KEY POINTS:
CARDIFF - French rugby administrators, even more than coach Bernard Laporte and the players, are to blame for the hosts running the risk of being knocked out of 'their' World Cup in the capital of Wales.
That 'Les Bleus' now face tournament favourites New Zealand in the quarter-finals at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on Saturday, was all too much for French sports daily L'Equipe.
Earlier this week, it wailed: "It was sunny when Les Bleus left Marseille, it was raining in Cardiff when they arrived.. It is so utterly stupid to leave France, where a festival mood has enveloped the World Cup for a sad city where no-one any longer cares about the tournament."
Had France finished first in Pool D it would have been they, and not Argentina, who were playing Scotland at the Stade de France on Sunday.
But the bigger question is why are any matches at this World Cup being played outside of France?
The start of the answer begins about a decade ago when the Welsh Rugby Union bid to host the 1999 World Cup. But in order to get the votes they required the WRU needed the support of their fellow northern hemisphere Unions.
They got it but with an expensive price tag attached which saw the tournament spread out across several countries. This inevitably diminished any sense of a 'rugby carnival', a joyful feeling clearly in evidence in France this year.
But there was little in the way of off-field momentum eight years ago with the dispiriting sight of a match between South Africa and Uruguay played in front of a meagre crowd at Glasgow's Hampden Park, the home ground of the Scotland national football team, summing up much that was wrong with the event.
Even so, it might just have been possible, if not desirable, to create some enthusiasm around a World Cup hosted by the four 'Home Unions' of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
But the French Rugby Federation (FFR), whose president then as now was Bernard Lapasset, insisted they too be given a slice of the action and ended up by hosting a Pool and a quarter-final.
However, a condition was that should France ever host a World Cup, Wales too would receive a Pool and a quarter-final.
As it turned out it was a deal France didn't need to make to secure this year's tournament.
They beat England, their only competitor, so convincingly the only other nation that voted for the Rugby Football Union's proposal was Canada.
Now, thanks in part to Argentina's results, but primarily as a result of the horse-trading which has so long been a feature of rugby politics, Laporte's men have been denied a traditional advantage of the home side - playing in front of a partisan crowd.
Of course, it might not make much difference. France, who have lost their last seven matches against New Zealand, upset the odds to beat the All Blacks at Twickenham, England's home, in the 1999 World Cup semi-finals.
But there remains a widely held view that the World Cups of 1995 and 2003, staged in South Africa and Australia respectively, were the two best editions yet largely because they enjoyed all the benefits of being staged in one country alone.
There is talk the International Rugby Board (IRB) will make it a pre-condition of all future World Cups that their only be a sole host.
Meanwhile Lapasset has been widely tipped to succeed Ireland's Syd Millar as the global governing body's chairman.
It will be interesting to see what happens both to him and the World Cup.
- AFP
