The team has made a lot of progress since coming together in New Zealand (in a 2005 test series). It's now a matter of building on those improvements so we can consistently beat the nations that we come up against and enable us to qualify for the World Cup.

I was happy with the team's development, but I believe we also let ourselves down in a few areas that could have paid good dividends if we executed properly. The most encouraging thing to come out of the performance was how competitive we were with such a limited preparation.

I have seen that Man moves over with each new generation into a bigger body, more awful, more reverent and more free than he has had before.

Although we're making progress, we've clearly got more work ahead of us to improve baggage performance for our customers. We are committed to moving into the top-tier of this category in 2006.

The truth is this: The march of Providence is so slow and our desires so impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our means of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing wave and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.

Progress is not alone a matter of technology.