Rugby World Cup 2011: Weekly recaps - Part 1
Rugby World Cup 2011 was kicked off on September 9 in Eden Park Auckland, where the hosts All Blacks took on associated nation Tonga, in the opening match. There were few question marks, speculations and assumptions regarding the successful holding of world
showpiece as New Zealand faced a number of issues before the start. Ticket selling and adjusting the huge number of foreigners from across the globe after the devastating tremor in Christchurch, were the major problems faced by the host nation. However, they
managed the gloomy situation in a decent manner.
In the very first match of the seventh RWC, All Blacks tamed their meagre rivals by a handsome margin of 41-10. New Zealand scored five tries in the inaugurating clash and gave a strong and threatening message to the other major competing teams. Israel Dagg
was the man who created first breakthrough for his side just in the 11th minute of the match. Later on, Richard Kauhi added a couple of five pointers to his teams total and Jerome Kaino and Ma’a Nonu also joined the party in the dying moments of
the match.
Dan Carter, who later on got himself out of the Rugby World Cup due to groin injury, was impressive with his boots and kicked three conversion and four penalty goals for his team. Collectively, he scored 18 individual points for his team and played a vital
role to seal the first victory in global show. Sonny Bill Williams was featured in the starting lines by the selectors and later on in the event he was given a bench role in the knock out stages.
On the other hand, Tonga did a very little in reply and managed to score just 10 points in the last minutes when defeat had become inevitable for them. Despite an impressive victory against Tonga, All Blacks coach Graham Henry was not convinced with the
performance of his side and asked them to put a greater effort in the forthcoming matches.
The second match of the championship was played between Romania and Scotland in Invercargill, on September 10. Scottish side overpowered the rusty Romanians by 34-24 after a good interesting battle. Scotland made the major difference in terms of tries as
they collected four in the match and Romania could score only two. The rest of the facts were quite similar for the both sides. Simon Danielli and Chris Paterson of Scotland were the leading scorers of the match with two tries and four penalty goals respectively.
Dan Dumbrava and Ionut Dimofte helped Romania with two penalty goals. However, the contest revealed the loop holes in Scotland's gameplan as they delivered a wishy-washy performance in their first game of the showpiece.
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