KEY POINTS:
Far from being unhappy at missing out on a few souvenir jerseys as has been reported on one website, the Portuguese manager told this column the team were still buzzing after their post-match experiences with the All Blacks.
Rafael Lucas Pereira said nearly all the players got an
All Blacks jersey which "they will keep forever because it is a huge honour".
But more important to the players, said Pereira, was the time they spent with the All Blacks in the sheds after the match. The reserves had an impromptu game of football against each other on Olympique Lyon's Stade Gerland, which the Portuguese unsurprisingly won 3-1.
"Then the All Blacks came to our dressing room and we drank beer," said Pereira, whose side had lost 108-13 but were far from disgraced. "The boys really appreciated that."
As for the All Blacks and jersey swapping, a team spokesman said there was no set policy. Debutants get two jerseys so they can swap one and keep the other. At other times, it is purely a personal choice. Greg Somerville chose to keep his starting jersey as for him, it represented the end of a long rehabilitation.
Apparently the demand for All Blacks kit, and not just playing jerseys, has been huge so at times "sorry" has been the hardest word.
Porirua move
Rodney So'oialo, along with Leon MacDonald and Nick Evans, fronted an adidas Impossible Is Nothing promo last week. His picture story was a nice demonstration that the little things can make an ordinary player extraordinary.
After his family emigrated from Samoa, So'oialo's father worked early shifts. Every morning, he'd wake Rodney and brother Stephen at 5am to go running. "Me and my brother were the only Island boys running around Porirua at that time," So'oialo said.
It is where So'oialo believed he got his self-discipline. The story was only slightly tarnished by the compere saying: "So this is your brother and yourself running around the streets in Samoa then."
Forget about New Zealand raping the islands of rugby talent, Samoa has stolen Porirua!
Irish spirit alive
Anybody who has taken the train from Telstra Stadium after a Bledisloe Cup test knows it can be dispiriting. Beer, bravado and way too much testosterone sees stupid sledging, the odd punch and vomit.
On the train back from Stade de France yesterday the Irish had every reason to be depressed.
However it took just one Irishman to start crooning "I met my love by the gas works wall" before the entire green-clad part of carriage launched into a faultless rendition of The Pogues Dirty Old Town. The Irish loved it, as did the French and at least one Kiwi journalist. Beats watching beer-fuelled boofheads.