England Storm into Rugby World Cup Final with Win over World No. 1 Side

England 19-7 New Zealand

England dominated the mighty All Blacks to qualify for the Rugby World Cup final, in Japan today.

They played New Zealand at their own game, with a highly mobile pack who tossed the ball around between them. Lock Itoje and flankers Underhill and Curry were exceptional, but all over the park England players defended robustly and created breakthroughs.

Sam Underhill ball carrying and punishing tackling

Manu Tuilagi opened the scoring, with a try, only one minute and forty seconds after the kick off. It was the result of a fast build up and the ball moving quickly through the hands from one side of the pitch to the other. When New Zealand halted the England movement, five metres short of their line, England quickly recycled the ball and Tuilagi bulldozed through their defenders to finish a spectacular opening phase.

Manu Tuilagi opens the England account.

England managed to cross the New Zealand line twice more, once either side of half time, but both times the TMO was called upon and he disallowed both tries.

Aside from a single glaring error, when England completely messed up their own line out, on their own 5 metre line, resulting in New Zealand's only score of the match, England ruled all over the pitch.

Once again, as in the case against Australia last week, England's defence was more than impressive. But as was required against the All Blacks, England defended very high up the field and all over the ground, winning the ball at breakdowns and quickly putting an end to all New Zealand attacks.

Owen Farrell picked up an early injury. He stayed on the field, but handed spot kicking duties over to George Ford, who was up to the task. Ford converted four penalties, which proved to be the final difference in the scoreline. But this was no boring England kicking game and if the number of tries did not reflect the difference in the performance of the teams, the final scoreline nearly did.

England celebrate beating New Zealand for the first time since 2012

England have put in two superb performances in the last two weekends, against two of the southern hemisphere juggernauts. They are peaking at the right time and it really doesn't matter who they meet from the second semi-final, they will more than have their work cut out to stop England going all the way and carrying home the Webb Ellis Cup.

The Webb Ellis Cup. It's coming home, oops wrong code. England look to be carrying it home.

Unbelievable Finishes at Lord's and Wimbledon

What a day in sport!

Both the Cricket World Cup final and the Wimbledon Men's final going right down to the wire, at the same time, in different suburbs of London.

Congratulations to England and Novak Djokovic on your wins.

Commiserations to New Zealand and Roger Federer, who fought so hard and came so close.

In case anyone missed all of the action in London yesterday, here's a write up that describes some of the nail biting exploits, both at Lords and Wimbledon.

England win Cricket World Cup: A golden hour ends in a champagne super over 

You have to feel for the Kiwis, missing out on the Cricket World Cup. I believe under the old rules they would have won in normal time, as they lost fewer wickets in scoring their 241 runs than England did. They also would have won if the two runs that Ben Stokes scored in the final over had not turned into six when the return ball amazingly hit his bat as he was reaching for the crease and deflected to the boundary for the most incredible six ever scored in a World Cup final, if not any game of cricket, anywhere.

The ball bounces off Ben Stokes’s bat as he dives to make a second run during the Cricket World Cup final at Lord’s

Australia Lose the Fourth Ashes Test

From a promising position on day four of the fourth Ashes test at Chester le Street, Durham, Australia’s batting disintegrated and succumbed to another defeat to England. This result gives England the series, having already retained the Ashes with the draw at Old Trafford, and Australia with only pride to play for at the Oval next week.

The fourth test swung both ways, with England and Australia taking the advantage at different times, much like most of the series so far. Australia established a first innings lead of 32 in a low scoring match. But it should have been more. Opener Chris Rogers picked up his maiden test century with some dogged determination and batting. Shane Watson scored 68 coming in at number six. But very few others made much contribution to the total, with three of the top five not making double figures.

Shane Watson and Chris Rogers, Australia's highest scorers

Australia’s attack once again performed better than their batsmen and dismissed England for 330 in the second innings giving Australia an achievable target of 299 and the best part of two whole days to get them. England’s total was mainly the result of another superb century from Ian Bell and some handy runs from Tim Bresnan, once again coming in as the night watchmen, and Graham Swann’s unbeaten 30 boosting the tail.

The second innings for Australia started really well with an opening partnership of 109. But things quickly fell away from there. Khawaja and Clarke both made only 21 and Stuart Broad broke the hearts of the Australian batsmen with two sensational balls to dismiss Clarke and the dangerous wicket keeper Haddin. From there the writing was on the wall. Peter Siddle contributed a gutsy 23 but he was never going to make the required 118 remaining runs with Australia’s weakened tail.

Autumn/Spring Internationals

The tour by the Southern Hemisphere Rugby sides of the cooler Northern climes continued this week. England started disappointingly against Samoa, after their world beating performance against Australia last week. The first half was try less, finishing 6-3 in England's favor. Although it must be said that England turned down numerous kickable penalties in favor of going for the 5 points. The second half convinced me I had underestimated Samoa's contribution to that low scoring half, when they scored the first try of the game in the first minute of the second half. It is almost a cliché to talk about the tackling of the Samoans and the TV commentators often do. But they do tackle hard and tackle often. For a small country with a small population they are relative giants in the Rugby world. They first came to notice in the 1991 World Cup when they beat Wales. At that stage they were known as Western Samoa and the English joked that Wales were beaten by half a country. But they have remained prominent in world Rugby, even through some lean times. Most of their players play in the Northern Hemisphere, or New Zealand. They have suffered because of that, with some of their clubs not releasing players to play for their country.

But there was no disgrace in this game, in many ways they gave England a harder test than Australia. After the try against them England did start to show some of the flair of the previous week. They hit back with two tries from Matt Banahan and Tom Croft and there was some Harlem Globetrotter style ball handling between those tries from England. Toby Flood's boot was safe, kicking four penalties and two conversions in total. Not to be outdone Samoa scored the final try of the match after sustained pressure on England's line to finish with the credible score line of 26-13. England will have to step up a gear when they face current world champions South Africa next week, even though they looked a shadow of themselves in their defeat by Scotland.

Now, I must level a few complaints about England Rugby and the Twickenham crowd. The first is a simple thing, I was not happy to see England turn out against Australia in that weird grey kit. It is traditional in Rugby for the home side to change colours, if there is a clash, but since when did white clash with gold and green? Never, in any of their previous encounters, that I am aware of. No, this is a lead taken from English Football in an effort to sell more replica kits. I don't like to see these traditions forsaken for commercialism.

Talking of Rugby traditions, the Twickenham crowd have now decided to forsake the tradition of honouring the Hakka and what ever the Samoan equivalent is called. They chose to drown out both traditional displays by the opposition in recent weeks. Now I know the Hakka is a challenge and everyone has to decide how to respond to that. But I believe it should be faced in silence and if you then choose to respond with a battle cry of your own that is all well and good. The Hakka and its Samoan equivalent, add to the colour and spectacle of International Rugby. But I can see them being phased out if the crowd decide to disrespect them and drown them out.

The Scotland victory over the Springboks was the shock of the week, after their awful performance against the All Blacks. I honestly thought Scotland could put a side out against no opposition and still lose. But they fought hard and secured the win off the boot of Dan Parks, who scored 6 penalties and a drop goal. South Africa scored the only try of the match from Willem Alberts and Morne Steyn kicked four penalties. The final score, 21 - 17 to Scotland.

Australia like South Africa also looked a weary side in their 32-14 victory over Italy. The score line actually looks flattering to the Wallabies as it was much closer throughout the game. It's been a long season for the Tri-nations sides, but that is no excuse for professional full time athletes. And New Zealand are showing no signs tiring with their emphatic win over Ireland. Australia's recent kicking problems seem to have been resolved with Berwick Barnes kicking 6 penalties and 2 conversions and missing only one, very long range, attempt. Unfortunately I still can not see a place for Barnes in the full strength run on side when Quade Cooper and Matt Giteau play to their full abilities.

The All Blacks remain the side to beat, dominating Ireland 38-18. Wales maintained their run of very ordinary form drawing 16-16 with Fiji. I have yet to see those two games so I reserve comment.

More fun with the tour games next week.