The World's Cup: A beer with the 'humble' All Blacks

New Zealand v Namibia at Olympic Stadium. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Steve Deane scours global media for an offbeat look at rugby's biggest show.

EATEN ALIVE

Spare a thought for Uruguay, the festering corpse of RWC 2015's group of death. As if it's not tough enough being the worst team at the tournament (you're pretty darn bad when you make Quade Cooper look like a supreme being), Wales' upset win over England means poor old Los Terribles have become points differential fodder for the big guns. Fair to say things haven't looked this bleak for Uruguayan rugby since the plane carrying the Old Christians Rugby Team crashed in the Andes and food supplies ran a little short. Even the steadfast types at Montevideo's La Republica are starting to sound a bit glum.
"With the passing of the minutes further improved the performance of the Australians against a team that had some bursts of attack and managed by Felipe criminal Berchesi the final three points for the team directed technically Pablo Lemoine , who on the scoreboard Please put a 12-3 kangaroos," the paper reported. Despite what Google Translate says, we suspect Felipe Berchesi's middle name may not be "criminal". More likely he just gave away a penalty.

FINGER ON PULSE

Pulse Nigeria's RWC coverage continues to set the standard in West Africa. Under the headline 'Namibian player enjoy beer with 'humble' All Blacks', the website reported the highly questionable proposition that the All Blacks are, in fact, humans.

"They invited us for a beer," revealed Nimbos tryscorer and instant national hero Johan Deysel. "We all went there and had a chat with the guys; such a lot of humble guys, the New Zealanders." Deysel said. "Although we lost the game I think it was electric. We saw they're not super-beings, they're people like us with two legs and two hands." Attached to each other, in the case of a few forwards...

WORLD IN DISUNION

Britain's newspapers made a good-sized meal out of fan disaffection over Paloma Faith's "truly awful" rendition of the RWC anthem World in Union. Papers such as The Telegraph have quoted disgruntled fans - who are assaulted with Faith's version of the song at every ad break during host broadcaster ITV's coverage - as "murdering" and "strangling" the song and even committing a "hate crime". Turns out a petition on change.org calling for the song to be axed has attracted just 9199 signatures. To put that in perspective, a change.org petition calling for John Key to be removed from power has 34,637 signatures, and another petition to save a display at Auckland Museum has 5354.

For the trainspotters out there, World In Union, with lyrics by Charlie Skarbek, is sung to the same tune as the hymn I Vow To Thee My Country, which was, in turn, taken from a section of Holst's The Planets. It was commissioned by World Rugby in 1991 and has been used as the tournament's anthem ever since. Dame Kiri Te Kanawa was the first to record it, and others to sing it have included Dame Shirley Bassey and Bryn Terfel.

SPYING GAME

The Sun's front page "For Your Tries Only" splash yesterday about a man with a long lens camera spying on the Wallabies provided an interesting insight into how Australia's print media - which is largely boycotting the event due to a dispute over conditions contained in the accreditation agreement - is covering the tournament. Australia's major papers have journalists on the ground but they are not attending matches or official press events. When it came to The Sun's big exclusive, the Sydney Morning Herald followed with a piece from a Canberra Times reporter quoting coach Michael Cheika as having a giggle about the issue.

"We don't even know what we're doing so how is anyone watching us going to know what we're doing?" Cheika said. "But I have heard about and we've got to have a bit of a laugh."
The Australian newspaper also carried the story, leading on the angle that the Aussies had "laughed off" the issue. News Limited's flagship Sydney Daily Telegraph buried the story well down its homepage, pointing out rather sniffily (but entirely accurately) that the Sun beat-up was in fact a recycled version of a story it had published nine days earlier.