Super Bowl: your verdict

The New England Patriots beat the St Louis Rams to cause one of the biggest shocks in Super Bowl history.

Did the Patriots deserve their win?

New England won Super Bowl XXXVI with the last kick of the game to upset St Louis in New Orleans.

Touchdowns from Ty Law and David Patten helped the Patriots to a 17-3 lead going into the final period.

The NFL's Most Valuable Player Kurt Warner was the inspiration as the Rams then fought back to level the match.

However, kicker Adam Vinatieri was the Patriot's hero, stepping up to convert a 48-yard field goal as the clock ran down.

Send us your verdict on a thrilling encounter.

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The Patriots deserved to win the game, the same way they deserved to win all 11 of their regular season games. At the end of the day, the Pats were underdogs and they came up with the win.
Mark Tummon, Liverpool - Hopkinton

We seem on the verge of living in a new sports world, with our heads a little higher

Dan S, USA

1,250,000 fans showed up in Boston to enjoy this moment with the team at their parade. Not bad for a city with fewer than 1m residents. Mothers and fathers pulled their children out of school, which was just as well because their teachers had called in sick anyway, in order to attend the game. Young men, bare-chested in 15-degree weather, climbed trees. We are beside ourselves.

We are living a dream and you would have had to grow up here to understand the situation. We as a region have always played second fiddle (Save for the Boston Celtics) in the sports world, having not won a non-Celtic Championship since 1918.

When fans around here saw their teams get close in the tight games, they always wondered "what will go wrong". It always had before. Always. But that is no more and we seem on the verge of living in a new sports world, with our heads a little higher. The Patriots are the World Champions of the National Football League, and our lives will never be the same.
Dan S, USA

The team that wants it most is usually the team that wins. For that reason alone, and because they truly played as a team, the Patriots deserved their win.
Kristen, United States

The Patriots totally deserved to pull off this incredible win. The strategy that New England coach Bill Belichick used to frustrate Kurt Warner was pure genius. Sure, we should tip our hats to Tom Brady, but a lot of credit should be given to Belichick for making his defensive backs cover the Rams receivers so brutally well that Warner was forced into stupid throws.
Ross Nelson, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Very few Super Bowls turn out as exciting as this one

Ben, UK

The Super Bowl win was a fitting finale to the New England Patriots' fairy tale season. They did not give in to the prevailing tendency of singling out individual performances, and that is why they deserve to be credited as NFL champions. They played as a team in an inspiring fashion and brought championship glory to starved Boston fans.
Akshat, Boston, USA

Here in Boston, there was no doubt that the Patriots would keep up their good form. It was a sign of their strength, when they chose to be introduced at the Super Bowl as a team, instead of individually. And we always knew, that if it came down to the wire, Adam Vinatieri would be able to make the field goal and win it for us!

That's why almost one million Patriots fans are expected to line the parade route today in Boston. It's 10:00 am and the parade doesn't begin for another hour, but the fans are all outside, braving the cold temperatures, to cheer on the victors. Go, Pats!
Barbara Canary, Boston, USA

What a great game! Very few Super Bowls turn out as exciting as this one, and even though, as a Dolphins fan, the Pats aren't a team I usually wish well, it's good to see the Lombardi trophy staying in the AFC. But does anyone else feel that, well though Brady played, Vinatieri was cheated out of the MVP award?

Granted, Brady did well to drive the Pats downfield in the dying seconds, but Vinatieri had to hold his nerve to make a fairly long kick. After all, it doesn't always end up that way - remember Scott Norwood losing the SB for the Bills in '91? On a more conspiratorial note, how strange it is that this year the NFL championship should be won by a team called the Patriots. Is there something the White House wants to share with us? All the same, well done New England!
Ben, UK

I recently moved to Boston so am not really a diehard Patriots fan, but I have to say that this was the best Super Bowl game, bar none, that I have ever seen. The Patriots are a team, played like a team and won as a team. This is a great town to be in right now!
Paul Harman, USA (Boston)

It's the second greatest upset in Super Bowl History after the Jets upset the Colts in SB III

Markus Liles, United States

The Patriots thoroughly deserved to win. Their defence outplayed the Rams' offence.
Ian Danby, US (expat Brit)

I admit I have to eat my words from the previous forum where I predicted Rams dominance. Quite a sloppy match, untimely penalties...and a great performance by the Pats' secondary hampered Warner's passing game on the downs where it counted.

The Pats' last drive, and great play from Brady, put them in position for a very exciting field goal that put the game to rest with a flourish. A very poetic finish, but a rather unremarkable game on the whole, but a great finish!
Richard Barnes, Sydney, Australia

Congrats to the New England Patriots, champions of the World, and their MVP quarterback Tom Brady. It's the second greatest upset in Super Bowl History after the Jets upset the Colts in SB III.
Markus Liles, United States

What an amazing result. Few people gave the Patriots much chance of winning but they took their touchdowns well and if the Rams had won it would have been really unfortunate as they played quite badly.

Todd C, USA

A fantastic game but if the Rams had played as well as they could they would have been crowned as Super Bowl winners. Maybe the pressure affected them more than the Patriots

Andy, Liverpool, UK