Diary: Steven Hoiles on Australia vs Wales

What a week it’s been.
We had just finished our captains run on Friday (teams last session of the week) & all was looking great.The session was complete and Steve Larkham was doing some kick off practise when he miss hit a drop kick and his knee locked on him. The look on his face was that of a shattered man.
He was taken back to the hotel to shower and head to the Hospital for scans. In the mean time in the shower his knee unlocked and he was doing sprints up and down the corridor of our hotel, to convince himself and anyone who would listen that he was ok.

After scans revealed not too much damage, the medical staff decided it was to big a risk to play him.Enter Berrick Barnes, only 14hours before he was out with the dirty dirtys (The non 22 members of the team).They all have a night out together sometime before the game. Luckily Berrick didn’t have a huge night and was ready for his 1st run on test.

Everyone in our squad had complete faith in him. He did extremely well last week and although the Welsh test would be a much tougher assignment, we all knew this young bloke had what it takes.In front of 80,000 fans he took control of the game and was a stand out player for us.

It was a great win in what was our biggest pool match of the world cup. 32 to 20 didn’t seem a fair reflection of the dominance we had over the Welsh.They scored two 2nd half tries, 1 while we had 2 men in the sin bin.Dan Vickerman got his 50th cap tonight, which is a special achievement and was the main attraction in the Dressing room, until Prince William walked in & congratulated us on the win and took some photos with the players and staff, which was very nice of him.

We are heading straight back to Montpellier after the game & have 2 days off all training.The boys will head out tonight for a few beers, and while some may ask what can this do in terms of winning the RWC, all I can say to that is that it helps “A little thing known as Morale”(quote from the great David Brent).Some of the guys are heading to Barcelona & St Tropez while others are catching up with family and friends during our days off.

Poor Steve larkham is heading to the Surgeons table to have a clean out on his knee, anything else they might find in his poor excuse for a lower body. He will hopefully miss only 2 weeks. Maybe 3 but we can only hope for a Yana Pittman style recovery, as he is vital to our campaign.Next entry will have all the pics from our days off & hopefully some good stories to match.