Peter Jackson: Hasty draw has skewed the World Cup
Ireland Head Coach Andy Farrell speaks to the media at the weekend. Picture: INPHO/Billy Stickland
Australia have now lost eight Test matches this year, a fate which Wales managed to avoid seven days after the All Blacks stopped them a long way inside the distance.
The Wobblies will probably lose again in Dublin this weekend before finishing the season in Cardiff where the Welsh are in a state of high anxiety over the decaying condition of what is supposed to be their national sport.
And yet, for all the Tests they have lost between them, Wales or Australia may have a better chance of going further in next year’s World Cup than the world’s four highest-ranked countries: Ireland, France, New Zealand, South Africa.
Almost every weekend brings further evidence of how Rugby World Cup has skewered its own tournament next year. The joyous sound of locals dancing in the streets of Florence provides the latest evidence, Italy having looked at the long list of Wallabies losses and doubtless concluded: Everyone’s beaten them except us.
The top four of any global team event are supposed to avoid each other until the semi-finals. Instead, the current quartet collide at the pool stage and then again in the quarter-finals, a double whammy which really does take some arranging.
If they come out of their pool, Ireland and South Africa will play France or New Zealand in the last eight. If they get that far, Wales or Australia meet England or Argentina.
As it stands, therefore, two of the four best teams will be knocked out before the semi-finals. Nobody, of course, can plan for the vagaries of form but such a scenario has been brought about by the tournament’s inexplicable decision to base their top four seeds on the way the last World Cup finished in Japan:
1, South Africa, 2 England, 3 New Zealand, 4 Wales.
They then proceeded to make the draw with undue haste 12 months later, in December 2020. Wales had slumped to 9th, Australia to 6th. Wales may move up one to eighth this week with the possibility of the Aussies dropping beneath them.
Fiji, Georgia and one last qualifier, possibly the USA, make up the rest of their pool. That means five teams in one pool with the likelihood that by next autumn none of them will be anywhere near the top six, let alone the top four.
There can never have been a weaker pool, just as there can never have been a stronger one than Ireland’s, swimming with the Springbok holders and Scotland, fresh from rattling the All Blacks like never before.
The mess could easily have been avoided by delaying the draw. FIFA, not exactly noted for being paragons of virtue, at least had the gumption to delay making the draw for next week’s kick-off in Qatar until the end of March.
Had they done likewise, rugby’s World Cup would have avoided sending the four leading contenders off on a course to crash into each other at almost every turn.
The trouble with players reinventing themselves as pundits is that some don’t know when to stop talking. Shane Horgan and Jamie Heaslip could do with a little tuition in that respect.
The former internationals, reunited at The Aviva for Amazon Prime’s live coverage of Ireland-Fiji, failed on at least one occasion to push the mute button and listen to someone else who had something interesting to say.
That the person in question happened to be Mathieu Raynal made it all the more interesting given the fearless way the French referee pinged Australia for wasting time in Sydney, a decision that cost the Wallabies the Bledisloe Cup.
Raynal had summoned both captains after some argy-bargy over Jack Conan’s disallowed try. Instead of allowing the viewer to eavesdrop, Horgan ploughed on regardless. When he did pause for breath, Heaslip continued the dialogue with barely a second wasted.
A pearl of wisdom can always wait, ideally as a reaction to what the referee has or has not said. It only takes someone on the gantry to call for silence and listen instead to those calling the shots on the field or in the van with all the camera angles.
Regrettably, the penny still hadn’t dropped a little later in the match with a pundit talking over the TMO’s check for the blow which put Joey Carbery out of action and his assailant, Tuisue, out of what’s left of the autumn series.
The trouble with players reinventing themselves as pundits is that some don’t know when to stop talking. Shane Horgan and Jamie Heaslip could do with a little tuition in that respect.
The former internationals, reunited at The Aviva for Amazon Prime’s live coverage of Ireland-Fiji, failed on at least one occasion to push the mute button and listen to someone else who had something interesting to say.
That the person in question happened to be Mathieu Raynal made it all the more interesting given the fearless way the French referee pinged Australia for wasting time in Sydney, a decision that cost the Wallabies the Bledisloe Cup.
Raynal had summoned both captains after some argy-bargy over Jack Conan’s disallowed try. Instead of allowing the viewer to eavesdrop, Horgan ploughed on regardless. When he did pause for breath, Heaslip continued the dialogue with barely a second wasted.
A pearl of wisdom can always wait, ideally as a reaction to what the referee has or has not said. It only takes someone on the gantry to call for silence and listen instead to those calling the shots on the field or in the van with all the camera angles.
Regrettably, the penny still hadn’t dropped a little later in the match with a pundit talking over the TMO’s check for the blow which put Joey Carbery out of action and his assailant, Tuisue, out of what’s left of the autumn series.
Not for the first time in his life, Doddie Weir stood head and shoulders above every single member of the global playing cast during an eventful rugby weekend from Florence to his native Edinburgh.
Nothing, least of all the ravages of a cruel affliction, could prevent him from another inspirational appearance at his beloved Murrayfield, this time to present the match ball from his wheelchair, surrounded by his family.
Weir’s spirit, as indomitable as ever more than five years after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease, will have touched the hearts of 67,000 in the stadium and millions more watching around the world.
His compatriots, their numbers woven in Doddie’s trademark yellow-and-blue tartan, almost made it a historic occasion. "We wanted to be brave," skipper James Ritchie said. "We know that nobody defines bravery like Doddie."
- On at least three occasions during the titanic duel in Marseille, Wayne Barnes could be heard rebuking Springbok players. "Don’t start shouting at me, again," he told one miscreant before telling another via acting captain Eben Etzebeth: "Can you ask him never to do that again?"
It’s high time World Rugby took a hard line before the shouting becomes more abusive. Fines or, more effectively still, suspension ought to prove an effective deterrent.
- David Flatman’s humour tends to set him apart from most pundits. Who else but the occasional former England prop could compare a wing’s role chasing restarts with a tighthead’s in the scrum as follows: "There’s no-one trying to fold you up like a deckchair when you’re chasing kicks."
- Head coach Ian Foster on watching the All Blacks ship 23 unanswered points to Scotland and still live to tell the tale: "There’s a lot of history that goes through your mind out there."
Translation: Scotland had never beaten New Zealand in 117 years and I really began to think I’d be held responsible for losing where we’d never lost before.
15 Ange Capuozzo (Italy) 14 Juita Wainiqolo (Fiji) 13 Yoram Moefana (France) 12 Owen Farrell (England) 11 Duhan van der Merwe (Scotland) 10 Finn Russell (Scotland) 9 Tomos Williams (Wales) 1 Ellis Genge (England) 2 Ken Owens (Wales) 3 Sipili Falatea (France) 4 Eben Etzebeth (South Africa) 5 Scott Barrett (New Zealand) 6 Anthony Jelonch (France) 7 Nick Timoney (Ireland) 8 Taulupe Faletau (Wales)
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