Another setback in February sparked doubts he would feature at another World Cup, but a commanding performance in his final worldwide on home soil against Australia last month sealed his place in the squad traveling to England.
Advertisement
After seeing South Africa lose to Japan in their tournament opener last weekend, the fan might have felt he had something to offer Heyneke Meyer in the breakdown.
“If this is the year USA will make its mark on the Rugby World Cup, it will require some once-in-a-lifetime play by the Eagles and possibly also some serious blunders by their opponents”, reported the New York Daily News.
“I’m sure they’ll go away with some wonderful sporting memories and a brilliant experience of Leeds”.
After beating South Africa in their group, England labour past Western Samoa to set up a quarter-final meeting with Wales, but find themselves 10-3 down at half time and Welsh fans taunt Will Greenwood with chants of “Rodney Trotter, you’re going to win nothing”.
Bracken thinks it will be close – he predicts a 30-20 win for England – but admits that injuries can often help galvanise a team.
“We’ve managed it by introducing kids’ programmes in 2008 that have produced about two millions kids playing a non-contact version of rugby”. “When we see our brand and the values of the game and passion of the game being promoted through the likes of O2 It’s phenomenal and they are doing an enormous job for us as well as their own brands it’s a win win”. “If England don’t do well I think the tournament will fall a bit flat on its face”. They absolutely hammered us.
“Our highest growth area is high school rugby which is a big deal for us going forward because it enables you to have players staying with you for longer and they’re younger, so that gives you a continual flow of players who can then feed into the national teams”.
“That means there’s huge pressure on the starting XV and the guys who come on, but if they were not good enough to play in pressure games then they wouldn’t be there, so I’m confident they won’t be overawed”. We will eventually, and we do have them at some levels. It’s nothing to do with white collar.
“Rugby union is not an ex-pat sport any more, it’s moving towards the mainstream and there’s more and more people getting involved”.
Advertisement
The research has predicted that when men sit down to watch the England v Wales game on Saturday, they will scrum down an average of three pints of beer, a bag of sharing crisps and a portion of chips, totalling a massive 2,544 calories. “They’re a very proud team and they take a lot of pride in playing for the Eagles”.
