Northern Hemisphere hopes depend on Scotland

The Argentina-Ireland game just ended with a surprising result: The Pumas defeat the Irish, 43-20.

Ireland lost their captain, Paul O’Connell, to injury last week, but take nothing away from the Argentina team. They scored early, often and kept Ireland far from the try line.

That leaves Scotland as the only Northern Hemisphere team still alive in the 2015 Rugby World Cup, and they face a tough task today in taking on Australia in just a few minutes.

Whoever ends up in the semi-finals, it is hard to imagine a final without the New Zealand All-Blacks in it. They pounded France on Saturday to the tune of 62-13. Watching the last 20 minutes of that game in a pub back in Oxford made you hope the ref would blow up the game 20 minutes early and put the French out of their misery. By then they wanted no part of the game and had no success at stopping any of the New Zealand players. To have a score like that in the quarter finals seems  an embarrassment for the tournament. You’d like to think that the minnows have been tossed from the tournament and only the evenly matched best are left.

Obviously not. Hard to imagine anyone besting New Zealand.

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