NZ: Game 2 - England versus Georgia

Sunday night, the last night of our Dunedin adventure, we went to our final game: England versus Georgia. While the conclusion may have been preordained (England was the heavy favorite), it was a fun game none-the-less. It was only four of us tonight - Ian, Meg, Ali and I. We headed down toward the stadium and stopped on the way for a pint before heading on. It was rather confusing trying to figure out what fans were what, as each teams colors were red and white, with both teams sporting almost identical flags (both utilizing the St. George cross). But, as the previous game, it broke down to English fans and anyone playing England. We were definitely in the later category!

It was really fun to watch the English warm up this time, as our really good seats gave us a great view of the action. It turned out to be a much more entertaining game than we expected. Georgia played very aggressively the first half, keeping ball possession for over 80% of the time. England was able to capitalize on mistakes, but beyond that they just played defense. At half it was 10-0 England. The Georgians starting of strong in the second half scoring a try and closing to within 3 points, but slowing began running out of gas. The English began to punish the small lapses and mistakes and the score slowly crept upwards. By the end it was 41-10 with most of the points in the last 10 minutes. The Georgians did well, keeping possession and punishing the English with strong running, but unfortunately I don't think they had a strong game plan beyond the 3rd phase of play as it devolved into straight up running into contact (which probably contributed to their tiredness). The man of the match was the Georgian 8, which was well deserved.

One of the highlights of this game was watching Johnny Wilkinson practice kicking during half time. He didn't start, so while the rest of the team were probably getting a stern lecture from Martin Johnson, Wilkinson was out on the field practicing kicks. It was amazing to see this guy kick! He had two teammates fielding kicks with him. They would throw him a ball, and then run to a random point on the field up to 50 m away. Wilkinson would drop kick to them, and the catcher would have to take no more than 2 steps to catch the ball. It was unbelievable how accurate he was! Despite my overall feelings for England (meh), Johnny will be one of the all time greats of the game.