Good Day
For Welshmen Dan Lydiate, Sam Warburton and Taulupe Faletau who will be setting a new World Cup record as a back-row combination when they appear together for the seventh time on Saturday.
The trio are reunited for the meeting with South Africa after Lydiate was left out of last weekend’s pool match in order to fully recover from a bang to his eye suffered during their meeting with Fiji and are looking for a better result than they achieved first time around when they played together against the Springboks in the opening match of the 2011 World Cup.
They move past the record that was jointly set in the 2003 World Cup final when England’s Richard Hill, Neil Back and Lawrence Dallaglio and Australia’s George Smith, Phil Waugh and David Lyons packed down together.
Warburton will also share in another tournament record when he wins his 11th cap as captain of a team at a World Cup, matching the mark set by Will Carling and subsequently equalled by his English compatriot Martin Johnson, Frenchman Rafael Ibanez and South African John Smit.
Richie McCaw will join them later in the day when he leads New Zealand out against France and the attitude of Kiwi camp followers was demonstrated yesterday as Steve Hansen, the All Blacks head coach, was asked how he felt about these being the last three matches for McCaw and his similarly esteemed team-mate Dan Carter, forcing him to warn against such presumption.
"First of all, we don't know we have got three games, so we don't have to control it for that. All we know is that we have got this one, but the men that they are, they are not even thinking about themselves, they are thinking about the team and that is one of the reasons why the All Blacks have been able to do the things we have done over long periods of time,” he said.
"So, when the times comes that those guys have officially played their last game, because there is no more for them to play, we will deal with it, but in the meantime, they are preparing to play what is a very important Test match and one that they want to play well in. It hasn't even been mentioned and it won't be mentioned.”
Bad Day
For anyone looking to make money by backing the Wallabies, this weekend at least as the bookies also seem to be making a few pro-Antipodean assumptions.
Odds of 10-1 on are pretty close to unheard of at the quarter-final stage of a major team event and seem designed to prevent anyone from picking the favourites in this particular two-horse race.
However for those who believe an upset is on the cards odds of 7-1 are another matter altogether and could make it a rare bad day for the bookies on Sunday if Scotland supporters believe in their team.
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