Some Rugby news: In Perth over the weekend, despite having a half-strength team through injuries, having the side reduced to 14 men and England being awarded two penalty-tries the Wallabies still managed to beat England 27-17.
Over the same weekend, an England squad sans Ferdinand and Beckham managed to throw away a victory over the United States thanks to a costly Robert Green fumble.
But of course, entering the classroom how am I greeted this Monday?
"Four nil!" was the students' reception when I entered my classroom today.
"Sir, when you watch the world cup do you prefer to sit further from the telly or Klose?"
"What's the date today sir? It isn't the FOUR-teenth is it?"
"Sir, how old are you? Not twenty-FOUR?" (actually twenty-six but what the hey?)
etc., etc., etc.
Every conceivable question whose answer might contain a four was asked of me today - just to rub some salt into the wound left by Germany's drilling of Australia on Sunday. Even the other teachers were none too sympathetic when I told them how I was greeted in the classroom.
"Well, one should hope so. The Australians were terrible."
The closest I got to sympathy was one teacher who reminded me of the above-mentioned Rugby result.
Losing to England in the Twenty20 last month didn't help either. And of course, England are currently holding the Ashes and not likely to lose it till Christmas (C'mon you can't expect England to beat Australia in Australia in a game of cricket!). It seems that I've come to England at the perfect time for a great big serving of humble pie and the English aren't losing any opportunities to watch me eat after all the years of being a bigger and richer country than Australia but always losing in sporting competitions.
The last Olympics in Beijing was the firstOlympics since 1988 where Great Britain got higher in the medal tally than Australia. In that same time period Australia won 9 out of the 11 Ashes series played. Over the same period Australia has likewise dominated England in the Rugby - although it has been a lot closer competition Australia beating England 23 times from the two sides' last 38 encounters. So when we finally come to the original football - the World Game - the English are only too happy to gloat whilst watching Australia flounder amongst the big names of Football.
However, if either Germany or England come second in their group (but not both) then we will get an oppurtunity to see how the English fair against this German World Cup squad. So if Australia don't get a chance to play England maybe Germany will - we'll see who gets the last laugh then in this long rivalry between nations.
(C'mon it's football not cricket - it'll probably be England).
3 comments:
And even New Zealand is doing better than the Ozzies!!
I know - it's tragic.
And which marketing genius decided to take a team to South Africa called the "All Whites"???
Well, it would seem I did get the last-laugh of sorts - England lost 4:1 to the same Germany that thrashed Australia 4:0. But as it happened, when it came time to gloat, I just didn't have the heart (plus it wasn't like Australia beat England - just that England couldn't do much better than Australia).
In any case, it's a good German team. My World Cup favourites? Yeah, I think so.
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