Phil Lythell
Sport News 24/7Springboks and All Blacks headline Autumn Internationals final weekend
By Phil Lythell, on 27th November 2009, 12:42 UTC
This weekend sees the culmination of the Autumn Internationals as far as the northern hemisphere nations are concerned.
There is a prestige friendly on December 5th when a Barbarians invitational XV takes on New Zealand at Twickenham but for Wales, Ireland, Scotland, France and Italy their last matches before the Six Nations Championship take place this weekend Englands programme ended in defeat against the All Blacks last Saturday.
There are two particularly mouth-watering matches taking place. In Marseille at the Stade Velodrome, France take on New Zealand in a fixture that has always had something about it. Twice France have eliminated the All Blacks from the World Cup yet they have also suffered some massive defeats to them on home soil. France's tour of New Zealand in the summer yielded a victory and a narrow defeat and the home side will be take significant encouragement from that.
At Croke Park in Dublin, the best of both hemispheres clash as Ireland take on South Africa. The reigning Six Nations champions face the Tri-Nations champions in what is something of an unofficial world championship though the Springboks will be keen to point out that it is they that are actually the World Cup holders. Ireland snuck a last minute draw against Australia two weeks ago and know they will have to up their game against South Africa even if the tourists have massively underperformed so far in Europe.
Wales face Australia in Cardiff in another attractive fixture with the Wallabies keen to erase memories of last weekends shock 9-8 defeat at Murrayfield. Their conquerors, Scotland, take on Argentina this weekend while Italy face the power and bulk of Samoa.
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