(Had to look it up myself, on the International Rugby Board's ranking, Norway are 82 out of 95 national teams as of June 2008. In the qualifying for the 2007 World Cup we were knocked out in the preliminaries by Andorra.
We also tried to qualify for the two preceeding world cups, but got knocked out by Latvia and Luxembourg respectively.)

The idea that Germany is not strong in sports other than football is bizarre.

2006 Winter Olympics: Germany 29 medals, Britain 1
2004 Summer Olympics: Germany 48 medals, Britain 30

Germany have also been recent participants in the world championship finals for a host of team sports that are played by more countries at a serious level than either cricket or rugby. Just off the top of my head, basketball, volleyball, handball and hockey (both ice and field). Field hockey is the only one of those that I think Britain is at all competitive in.

France, Italy, China and Japan all compare favourably with Britain in this respect, though none are as strong across the board as Germany.

Sempronio Carpentiere wrote:


And we're shit at rugby as well (witness Tour of Hell Mk II - now with added roasting!). We reached the 2007 World Cup Final by brutalising teams with weaker packs or known flakiness (Australia and France) but then we came a cropper when South Africa matched up for strength because we had - surprise, surprise - no skill or technique to resort to when the bludgeon failed. As in rugby, so in football, it would seem.

The German rugby 7s team were very well received at the IRB London 7s last year, but the highlight was a hatrick of tries by a chap called Igor on the way to the Russians eliminating the Aussies.

As to the English team, I suspect it would have been the usual quarters, over and out. It's about our actual level in these things, it's just fail to see the delusions of grandeur in ourselves that we mock the fans of teams such as Turkey for having.