WE EXPECTED NEW Zealand to win ugly today, and they would have accepted that, but every one of their scores today was pretty magnificent.
By ‘every’, we’re extending the plaudits to the three tries and every Dan Carter penalty, but the pick of the Southbridge man’s 19 points was this superb 40-odd metre drop-goal to open up a seven-point gap at a pivotal point in the game.
That score eased the tension a little after Australia had reduced an 18-point gap to four, but before Ben Smith’s sin-binning, New Zealand looked ready to run away with the game as Sonny Bill Williams threw two excellent offloads in two successive possessions to allow Ma’a Nonu the space to go BeastMode through the gold defence.
That step. We feel for you Kurtley Beale, we really do.
The rest of the highlights are pretty great to watch over and over again too.