Ticket rip-off

RWC 2007 is shaping up to become the finest of the six tournaments to date. The only threat to France achieving that accolade is the nonsense of allocating games to Wales and Scotland, where ticket prices have been inflated. Today’s Fiji-Canada game could be watched by as few as 20,000 people at Cardiff’s Millenium stadium. That’s 50,000 empty seats, while more than 40,000 tickets remain unsold for Scotland’s game against Romania at Murrayfield on Tuesday. Few can blame the absent fans when Rugby World Cup insists on charging up to four times the price of some pool games in France

Ref got it wrong

Paddy O’Brien, the IRB manager in charge of World Cup referees, has blown the whistle on Paul Honiss, admitting that the South African was wrong not to award Samoa a try against South Africa. ‘Paul Honiss disallowed it because he felt the player (Samoa lock Iosefa Tekori) was part of the ruck, and so was offside when he picked up the ball,’ said O’Brien. ‘We believe the decision was wrong, and that as the last player in the ruck he was entitled to do what he did’

Mad on Scrummies

While England’s Wags stole the headlines at football’s World Cup last year, the Scrummies, as the England rugby players’ wives and girlfriends are known, have kept a low profile in France. Wags and Scrummies are both trumped for the best title, however, by the nearest and dearest of the England footballers currently competing at the Women’s World Cup in China. They are known as Mads (mums and dads) and Baps (boyfriends and partners)

Island headbangers

‘I bang my head against the wall,’ joked Finau Maka, the Tonga and Toulouse flanker, when asked how he prepared for his debut against USA. Maka’s massive Afro hairstyle looks as if it could cushion the blows successfully, unlike the short-haired Samoan Brian Lima, who marked his record fifth World Cup by knocking himself out trying to make a big impact against South Africa. The Chiropractor, as Lima is known, has been given the all-clear but his coach, Michael Jones, said the 35-year-old is not ready for today’s clash with Tonga. ‘We wouldn’t risk his health – he’s only got one head,’ said Jones, a World Cup winner with New Zealand back in 1987

Cliffhanger

Nike are usually on the ball with their innovative advertising, but England’s sponsors – like Brian Ashton’s team – came badly unstuck with a double page Churchillian-style ad, which ran on Friday under the banner: Not without a fight. Those ad executives should have seen the writing on the wall when the two main men in the picture, Phil Vickery and Lawrence Dallaglio, were respectively suspended and dropped. England went down to the Boks without a fight, leaving the champions on the precipice of a World Cup disaster and Dallaglio regretting his war cry: ‘The boys have the balls to prove a lot of people wrong tonight’. Perhaps Nike will now change their slogan to ‘didn’t do it’

DVD winners

Congratulations to Mike Jones, James Burke, Feargal O'Rourke, Cheryl Bloom, and Jeremy Kitchin for winning our ITV DVD competition. Three-disc World Cup box-sets, worth £29.99, are in the post to you all