The Rugby World Cup is still holding out for new heroes

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.

“I believe there is a big opportunity for us to win,” he said before the Eastern Europeans faced Australia at the Stade de France. Georgia have eyed that next step for some time, and the Wallabies had been in awful form, but this was rugby through the looking glass.

And then it wasn’t. Australia hardly blew anyone away, and certainly not a Georgian side that lost 21-3, but that result was of a piece with a first round of games that produced plenty of drama but nothing in the way of a French revolution.

England utterly dominated Argentina despite playing 77 minutes with 14 men, South Africa suffocated Scotland in Marseille and Wales just about hung on against a Fiji side that most of us had hoped would be the poster boys for this new dawn.

The immediate result is an updated world rankings table that sees the old boys network re-established. The three southern behemoths and the original ‘five nations’ now occupy the top eight spots. Fiji slipped two places to ninth, Argentina plummeted four to tenth.

The more meaningful knock-on to that opening round is a competition which, after all that promise of change, is in danger of stultifying into the old and familiar as we turn into a second lap that offers less opportunity for upset.

Tonga may trouble Ireland this weekend, and Japan might discommode a one-dimensional England, or neither might happen. With the Pumas on a weekend off the onus falls on Fiji to keep the underdog flag flying when they tackle Australia in Saint-Etienne.

Lose that and a side that many had tipped to be the Great Disruptor at this World Cup will be facing another pool stage exit. Maybe, as head coach Simon Raiwalui suggested before their loss to Wales, we should have reined in all that heady optimism in the first place.

“When could we ever be called favourites when we're considered a developing country versus a developed country, resources and those sort of things,” he said last week. “We never go in thinking we're favourites to win, we're humble.” 

If the results and, in some cases, performances underwhelmed and served to spook some of these dark horses then it leaves most of them little in the way of time or space to gather themselves and rethink things ahead of their second spin around the track.

Felipe Contepomi, assistant coach to Michael Cheika with Argentina, was asked this week if their non-performance against England in Marseille might prompt them to tear up the script and come up with some new plotlines, and maybe leading actors with it.

The Pumas are a hot and cold collective at the best of times but the former Leinster player and coach dismissed the idea of a fresh start mid-race and explained that it would be “suicidal” to get all radical on their training and their playing style.

“A result cannot change or scar you either,” he said.

Argentina could yet find themselves in a semi-final for the third time since 2007, such is the imbalanced nature of the infamous draw, but the window for a genuinely historic shift is closing at a time when we were hoping for it to swing open.

The structures underpinning, and stifling, the democratisation of the Test game continue to work against the likes of Argentina and, particularly, Georgia and the Pacific Islands, who continue to suffer for the lack of consistent structures at club and/or Test levels.

Samoa’s sterling effort against Ireland in Bayonne in that recent warm-up game was all the more stirring for the fact that it was only their second game against ‘tier one’ opposition since the previous World Cup, and just their tenth of any description.

That’s the equivalent of one year’s schedule to an Ireland or South Africa.

Tonga assistant coach Zane Hilton was asked about this before Saturday’s meeting with Andy Farrell’s squad and touched on the proposed new ‘World League’ that many fear will only close the trapdoor on those looking to break a glass ceiling.

“There's going to be new scheduling of the new world calendar over the next two years and that in itself is probably going to change things,” he said. “That would mean there is going to have to be discussions with clubs with the way that happens.” Whatever about the way forward, the will has to exist to level the field first.

For now the focus turns to the second round of fixtures in France which starts with the hosts and Uruguay playing in Lille.

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.

We’re still holding out for some new heroes.