England leading the bore stakes

SPORTS BETTING: WORLD Cups, whatever sport they may be, tend to follow a familiar and irritating pattern.

Spread out for weeks at the behest of the television companies, they are tedious in the extreme at the start and, by the time the nitty gritty of the knock-out stages come along, you are bored with the whole thing.

Remember last summer’s soccer World Cup? And what about the cricket version which seemed to last the best part of two months?

Rugby Union has its place in the spotlight at the moment, and so far the tournament has been downright boring.

With the exception of the superb New Zealand All Blacks, the fare has been poor with only Ireland’s shock win against the Aussies of any real interest.

Chief culprits are England, a team which plays in the mirror image of their combative coach, Martin Johnson.

The team which Johnson captained to win the 2003 competition was an attritional outfit which relied on brute force to pressurise the opposition into errors and so give Jonny Wilkinson the chance to use his trusty boot to great effect.

England have about as much flair as Norris in Coronation Street and, ironically, have shown so many lapses of discipline that they have been the team conceding penalties this time round.

I think they have zero chance of winning the competition and would not be remotely interested in their current price of 12-1.

The All Blacks will almost certainly justify 3-5 favouritism on home soil and though the draw has been kind to the Northern Hemisphere sides with one of them likely to reach the final, bigger dangers to New Zealand are Australia (7-1) and South Africa (11-1).

Wilkinson, whose errant kicking in the opening shambles against Argentina was blamed on the ball – didn’t we hear something similar in the soccer World Cup last year? – remains 12-1 to be top points scorer in the tournament.

That’s a joke price for he is not sure to play in every match and surely one of South African Morne Steyn (7-4), All Black Dan Carter (4-1) or French ace Morgan Parra (5-1) will prevail.

England are 500-1 ON to beat Romania in their next pool match on Saturday and will do so, but I fear that they will bomb out as soon as they meet a side with any endeavour.