Lodewyk De Jager of South Africa comes in to tackles Jerome Kaino of the New Zealand All Blacks. Photo / Getty Images.
Lodewyk De Jager of South Africa comes in to tackles Jerome Kaino of the New Zealand All Blacks. Photo / Getty Images.
It is always a useful exercise to ask yourself this as a New Zealander: Would you think this was a great World Cup had the All Blacks been knocked out in the quarter-finals?
It's purely hypothetical, but there was enough intrigue and drama in pool play allied to terrific crowd support at venues as far flung as Brighton and Newcastle, to suggest the answer would be a resounding "yes".
Of course there're still a few bores out there who want to compare Rugby World Cups to the incorruptible Fifa World Cups so they can scoff at the scale and presumably make themselves feel better about their place in the world; and just as foolishly there are rugby fans who like to proclaim the RWC as the third-biggest sporting event in the world (cricket's reach in India alone makes that claim dubious) as if being on an imaginary podium makes any difference to the way we perceive it.
Best just to acknowledge it as the biggest, brightest rugby tournament in the world and leave it at that.
The reason I believe this has been the best on-field RWC is because the of the competitive nature of the pool games. The majority of the matches remain fait accompli but there was enough minnow magic to keep fans hooked. Where once the problem with World Cups was sustaining interest in the first month, to these eyes, the problem has now shifted to the second.
With that in mind, let's look at three ways Japan 2019 can be even better than England 2015:
1. The third and fourth-placed teams in each pool and the knocked out quarter-finalists move into a secondary, concurrent tournament that has some form of automatic-qualification carrot to it.
At present we have a feast of 40 matches in the first few weeks and an anaemic eight matches, including the kissing-your-sister bronze-medal match, thereafter. The final few weeks can feel like three long pregnant pauses with ludicrous weight being put on such revelations as team-naming day, when Blind Freddie could usually name 22 of the 23 in any given team.
A plate tournament would mean more logistical and cost challenges but it would also mean a) more rugby for broadcasters and sponsors, b) more meaningful tests for second-tier countries, c) the chance to take games to smaller stadia and locations, and d) a chance to blood the next tier of referees.
It would be easy enough to formulate, though there would have to be matches on short rest (there could be a rule to extend squads for the plate tournament). It would also mean that tour packages to people on the other side of the world would be easier to sell if they were guaranteed rugby - even if it's not exactly the rugby they wanted to see.
2. Start treating the second-tier nations with the dignity they deserve, both at the tournament and in between.
Much has been made of the indefensible draw disparities, apparent judicial anomalies and the lack of tours by big nations to small, but it is time to stop talking about it and actually make meaningful steps towards rectifying it.
Fifa might be a vile organisation that does nothing without the ulterior motive of a powerful few retaining a vise-like grip on the sport, but that naked greed does at least provide the illusion that all countries under its vast umbrella have a meaningful vote (this column does not have the time to explain why that is in fact a farce), and that they all have opportunities to qualify and succeed in major tournaments.
World Rugby creates no such illusion. They haves and the have-nots are clearly defined by the privileged status of Six Nations and Rugby Championship membership. The have-nots are asked to turn up every four years, try their best, be "bravo'ed" from the field and then sent packing back to the wilderness with a couple of crates of sponsored tackle-bags and two-days-per-year access to a resource coach nobody has heard of.
That might be a slight exaggeration, but you know what I mean. The tournament organisers are bragging that this RWC will generate commercial revenues of close to $600 million and a surplus close to $400m. That's 60 per cent more than 2011 and significantly more than France in 2007 - so the game is growing, right?
Well, not really. Rugby's geo-political landscape still makes possible for only one of 10 teams to win the World Cup because they're the only ones exposed to regular top-line competition. Until they rectify that, any claim that World Rugby makes about it being a massive global tournament is a manipulation of convenient metrics.
3. Sort out the rules, including those around the use of the TMO.
Rugby doesn't need to apologise for being the only sport where the interpretation of the official can affect the result of the game, which is why I often cringe at the hanging-judge assessments we make on the likes of Wayne Barnes, Bryce Lawrence and Craig Joubert. Plenty of important football World Cup matches have ended farcically and unsatisfactorily, such as the 1990 Argentina-Germany final, and plenty of cricket tests have been marred by poor and inconsistent umpiring (though far less often now).
The big difference is the average viewer has some comprehension of the rules that were in place, even if they don't agree with the referee or umpire's enforcement of them.
Scrum, maul and breakdown technicalities mean that rugby doesn't have that luxury.
I tried to imagine what the first half of the Springbok-Wales quarter-final would have appeared like to a rugby neophyte and the simple truth is that it would have been baffling and off-putting. The first half of the All Black-South Africa semifinal probably wasn't much better.
You try to explain to a Guatemalan watching rugby for the first time why the team who appears to be dominating and playing all the rugby are penalised nine times in 40 minutes for a range of offences of which maybe one was actual foul play.
It's never going to be simple: the premise of rugby and what makes it so attractive on one level is that it is designed as a contest for possession at every phase - except, bizarrely, on rolling mauls when it is... oh, forget it - but somehow that contest has to uniformly enforced. Good luck.
As for the TMO, the system has largely been successful, though the games are taking noticeably longer to complete. Should the powers of that official be extended? I believe so, as I have explained in an earlier column, when it comes to the 'silent' enforcement of the offside line.
I'm buying... Los Jaguares Okay, I'm taking an educated guess that's what Argentina's Super Rugby team will be called but whether they're called that or the Mendoza Madmen, it doesn't really matter because they have the potential to light up what is otherwise looking like bit of a pig's ear of a competition.
I'm selling... Beer Go on, you can admit it. You quite enjoyed this World Cup didn't you, and you even watched the majority of matches jacked up on nothing more than tea, coffee and cheese on toast.
Last week: I'm gave South Africa an 8.5 points start at $1.92 as a form of semi-happiness insurance. As it turned out everything about that result was pleasing - the more adventurous side won and the bet came in.
This week: If it's ain't broke... Australia with an +11.5 points start at $1.45. As much as many of you might want to imagine it, it's difficult to see the All Blacks finishing more than a try and a penalty ahead.
Total spent: $180 Total collected: $156.60
MAILBAG
Last week, I ranked the remaining refs in the competition and it sparked a few interesting responses, most of them printable. Here are a few motley emails.
I'm a long time past rugby player, coach and administrator. My concern is the time wasting of scrums - this front-row culture, has to be put to bed.
The front rows only go in first without hitting. When the ref is happy with their binding, he calls, "locks in". That's when the rest of the forwards simultaneously join the scrum. The half puts the ball in and a clean hook will give the half time to clear smartly.
Scrums can then do their physical thing, but the ball will be hooked so any collapse or screwing won't have any effect.
At present, whoever gets that split second hit in first, has the gain. It relies on the ref to determine if was too much of a gain and guesswork penalties are not good.
My scrum setting would be favourably received by a majority of referees and players ( excluding props), by greatly reducing the time-wasting and boring collapsing and screwing complexities out of the game.
Here's my take on the Joubert 'Inappropriate' decision.
In the last seven minutes, Australia made five errors and Scotland let them off the hook by making seven of their own.
Yes, maybe, Joubert made a mistake on that penalty. Maybe, and that's still only one. Here's what I learned in Cardiff in 2007: the ref missed a forward pass, but that is not why we lost. We lost because we played like muppets for most of that match, and let ourselves be in a position where a ref's mistake could make the difference.
Don't, just don't, say that it was decided by only one single moment, a mistake by someone else.
Own your own mistakes. Suck it up, and come back better next time.
Got to be Nigel Owens, takes time to ensure what happened is what he believes he witnessed. Wayne Barnes runs a close second, impressed with the way he managed his interchanges with the TMO and kept the game moving.
It's easy to say we need the correct decisions but if a TMO exchange disadvantages an attack then it can be just as bad as the wrong decision. Tony Evans
