Chris Rattue looks at the best and worst from the weekend’s Rugby World Cup action.
WINNER/LOSER: The Rugby World Cup
You have to be there to really enjoy the Rugby World Cup.
But for a TV viewer, the concept is on life support.
Rugby World Cup 2023: Winners and losers from the weekend’s Rugby World Cup - Chris Rattue
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The magnificent crowds look and sound fantastic in France, helped by the likes of a reported 15,000 travelling Ireland fans.
Chile’s supporters, for example, were a sight and sound to behold as their team gave Samoa an early scare in Bordeaux.
The TV commentaries of many voices and nationalities are free of the claustrophobic New Zealand slant that deadens the sport during normal transmission. Karl Te Nana actually sounds quite good, when sprinkled in with other overseas match callers.
It can sound like a World Cup, but it isn’t one.
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Pundits have desperately scrambled around trying to find something to learn from New Zealand’s crushing win over Namibia.
The answer: there is nothing significant to learn from a game like that.
New halfback Cam Roigard is getting accolades, but you’d be mad to draw any conclusions about him as a top test prospect from a such a lopsided contest.
Fiji are the only “outsiders” to offer any hope.
But the familiar World Cup pattern is that a darling or two emerges each tournament, only to fall back at some point over the years.
Case in point: Manu Samoa, the rising stars of the 1990s whose first-half ball handling was distressingly bad before they thumped Chile.
Tonga were outclassed by an Irish side that is hard-nosed and brilliantly organised, but the current world number one team is hardly brimming with superstars who will be remembered in glowing terms in decades to come.
In an ideal rugby world, Tonga should have a decent chance of beating Ireland.
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The commentators try hard to give the tournament the necessary flavour, but even then, the analysis is saccharine and lacking in even a bit of serious critiquing, a la the Fifa equivalent, because we’re still in rugby festival mode.
Rugby’s looming World League, which begins a year before the next World Cup, will help the rich get richer and make the World Cup even more of a marketing exercise than a genuinely exciting tournament in the pool stages.
As for this tournament, the big games arrive in the quarter-finals, but we’ve known that for about 30 years.
And from 2026, we’ll effectively get two more seasons of major World Cup games in every four-year cycle thanks to the World League.
Ironically, years and years and years of World Cup “failure” by the All Blacks is what drove the interest in this country. Agony was a kind of ecstasy.
Oh, the memories.
With the new elitist test competition looming, we may be saying goodbye to the Rugby World Cup as we know it.
LOSER: Ethan de Groot
A rising star of the All Blacks front row is having a World Cup shocker, through scrum issues and a red card. He’s young enough to reset his career though.
WINNER: The RWC flow
By rugby’s often problematic standards, the World Cup officials are doing a pretty good job of keeping the games flowing, considering all the things they have to deal with.
WINNER: Johnny Sexton
Much was made of Sexton breaking the Irish points scoring record, but he also breaks modern trends of sports communication.
Great rugby teams generally need a great No 10. They also need incredible drive.
Sexton’s dominant personality and obsessive dedication has been central to Ireland’s unlikely rise to the top.
His at-times critical way of dealing with teammates isn’t universally popular, apparently. But when it comes to winning at test level, Johnny Sexton is the real deal.
WINNER: Charles Piutau/Vaea Fifita
Piutau was a groundbreaker of sorts, quitting All Blacks eligibility at a young age to make a fortune overseas, then finding his way back to test rugby through the new rules.
And there were Piutau moments in Tonga’s game against Ireland when his sharp stepping was a reminder of what a good prospect the All Blacks lost, although his overall game wasn’t that impressive.
But the All Blacks really missed a trick with another Tongan recruit, big loose forward Vaea Fifita.
Fifita was stuffed about, via the Hurricanes’ stupid dalliance in trying to convert him to a lock.
It’s the sort of confusion and fate that could befall current All Black Tupou Vaa’i.
Lock and loose forward are very different positions, and young players need to specialise in one or the other.
WINNER/LOSER: The Warriors/public transport.
This is supposed to be a rugby column, but...
A fast start and magnificent last half hour or so saw the Warriors squash the Knights to keep their NRL title hopes alive on Saturday night.
Mt Smart Stadium has been an unforgettable venue this year. There is a vibrancy and humour going on that you don’t often see in Kiwi sport.
The tribute to Shaun Johnson, who walked around the stands as the Newcastle game was winding down, was as heartfelt as it was unusual.
The star halfback knows to work a room.
Johnson waved and egged the crowd on, and this crowd was a pushover.
His career has undergone an incredible transformation. Johnson always had a big following in the base, but also (hand up here) a lot of critics.
There was a time when he would have thought twice about doing a lap of honour.
But he’s the King of (a packed) Mt Smart now, and he gets to know it.
Unlike certain other sports, the league crowd doesn’t mind letting its hair down, or wearing its heart on the sleeve.
When you see a player like the brave heart Tohu Harris covered in bandages and fighting for every last centimetre in tackles it’s easy to see why these Warriors are really connecting with the public.
If only our public transport system could do the same.
We gave up on it after a couple of NRL rounds this year, because it took so long to get home via an unco-ordinated service.
And that’s not all.
Without a word of a lie, a transport marshal demanded I lower my umbrella in the pouring rain after one game, for fear of touching live wires above the platform. Seriously.
One more brush with game day public transport failed to offer renewed hope.
Naively, I turned up at Britomart on Saturday - that’s the main, central train station in the country’s biggest city - to find it was closed. CLOSED.
It’s almost funny.
