I awoke to quite a dull day yesterday and slept in a little longer than my usual getting up time. The highlight of yesterday was the women’s rugby semifinal between Canada and New Zealand and I was not to be disappointed. Six-time world champions New Zealand were undefeated in the Women’s Rugby World Cup for 11 years – a winning streak that spanned 4,063 days. None of the match day 23 in Bristol on Friday had lost a World Cup game. They had not lost a knockout game in the competition since 1991. They had only lost twice in 42 World Cup games.Their record now reads: Played 43, lost three. Canada, who had to set up a \u00a3530,000 (C$1m) fundraising drive – titled Mission: Win Rugby World Cup – to help them reach the tournament, delivered an incredible semi-final performance in Bristol to end New Zealand’s bid for a third straight title. A sensational first-half performance, including three tries in the opening 25 minutes, saw the number two ranked side in the world gain control of the game right from the opening whistle. When lock Sophie de Goede knocked over a conversion for her own try after striding clear, the half-time scoreline read 24-7. It is true that New Zealand looked to be the classier side and some of their rugby was superb as always. But the Canadian team seemed to have strength in depth and took every opportunity that presented itself, with some incredible running angles to score their tries. Their line-outs were superb and I think they only lost one towards the end of the game when the game was already lost and won. Their sheer speed forced the New Zealand players into uncharacteristic handling errors and this was one of the major differences between the two sides. In particular, when the Canadians entered a maul after a throw in near the try line, it was pretty evident that they would eventually score. By the end of the first half, the Canadians were three tries to one up and they added another try early in the second half. It was obvious to seasoned observers of the game that the Black Ferns would stage a comeback in the second half which indeed they did and the Canadians, anticipating this, defended staunchly. But the lead built up in the first half was too big a total to overhaul and hence the Canadians ran out as winners. They will be formidable opponents when they meet either England or France in a week’s time and may well emerge as eventual overall champions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As well as all of the Donald Trump generated news emanating from the UA, one of the latest snippets is that the Trump effort to sue the New York Times for $15bn has been thrown out by a judge. US District Judge Steven Merryday described Mr Trump’s complaint as a ‘decidedly improper’ attempt to attack an adversary. A complaint, he said, should ‘fairly, precisely, directly, soberly, and economically inform the defendants\u2026 of the nature and content of the claims A complaint is not a public forum for vituperation and invective – not a protected platform to rage against an adversary’ the judge added. He has given Mr Trump 28 days to submit an amended complaint of no more than 40 pages. Of course, people of immense wealth like Trump will often go to law to silence their opponents but in this case, he has met his match. There are other disturbing stories emanating from the USA that the administration wants to effectively ban any news networks that opposes Trump by removing their licenses. One cannot imagine a greater attack on free speech than this and even some Republicans are appalled by the latest developments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The morning turned out to be a very interesting one. I started to walk down the hill ready to meet my usual Saturday friends but my Italian friend was out in her garden doing some tidying up. So we had a long chat for about 20 minutes which was a bit delightful but my knees were playing up a bit by this stage with standing (and not moving) and I doubted whether I could get down and see my other friends in time. So I turned back in order to collect the car so that I could collect my newspaper and have a ‘free’ coffee in Waitrose. Then I got a call from one of my nieces up in Yorkshire who was driving up the A1(M) to see one or both of her children who are working in the Newcastle area. So this was a wonderfully welcome conversation and we always have long and deep conversations with each other, giving each mutual advice when we can. Then when I returned home and surveyed some of the roses still growing in our front garden So I thought I would pick some yellow roses to give to my friend as a birthday treat when I see her tomorrow. On the spur of the moment, I knocked on my neighbour’s door to see if I could ask her permission to pick some of the roses in her front garden to complement my own. This permission she readily gave and then we popped into her lounge for a few minutes chat. Her husband was actually in hospital for a scheduled operation on his knee but was going to be discharged within a day or so. I said I would pop around to have a chat with my neighbour’s husband as he was bond to be a little immobile for a day or so until his new knee (if that is what he has been given) has a chance to settle down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So England beat France, as many had predicted by 35:17 but this was one of the most unconvincing wins of all time and if the French mad made one or two slightly more sensible decisions in how they passed the ball, they could have scored at least a couple more tries in the first half. But at half time, England had a narrow lead pf only 2 points but gradually overhauled France who just faded in the second half. In terms of sheer rugby, the French sometimes played the more attractive rugby but English strength in the rolling mauls told on at least a couple of occasions, The English Meg Jones won a stunning try where she ran a beautiful diagonal lone to beat the French defence. But on this showing, I would hardly give England any chance against Canada next weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I awoke to quite a dull day yesterday and slept in a little longer than my usual getting up time. The highlight of yesterday was the women’s rugby semifinal between Canada and New Zealand and I was not to be disappointed. Six-time world champions New Zealand were undefeated in the Women’s Rugby World Cup […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7691,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7690\/revisions\/7691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mch-net.info\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}