Can you stand the tension! We are now down to the final match. I have bet on with an English friend of mine. At first I thought the All-blacks had a chance but then they got whooped by the Wallabies, so okay -- I still have to barrack for the Wallabies in favor of the British team -- I am an Aussie by marriage, after all.

Here's a taste from the Sydney Morning Herald -


It's not just the chariot that's swinging ... English rugby fans have been whipped into action in an email campaign to force a major swing in our online poll.

The poll asked readers to describe the English team's performance against France in Sunday night's soggy semi final.

Last night it was clear the vast majority of the 3000 votes cast reckoned the playing style of the English kicking machine was "dull, dull, dull", with only a handful describing it as "scintillating".

But over night - with England 11 hours behind Australia - that all changed and a bit of electronic rucking and mauling got underway to get the ball out of the boring bin.

Expat Aussie Angus Dobie told smh.com.au that an e-mail chain had started in London, urging all English rugby fans to vote "scintillating" - and it scored a Wilkinson-style conversion in the poll.

By early this morning it had swung high - with more than 40,000 voting "scintillating" and "dull, dull, dull" rating less than 10 per cent.

Web developer Jonathan Hedley - who checked the poll logs for smh.com.au, said: "A lot of attempts were made to stuff the vote but they were rejected. There are several layers of protection to the polls and this appears to be another email link campaign."

The same kind of thing happened with the Hanan Ashrawi poll last month. A campaign to skew the result turned a large yes (she does deserve the prize) to a final no (she doesn't) by the time the poll closed.

Richard Woolveridge

Go the Wallabies!  ¶ 5:30 PM