‘Weaker’ teams deserve better

TWO weeks into this Rugby World Cup and the momentum keeps building. This weekend’s results, the All Blacks aside, have favoured northern hemisphere teams with the big games going Wales and Ireland’s way.

In the lead up to the Wales v Samoa match I watched a replay of their 1991 encounter. That match, played at Cardiff, will probably always rate as one of the great upsets in RWC history, Samoa defeating Wales, and in doing so displaying to the world for the first time the combativeness of the South Pacific island sides.

20 years on, Samoa was unable to reproduce that fairytale result but yesterday’s match did show how rugby has changed — in all but one thing.