Wickham's musings from Chalke

 
England beat Australia 20 - 17 in the World Cup final in Sydney on Saturday 22nd November.

Australia was on a roll having improved during the tournament and beaten New Zealand in their semi-final. England had beaten France fairly easily in their semi-final, but had often played below their best. England tended to make a slow start, then powered ahead in the second half of previous matches.

In the final England was ahead at half-time 14 – 5, but conceded three penalty goals in the second half and didn’t score themselves.

The reason was because the referee started penalising our front row at the set-piece scrums. England had a heavy experienced front row but Australia’s men were under-powered and less experienced. The result was that in the first half we were pushing them off the ball and the scrum was breaking up. Normally the weaker side is punished, but not by Andre Watson the referee.

Northern hemisphere players and refs accept that scrums should be contested, in other words you push hard and if the other team buckles, either they are penalised for breaking up or you get the benefit of the next scrum because you were moving forward.

Southern hemisphere players and refs adopt the rugby league approach where the scrum is just an uncontested means of re-starting the game. Crooked put-ins are common and front row men have become light-weight and more mobile.

The ref may have thought the scrums would become dangerous in the second half or he just adopted the southern hemisphere interpretation more rigidly, but the result was England’s front row was confused, didn’t dominate scrums as they had in the first half and conceded penalties. One penalty was just before full-time and Australia converted it to bring the scores to 14 – 14.

Woodman, our prop who was penalised, admitted he had pulled out because he thought they had gone (ie forward) before the engagement (when the ref says “engage”). Basically he was confused about how the ref wanted the scrums to work in the second half.

In extra time we got a penalty in the first ten minutes, and then they got one in the second ten minutes. We set up a ruck in their half near the end of the second ten minutes and Dawson thought we were just too far away for a drop kick and he managed to dart forward about ten yards while their defence was spread wide to stop our backs.

Another ruck was won, he passed the ball to Jonny Wilkinson who had gone to his left and had to use his weaker right foot to get a drop-goal twenty seconds before the match would have gone into another session of extra time with a sudden-death first-score-wins rule. If a second period of extra time had been needed and also drawn, then drop-kicks by five players in turn with five attempts each from widening distances from the centre would have decided the match.

I’m glad we scored a try because there was criticism that we won the game against France with kicks by Jonny Wilkinson. The try was a classic. Matt Dawson passed the ball to Dallaglio who ran the ball away from the scrum, passed to Jonny Wilkinson who timed a perfect pass to Jason Robinson who accelerated to the corner, dived early, slid over the line and wasn’t touched until he was over the line. Scrum half, flanker, back and winger.

At full time it when it was 14 – 14 both sides had one try and three penalties. Australia’s try was very early in the match when Stephen Larkham kicked high for the winger Lote Tuqiri to jump and catch it right on the line. Jason Robinson was there but being at least a foot shorter than Tuqiri didn’t stand a chance.