of him getting involved at Southampton Football Club*

[Paranoid schizo]

Despite his, ahem, apparent bias to English players (btw, look at the list of try scorers boyo ) and his, err, odd tactics, I have to tip my cap at the All Blacks.

 

Awesome. Simply awesome.

 

And him a scummer? Quality!!!!

[Akiiryu]

To be honest, when in watch the first game (in Norwich) I couldn't really take much joy from the AB victory. The Lions were sooooo woefully bad some (if not all) of our Super 12 teams would have hammered them. The ruckass the followed over the "spear-tackle" was a shameful display by a coach (and his pet spin doctor) who had lost all grasp on reality. The guy is an embrassment and certianly didn't deserve a knighthood.

[Senator Gaius]

[Scipii]

Cometh the Autumn; cometh the backlash as the MIGHTY Cymru smash the Kiwis into the green green grass of home

[Akiiryu]

We shall see, we shall see. I do know that (grammatical error corrected to make Scipii happy) Cymru will put up a better fight than those toothless kitties.

[Scipii]

The Cymru? Cymru is a place you know.

[Akiiryu]

Yes, I know. Late night typing.

[Scipii]

Ok, chill out my friend

[Akiiryu]

I was joking

[Akiiryu]

Here is one example of the stuff being said about Clive in NZL at the moment:

 

 

---------

So Long Clive, Don't Hurry Back

 

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. So this is what five straight defeats to the All Blacks does to you. Five rugby equivalents of having your strides whipped down and being placed over a rigid knee with a decent old spanking administered with a wooden paddle.

 

Sends you barking up a forest full of trees.

 

Dear old Clive Woodward - sorry I've stripped the dark knight of the title, for disservice to his sport - had so lost the plot by the end of this Lions tour of New Zealand that I really wondered whether he even knew what he was saying.

 

If he did, his outrageous outbursts over the last days of his darkest moments reflect even worse on a fellow who really seems to have lost all perspective or ability to rationalise.

 

It was too much to expect a man of his oozing self-confidence or blinkered defiance to admit that he'd got it wrong. And maybe fair enough too. He believed what he believed in, and it is up to others to judge him on his results, which was exactly what he asked for before this test series started.

 

And judged he certainly has been, with a resounding guilty verdict issuing forth in the north over a touring outfit going down in notoriety among the worst of over a century's history.

 

Judge this. The results were a collective score of 107-40 to the All Blacks, 12 tries to three, three tests to nil. And these were probably the numbers that reflected best on the hopelessly outmatched tourists. They never fired a shot and were so bereft of standout players that the two most memorable characters of the tour were the coach and his spin-doctor sidekick.

 

But, again, that's all right. It is sport, after all, and somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. And through all of this we should never lose sight - despite Woodward's best attempts to have us do so - that the Lions got their what-oh from a very good All Blacks side that is bordering on becoming a great one.

 

But I am here today to deal with Woodward.

 

He not only got it badly wrong on this whole tour, he finished with such a bizarre volley of verbals that they can't pass without response.

 

So where did he get it so wrong? Well, the numbers he brought were unwieldy, but that in itself wasn't the root of his problem. He never gave them the chance to build as a unit, and paid the price. He sniped about Graham Henry not releasing players to appear for their provinces, then kept his own test candidates wrapped in cotton wool, one to a room.

 

These Lions were a jumble of individuals thrown together at various times. They were never a team in any sense of the world.

 

He got it wrong in his selections, too. Clearly. His hopeless loyalty to past-it Englishman was a major mistake and one that was corrected too late.

 

Out Of His Rugby Depth

 

He also got it wrong with his appointment of the rogue Alastair Campbell, if only in the ridiculous smear campaign they hatched to try to discredit Tana Umaga over the Brian O'Driscoll injury. It backfired badly and was so ill-conceived it proved beyond refute that Campbell was out of his depth when it came to rugby matters.

 

You attack an All Black captain of Umaga's standing in New Zealand, having just been beaten senseless in the opening test, at your peril. And that they did.

 

But I can forgive all of these failings.

 

What I can't forgive is Woodward's curious double-standards and oscillating viewpoints. They grow and grow and grow on you until you finally feel like screaming: "Enough!"

 

Time and time again he told us in the early stages of this tour that this was the "best prepared Lions team" in history. Then the man had the cheek to deny it. He did himself no credit that day, nor many since.

 

Over and over again he told us how well his players were playing, when clearly we could all see they weren't. After each test loss, he clung to positives that simply did not exist. After a record defeat in the second test he bemoaned the margin as not reflective of his side's valiant effort. Believe it or not after the third test he told us that the tour had been a "success".

 

Further, in the final week came the suggestion that in future he would keep a test 22 hidden away in Melbourne and just fly them in for tests. Hmmm?

 

Then after the Eden Park defeat he'd swung completely the other way. He'd bring more players, more staff and play three times a week. The lunatics had taken over the asylum.

 

Then came the icing on the cake. No, the balance had not swung to the southern hemisphere, because New Zealand hadn't won a World Cup since 1987. "The only true judgment of a team is at a World Cup," he said in all his sneering nastiness. "Who holds the World Cup at the moment?" Er, you do Clive. Or at least you did two years ago. A scarcely credulous Henry responded by labelling it "camouflage".

 

But if there was proof needed that the once master coach had lost the plot it came on his return to England when, amid further news of Campbell-hatched "secret" photos being spun of axed Welsh star Gavin Henson with the coach, he defended his spin king thus:

 

"The media has missed an opportunity with him. If they had spoken to him, he would have given them ideas on how they could have written more creative stuff in terms of following the team around and how we are operating. That's why I brought him along, to try to move everything with the media on to a whole new level, but unfortunately the media have not taken up that challenge.

 

Are these the words of a man divorced from reality? Sadly, Clive it is you who have failed to take up the challenge. Enjoy your time in soccer. Don't hurry back.

 

http://xtramsn.co.nz/rugby/0,,12448-4560515,00.html

[Paranoid schizo]

Slightly OTT wouldn't you say? There aren't too many players in the rest of the World who'd get into the current All Blacks team.

 

I too think Clive Woodward got it wrong.

 

I too look forward to the Welsh games. Two passionate sides who like to run rather than drop kick at every flamin' opportunity!!!!!

 

 

Cymru Am Byth!!!!

[Scipii]

Cymru Am Byth!!!!

Excellent sentiment

[Phil VII]

indeed, i may be English, and i may like Sir Clive for winning us the World vup two years ago, but he was hardly the greatest manager for the Lions tour team, there was a fairly big hoo-hah over here as to why he was picking so many more english players(the side that only came 4th in the six nations trophey easrlier this year) than over both the Welsh and the Irish sides (1st and 3rd respectivly).

 

Sir Clive did cling on to much to the notion that the english are better than the rest of the UK, whih was so obviously prooved wrong during the six nations, only the scottish and the Italians were lower than us (both are hardly great rugbying sides).

 

I think sir clive deserves to be given a retirement packge after the disaster that was the lions tour, and be allowed to dissapear behind doors rather thsan try and take on another potentially good team...

[Nevareion]

That's why he's going to Southampton