Bevan Rapson at the Rugby World Cup: French and Welsh prove true contenders

Action from the Ireland v Wales game. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Any lingering Southern Hemisphere smugness must have finally evaporated on Saturday night, when Wales and France won with performances even a one-eyed New Zealander had to love.

Nobody who saw these victories will ever again accept the notion that rugby up-over is a tedious knuckle-draggers' scrumfest.

Certainly, the Welsh haven't always lived up to their own heroic mythology but the side that dispatched Ireland was Wales reborn. While I don't have any known Welsh blood, like Bevans everywhere I relished the rugby masterclass Gatland's men provided.

Expect the Celtic bloodlines that painted Auckland green in recent weeks to flower into scarlet next Saturday night. Quicker than you can say "Shane Howarth", thousands of locals will be producing convincing stories of Welsh ancestry. For a night, the Eden Park stands will all be leeky buildings.

Happily, the French fans will also descend again, and deservedly so. No matter how often we repeated the mantra about their team's unpredictability, the transformation from divided rabble to scintillating rugby machine was still gobsmacking.

Was everything that went before just an act? They were like the poolhall shark who fumbles his way through a series of comical defeats, until the big-money game when his devastating expertise is revealed.

Forget the supposed disparity between hemispheres. The French and Welsh teams that turned up on Saturday are real contenders.

Ireland depart having also proved they can topple a southern power, though Martin Johnson's quest to mould England in the image of his 2003 cup winners proved fatally unambitious. The world has moved on.

The England players were enthusiastic socialisers, which might not have helped, but let's hope their supporters continue to fly the flag in pubs across the land.

For rugby tragics like me, it's great having fans from the United Kingdom around. They're good company, steeped in rugby tradition yet usually able to keep things in perspective.

We take the game more seriously here, and haven't got that to ourselves. Looking into the eyes of Springbok supporters I spoke to in the stands at North Harbour, I saw a familiar intensity. They're as mad for it as we are.

All the visiting teams' supporters have been good value. I've enjoyed encounters with South Africans, Poms, marauding Irish and Scots, a mild-mannered Romanian father and son, an elderly Japan fan, drum-beating Argentines and shrieking gaggles of Samoan teenagers.

I also thought I'd bagged a Fijian on the Devonport ferry but she turned out to be a lady from Papua New Guinea, here for a teachers' course. She knew nothing about rugby, so I spared her my latest theories on front-row alignment and midfield distribution. We still had a nice chat.