The Rugby World Cup is still holding out for new heroes

Four of the eight games this ‘weekend’ are destined to be mismatches and that’s a conservative estimate. It will probably be five, maybe six.

Fine Inisi of Tonga poses for a portrait during the Tonga Rugby World Cup 2023 Squad photocall. (Photo by Karl Bridgeman - World Rugby/World Rugby via Getty Images)

It was supposed to be a new beginning for the Rugby World Cup. A defenestration of the traditional elite, or at least some of them, by a gathering wave of nations eager and able to make this the most open of the ten tournaments to date.

There were no shortage of pointers, whether deeds on the pitch or words off them, to suggest that the first weekend of this 2023 hosting would deliver on that promise though the words of Georgian scrum-half Vasil Lobzanidze were a pure distillation of all this hope.