World Cup Country Profiles - England

World Cup Country Profiles

Over the next few weeks the Dropkicks will be bringing you our take on this year's entrants in the Rugby World Cup.

England:

When we were dishing out the countries to profile, I realised that I had been (or was going) to every country on my list (England, Portugal, Japan and the USA). Excellent, I thought, this will be the perfect chance to impart some of the cultural idiosyncrasies and stereotypes I observed into my posts.

Hence, the English team will be surly, pushy, self-important, they might stab you, and they will drink the world’s worst coffee. Apart from the coffee part that fits the English team to a tee.

Since winning the William Webb Ellis Cup back in ’03 the Rose has had a spectacular reversal in form, which started in 2004 with a couple of drubbings by an angry All Black team.

In 2006 England played three internationals that resulted in 3 losses, one to Argentina. This year hasn’t been much better as England suffered 4 losses including record breaking losses to Ireland and South Africa.

Their winning coach has left and even the return of the oft-injured Cup hero Johnny Wilkinson hasn’t helped. It won’t help that England’s pool contains not one but two of their strongest rugby opponents. No, not the French. South Africa and Samoa.

Samoa physically bashed England in their World Cup match in 1995 and in 2003 came very close to beating the eventual winners. And as I mentioned above South Africa has already humiliated England twice this year.

Of course we have the English to thank for the resurgence of the drop-goal as a method of scoring (and how apt that they won the cup with that particularly poxy tactic). And the irony of the Springboks beating them at their own game must, surely, rankle the English who despise irony.

The English also rank quite highly on the ugliest team rankings. While our boys in black strut the catwalks for Armani and Versace and even our scrummagers pose nude for art, the English team tend to look like the peasants in Monty Python’s Quest for the Holy Grail.

The New Zealanders tend not to like the English much either. We’ve had a few dust ups over the years (see the video) but it doesn’t look like we’ll be meeting the English anytime before the semi-finals.

England will start off easy with the USA on September 8 in Lens before slamming head-first into South Africa on the 14^th in Saint-Denis. This means they will be softened up to face Samoa in Nantes on the 22^nd. English finish the Pool matches with Tonga on the 28^th in Paris.