Defending champions?!!

Not posted anything about the Rugby Union World Cup so far, because as an England fan who also has a soft spot for the Irish team it has all been far too depressing to think about! Really is hard to believe that just 4 years ago England were the team that the others were scared to play against and ending up winning the tournament. So much has changed since then and we have seen nothing from England that is worthy of the defending champions tag. The win today against Samoa was a bit more promising apart from the 1st 2o mins of the 2nd half when some sloppy mistakes nearly brought Samoa level, but I'm not sure that the likes of the All Blacks / Aussies will be quaking in their boots at the prospect of playing the 'defending champions'! And the less said about Ireland the better. Supposedly after France the Northern hemisphere's best chance of challenging the Southern hemisphere teams for the trophy, but 3 awful games have left them on the verge of going out in the 1st round. It'll take an unlikely beating of Argentina by a margin of at least 7 points with a minimum 4 tries scored to gain a bonus point in the process to keep them in the tournament. At this stage I've got to say the All Blacks are standing head and shoulders above all the rest and it's hard to see past them for the trophy.

Football isn't much to shout about at the moment either. Having been so positive about the 'new look' Liverpool a few weeks ago, they seem to have gone into a slump that has led to 3 pretty unimpressive draws against Portsmouth, Porto and worst of all Birmingham. I'm not one to jump onto managers backs too quickly - I like Benitez and hope he is at Liverpool for a long time to come, but I do wonder sometimes about his rotation policy that has seen Torres (our best striker) left on the bench for 2 of those games. It's all well saying they need to be still able to perform come the end of the season next April / May - but what is the point of that if we are not still in contention to win the league at that point due to dropping too many points earlier on?! Sort it out Reds!