Thoughts on New Zealand vs Scotland - World Cup 2007

To be honest, the All Blacks were in a no win situation. They were playing a Scotland side that had elected to rest it's big name players in a match they were expected to win comfortably regardless of who the Scots put on the field. The game was still at a sold out Murraryfield ground, and the '2nd stringers' all knew this was their chance to push for a first team selection.

The All Blacks went on to do what you inevitably do in a no-win situation - they won. 40-0 is a convincing scoreline against a team that is ranked top 10 in the world. It's actually 4 points more than the scoreline from a week earlier when South Africa was said to have 'demolished' England - a team ranked only 3 higher than Scotland in the World. 6 tries to nothing is a convincing victory - and let's not forget than Aliens had taken over Dan Carters body. The REAL Dan Carter has never kicked 4 from 9 in his life. had he hit those kicks the scoreline would have gone up to 51-0.

The doom and gloom doesn't stem from the scoreline, but the game itself. The All Blacks made 20 handling errors - unheard of in recent times. And more alarming they made several critical judgment errors that cost tries. The back line was given a feast of possession from a forward pack that was destroying the scots, and they failed to convert it into a landslide of points.

For their parts the Scots looked every part a team that knew they could never win. They determinedly slowed down the game, collapsed scrums, threw the ball away and allowed every aspect of negativity possible to mark their play. This was a team with one objective - not to lose by too much.

And let's not forget the jerseys! There was a lot of confusion out there caused by both sides wearing nearly identical jerseys. Players had a moment of doubt when looking to the support because they had to look to the face, not the jersey to see what team the player was on. It's no coincidence the All Blacks normally polished finishing was impaired by the jersey confusion. Officials admit they wanted to change the jerseys at half time because they were affecting the match. I noticed twice penalties on the ground awarded to the wrong team - possibly due to not being able to discern who it actually was doing what.

I'm now going to take a brief diversion to my own playing days. I used to play for a club with an interesting makeup. Our forward pack was lethal, our back line was a liability with the ball(I was in the backs obviously). In my last season for this club we started the season with a couple of losses and then found our pattern. We beat every team from our third match threw to finals time, but never by more than 10-15 points. The team that beat us on week one went on to crush many of the other teams we played - breaking 100 points on three occasions. Happily enough we met them in the semi finals and beat them. By 12 points.

The moral of the story I guess is that a win is a win is a win is a win. Especially at the business end of the season. We are now at the business end of the season and it's time to stop seeking perfection and starting being happy with wins! Sure, we would love to see the All blacks blitz every team they play by 100 points, and we know that excluding South Africa, Australia, Argentina and perhaps France they are quite capable of doing so.

But ultimately if we drop every second pass in the world cup final but manage to win 3-0 with a miscued dropgoal in the ninth period of extra time - that's enough for me. I don't demand perfection of the All Blacks. I just want our cup to come home.

Tom Scott is a die hard supporter of the All Blacks and he looks forward to seeing New Zealand be the first team to retain a world cup in 2011.

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