Mourning all.

Well, I woke up and the dream persisted. I'm still in shock. I'm guessing NZ will collapse again as the truth sinks in that this was our worst result in a World Cup so far. What next? Bundled out in the Pools at home in 2011?

I need to watch the game again to try to figure out where it all went wrong. I've read the Kiwi papers online and the excuses fall into 3 categories:

1. Bad refereeing
2. Bad coaching decisions
3. No heart

There were some bad calls yesterday, but had we been playing well they wouldn't have mattered. Did the forward pass make a difference? If it had gone back the try would still probably have been scored, so we can only blame ourselves for the position we were in. In this case the ref could have saved us - should have saved us - but missed it. Should McAlister have been sent off? Probably not, but why were we in a situation where it mattered?

The ABs seem to have based their game plan around avoiding the line-out, presumably because they thought there was a weakness in their own game there, and that superior fitness would eventually tell as the French tired of running the ball back. It was clear that the first premise wasn't true for this game, as what lineouts there were went pretty well, and we saw little sign of the latter either, so the game plan should have been changed. Kick for touch (while we had kickers) and make the French bring the play to us. (This may have also saved Carter and Evans from the injuries they received.) We saw the forwards making good progress when they kept the ball in hand, so they should have done this more often. If the finishing hadn't been so poor we would have had at least one try from this, perhaps more.

Did the resting of players and the rotation policy work? It would seem not. We didn't get any strong opposition in the pools and this can only have been compounded by the these policies which left the players with little hard work in the build up to the tournament and the quarters. We had it easy and fell apart in when it counted, while France and England had it hard but pulled off seeming miracles when they needed to. On the other hand, Aussie didn't rest anyone, had a slightly tougher pool and still lost it so perhaps it comes down to number three, a lack of heart?

Only the players will know the answer to that one. It did appear though that both Aussie and the ABs didn't expect the games they got, and were perhaps mentally unprepared. In the end perhaps it wasn't lack of heart, but lack of mind that cost us.