Recapture when England was great..!

Rematch of the 2003 final to commemorate the tenth anniversary


http://www.espnscrum.com/blogs/rugby/story/204195.html

Nice idea. Lots of players missing though.

Danny Grewcock and Austin Healy on the sidelines. I guess this time we know who is will be that lamps the opinionated little wotsit... 

Why bother...this game just highlights that we've only won one and have been utterly gash since!!
Why do we have to cling to these minor bits of success..instead of putting it aside and looking forward hopefully to a few more...

Always good to see these sort of efforts to raise money for charity.

England won a RWC ???!!!  

GeordieFalcon wrote:Why bother...this game just highlights that we've only won one and have been utterly gash since!!
Why do we have to cling to these minor bits of success..instead of putting it aside and looking forward hopefully to a few more...

I think you're missing the real point of this Geordie. The anniversary is just a vehicle for an event to raise money.

These kind of matches are regular occurrences to raise money for charities. Makes sense to use the "anniversary" to help publicise and maybe raise more funds.

Very deserving charities...!

GeordieFalcon wrote:Why bother...this game just highlights that we've only won one and have been utterly gash since!!
Why do we have to cling to these minor bits of success..instead of putting it aside and looking forward hopefully to a few more...

bit disappointed in that comment, i can only guess you didn't notice it was for charity?

It's also being shown in a rugby club special so i hope anyone who can will donate a little whilst watching what can only be described as a bunch of overweight men running at each other.

ou don't need to go back to 2003...England were great last year- for all of that 80 minutes...

Taylorman wrote:ou don't need to go back to 2003...England were great last year- for all of that 80 minutes...

still hurts....  

hurts like hell
most loses do

nathan wrote:

Taylorman wrote:ou don't need to go back to 2003...England were great last year- for all of that 80 minutes...

still hurts....  

Nope...not at all. I'm in the camp that thinks the ABs need a loss every now and then. Winning every time after a while has a way of making this side lose its touch with reality. They end up...waiting to lose as reasons for winning pale.

Nothing recharges this side more than a loss and look at their results this year. I doubt they'd have won every test to date had we beaten england last year.

It still hurts Tman but there is definitely motivational value in a loss. I don't subscribe to the theory that you learn more from your losses than from your victories. There are benefits to winning like confidence that cannot be got as much by losing. Australia will have gained confidence by their Dunedin performance but imagine how they'd have felt and played up north if they had won.

Playing badly and winning is a nasty habit. England approached the game against Wales thinking of their NZ performance at the start of the season. You called it Tman but that preparation denied the fact that England had been slipping in standards and their Italy win was not a performance to remember a convincing performance. It would have been more astute to remember a game where England had turned around a bad performance.

This event is raising money for charity. From a rugby perspective the 2003 is a good thing to remember not from the perspective of the pinnacle that England reached but the journey of finding the right combinations and building momentum as a squad through performance against all opponents. It's like running a marathon. It's healthy to visualize from time to time the finish line but the marathon is won or raced with the head down and doing the hard graft that is necessary.

GeordieFalcon wrote:Why bother...this game just highlights that we've only won one and have been utterly gash since!!
Why do we have to cling to these minor bits of success..instead of putting it aside and looking forward hopefully to a few more...

One more than anyone else in the NH.

kiakahaaotearoa wrote:It still hurts Tman but there is definitely motivational value in a loss. I don't subscribe to the theory that you learn more from your losses than from your victories. There are benefits to winning like confidence that cannot be got as much by losing. Australia will have gained confidence by their Dunedin performance but imagine how they'd have felt and played up north if they had won.

Playing badly and winning is a nasty habit. England approached the game against Wales thinking of their NZ performance at the start of the season. You called it Tman but that preparation denied the fact that England had been slipping in standards and their Italy win was not a performance to remember a convincing performance. It would have been more astute to remember a game where England had turned around a bad performance.

This event is raising money for charity. From a rugby perspective the 2003 is a good thing to remember not from the perspective of the pinnacle that England reached but the journey of finding the right combinations and building momentum as a squad through performance against all opponents. It's like running a marathon. It's healthy to visualize from time to time the finish line but the marathon is won or raced with the head down and doing the hard graft that is necessary.

Doesnt hurt for me at all as we have more than our share of winning- one loss in 2 years is something any sport team dreams of let alone reaches. Sure there are benefits from winning but there arent a lot of real lessons- REAL lessons. Losing is about a gameplan and its execution not providing the sought after result. Not achieving forces the deeper questions. In 07 we werent asking the questions- same with Hong Kong and England last year. We were too busy finding ways to keep winning and ultimately doing what we have been doing is usually the only answer. For me that equates to waiting to lose.

Meanwhile every side that faces us is scraping the bottom of the barrel to find that archilles heal, that one failing that might tip us over.

Thats why its imperative we have a loss- preferably a bad one- close to the next world cup- if only to keep that burning pain of a loss close to the heart. Then we can go on winning the next 15 or so after that. But for me this side seems to have learned one valuable lesson through its very good record- to lose when it suits, just to be able to get back on the bike again.

hardly lose when it suits! and dont forget the other nonwin that should have been lesson enough

I heard England won and Steve Thompson scored an eighty meter try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9M47PuYqBlU

Love the swallow dive at the end, as in the earth swallowed him up and his feet could no more.

It's important to learn lessons I agree. It's unfortunate that NZ didn't learn their lesson in 1995 and were forced to repeat it in 2012.

I'm recording this on Sky Sports. It's just been repeated.

Will watch it later. Will be interesting to see how some of the old boys got on (especially Thommo!).