…there’s never any convenient time for any of them.

Good, morning sports fans! Yes, it’s that time of the decade again, the Men In Black are to meet the Blue Men Group in a Rugby World Cup knock-out game! Isn’t life just fan-farking-tastic? The host and the hot favourite meet at the quarter-final stage . Now, I’d like to apologise on behalf of my beloved national team, we farked up, we shouldn’t have met so early  in the competition. Our bad. What can I say, Remy Martin is so used to pass the ball to Corletto, his Stade Français team mate, that he forgot that  day  Ignacio was playing for the other guys. The fact Ignacio was wearing a different shirt and was running in the opposite direction should have been his first clues but there you go, not the brightest our Remy.  Again, sorry.

I’d also like to apologise for not meeting you in France. Kind of silly on our part. It’s not that we don’t like having you guys at home. Not at all, we particularly enjoy your colourful language, your nice tatoos and those lovely dances you perform on bar tables when you’re mildly inhibriated. Although we’re slightly intrigued by recent breakouts of various exotic diseases spreading among our ovine population, totally unrelated I’m sure but I digress.  No, the reason we’re not meeting back home is we thought we needed the Taffs vote to win the rights to the RWC and it turned out we didn’t. By the time we realised our mistake it was too late and a couple of games were promised to Cardiff. Sorry if you were looking forward to another serving of Merlot and magret de foie gras, it looks like it’s gonna be  Brains beer and boiled leeks instead this weekend. Again, sorry.

So, how do we feel about meeting the All Blacks? Alright actually. We, the fans, are bricking it, of course but it has to be done. Can’t get a lollipop from the doctor without getting stabbed in the ass first (with a syringe if you’re lucky). Well, you can’t win the World Cup without beating the All Blacks at some point, it just wouldn’t be right. Tut tut tut, it just wouldn’t be right! Whether you meet them in the Quarters or the Final doesn’t really matter, you still have to beat them. And beat them we will!

I know, I know, some of you will tell me that the Flying Hogs squadron will inaugurate Hell’s new Ice-rink before this happens but I, for one, believe.  First of all, I believe because I kind of have to. What kind of a fan would I be if I didn’t? A realistic one. Touché.  Second of all, I believe because all the signs are there!

Cardiff is not actually that bad for us, some will call me delusional but hear me out. The alternative was playing in Stade de France, you’d think playing there would lift our spirit, think again. Playing in Toulouse, Marseille, Lens etc… would definitely lift our spirit. The Stade de France simply wouldn’t. Quite the contrary, it would just add pressure.  The French team simply don’t like to play there. The love-hate relationship between les Bleus and  the SDF is long and well documented, the “Bourgeois de Merde” comment from Laporte a couple of years ago was a real crowd pleaser and the SDF crowd is always the first to jeer les Bleus when things don’t go right. Let’s face it, Parisians don’t know squat about Rugby and people who go to the SDF are either keen on prawn sandwiches or simply football fans.

Cardiff is also good for another reason. I’m not superstitious - it brings bad luck - but we have never lost a RWC quarter final abroad! If that’s not a sign I don’t know what is. The only RWC QF that we’ve ever lost was actually in Paris. How’s that for another sign, looks like we dodged a bullet there. Of course, some will probably retort that the All Blacks have never lost a QF, period, but I’ll just go ahead and conveniently ignore that fact. Also the Millenium Stadium has been a happy hunting ground for us of late. We’ve won our last 5 games there, ok it was against Wales but so what? It still counts for something!

As for the old “oh the French can’t travel” cliché, who’s being delusional? We love it. We thrive on it. Nothing suits us better than the ol’ underdog tag . There’s no pressure, everybody give us for dead. That’s probably why we’re the only 6N team that has won test series in SA, NZ and Australia. We love playing abroad. Need I remind you what happened the last time France met the All Blacks in the UK? Again, sorry.

So, am I worried we have to play the All Blacks in Cardiff. Absolutely not. The only thing I’m worried about is that the All Blacks are so massively superior to us in pretty much every compartment of the game. I couldn’t care less about Cardiff! I think the location of the game should be the least of our worries.

Let’s face it, the All Blacks have looked more impressive of late than my beloved Bleus. Our last encounters have resulted in us getting our backside handed to us and finding ourselves under our own sticks muttering “what the fark just happened?!?” more times than you can shake a stick at. However, the last meaningful game between the two only resulted in a 12pts win for the good guys of the South. This involving the All Blacks A team, if there is such a thing, which leads me to believe that we’re not as far behind as people think we are.

Sure the All Blacks are better than us but then they’ve always been better than us, for a whole farking century, that didn’t keep us from beating  them 10 times, including 3 in New Zealand. Of course we have changed a lot, we’ve lost our flair. Our sacrosanct flair. True we lost it but so what? Did Australia use Flair to beat the All Blacks a couple of months ago? Did South-Africa last year? And the year before? Why the hell should we? I’m as sad to have lost our French Flair as the next French supporter but if it makes us win the RWC let’s go for it, tomorrow is another day. French flair will be back, in the meantime let’s try and win this thing.

All we need to do is stay in the game. Easy! With our flair gone we probably can’t score 33 unanswered points in 20 minutes like in the good old days but we have other cards to play this time around. Our defence has improved, our discipline is better. It’s going to be really tough but if we can stay with the All Blacks we’ll have a chance. The longer we stay with them the bigger our confidence will grow. There will be up and downs, periods of massive onslaught, we know what to expect. Let’s just weather the storm and see what happens. Our last 3 games have been do or die affairs and we passed each time with flying colours. Mentally we’re there. Let’s just hope everything else follows.

There is a buzz in France at the moment. Like a feeling we’re on the verge of something big. Maybe we’re delusional, maybe we’re kidding ourselves. Whatever it is, it tells me one thing, we’re up for this.