Game 13 - New Zealand v Japan - Waikato Stadium - 16 Sept 2011

I'm blogging this game after the fact, so I won't go into quite as much detail as in earlier postings.
Megan and I were invited to Paul, Mary and Zeb's for dinner and we watched this splendid game there.

There had been a lot of talk about the ABs going into the game half-baked, with McCaw, DC, Keiren Reid and Mils Muliaina all unavailable through injury, but on the other hand Japan were fielding a B team in order to save their energies for games they had more chance of winning. So no real qualms there.

Looking back on the game I'd say we would have done little better had the injured players been able to appear. The All Blacks really came to play and outmuscled the Brave but somewhat scrawny Blossoms. They hit the scoresheet very early indeed when Conrad Smith dotted down after 3 minutes, and they built on this great start to demolish Japan in every department.

Several of the starting All Blacks played brilliantly. Jerome Kaino was impossible for the Japanesse to contain, as more, then more Blossoms had to commit themselves to his bullocking runs. His outstanding work in the loose led to many All Black high-points, and he also grabbed a superb try for himself in the tight. It was a 12 out of 10 performance from him.

Ma'a Nonu was golden, he played one of his best 80 minutes as an All Black. Richard Kahui and Cory Jane totally dominated their wings, but it was the Waikato kid who hit the score sheet twice bagging 2 more tries to join Fijian winger Vereneki Goneva atop the RWC leaderboard with 4 tries for the tournament. Cory never stopped trying , set up plenty for others and defended brilliantly, but he would certainly have wanted to bag a try of his own tonight.

Also top draw were, Andy Ellis, Conrad Smith, Victor Vito, Adam Thomson and Brad Thorn.
No All Black had an absolute shocker, but Colin Slade struggled to find his kicking boots early and was responsible for the ABs worst moment later, so he might not sleep soundly tonight. Everyone else will have done their chances no harm at all.

The real talking point has to be Sonny Bill Williams; with Smith and Nonu appearing so settled and incisive in the centers, the All Black Coaching staff have been struggling to work out what to do with SBW. Tonight they found out how! He was brilliant in his 30 minutes on Cory Jane's wing. He carried with menace, he tackled like a bulldozer, he off loaded, he set up the try of the night (to Ma'a in the 61st minute) and he scored two himself.

The smile on Sonny Bill's face after he scored his first was worth the price of admission alone. This moment produced the biggest cheer of the night (so far), proving most New Zealander's love this freakish talent, not that this will silence his critics for long.

The biggest cheer of the night ended up coming at the 57minute mark, when superbly named Japanese speedster Hirotoki Onozawa latched onto (by this stage) fullback Slade's mispass and raced away for Japan's sole try. This was also only the second intercept in 13 games, quite a low ratio in anyone's book.

New Zealand have been bundled out of a World Cup before by an intercept, how I hate to remember it... Stirling Mortlock's intercept after 8 minutes in the 2003 semi final was a blow the All Blacks were unable to recover from. So my guess is that Japan's moment of glory will result in some hard training yards over the next few weeks for the All Blacks.

Bad memories aside it was an evening of festival rugby, that will have left a smile on every dial. But I do have one final quibble. When Andrew Hore replaced Kevin Mealamu as both hooker and skipper, he became the first convicted Seal Killer to captain the All Blacks. Call me old fashioned but I consider this a new low in our rugby history.

Final Score New Zealand 83- Japan 7

13 games 69 tries.

Tweet of the match- "Both teams have well-documented weaknesses for killing water mammals." @dritchie