Ah, les jours de gloire! This was the greatest World Cup of them all,
there is no doubt. This is not to deny the political significance of South
Africa 1995 or the open-hearted and meticulous events of Australia 2003. But
France 2007 has been magnificent, and it is difficult to believe that it
will not remain the best World Cup for some time to come. Perhaps the
infinite cultural variety of France itself was the backbone, on and off the
field. And if rugby union was smug already about its essential inner
goodness, now it is going to be insufferable. And rightly so.
Among the thunder of the play and desperation for success, among the
modern-era commercial rapacity and the tumult, rugby’s magnificent spirit
was burnished to a glossy gold. The standards of sportsmanship on the field,
the lack of rancour surrounding the matches and the fabulous interaction
among the travelling supporter multitudes was phenomenal.
After Fiji went down to South Africa in their quarter-final in Marseilles,
they marked their exit with the longest lap of honour of all time. They
wandered slowly around the field, apparently acknowledging each of the
55,000 crowd individually, full of Fijian ritual and thanks. It must have
been about 45 minutes after the end of the game when they came back to the
top of the tunnel. There, still waiting to clap them off, were the
Springboks. That was class.
The figures are impressive. The tournament will make about £90m profit, most
of which will be reinvested in the sport around the world. I hope a great
chunk of this will go to the Tier Two and Tier Three nations, whose amazing
improvement gave this tournament an edge and a colour and a tear-jerking
quality.
The crowd numbers have also been amazing. Many times we walked to a stadium
expecting to be reasonably lonely at what seemed to be an unattractive match
– say, Argentina v Georgia – and found every seat in the house taken. Better
still, we found the French were open-hearted, generous, eager to party and
with a love of the underdog that was positively British. The French public,
in the stadiums or in the country at large, grasped their responsibilities
to the rugby world and discharged them superbly. This was some feat of
multi-tasking, as they were all smoking at the same time.
The standard of play was also higher, on a different planet to 1995 and 2003.
The previous World Cups were played chiefly by those for whom the
professional game had arrived in their mid-careers or later. The players of
France 2007 were children of the professional era. They had learnt their
basic skills, their rugby excellence, their grasp of conditioning and
nutrition and the mental side, right from the sporting cradle.
So if you accept that rugby union was never meant to flow continuously, that
it is meant to have aggravations, that there are odd intervals when players
bash the ball up round the fringes at about one foot per minute, if you
grasp that the desperation not to turn the ball over in midfield will lead
to periods of aerial hoofing, as if the crowd are watching a celestial
tennis match, then the rugby here was sumptuous.
Another delight was the evidence that rugby is in a phase when it can be
played in different styles. We have been through some horrible homogenous
eras, in which all that distinguished the teams was that they played in
different coloured kit. But consider what we have seen here in France.
We have seen the all-out attacking brilliance of the Fiji-Wales match, with
both sides launching themselves early in the phases – no need to bash
endlessly on until the defence collapses with boredom. But we have also seen
Argentina thrive. No wide team this, but highly compelling and completely
fronton. We saw England-Australia in the quarter-finals, a thunderous blast
at the contact points, which was won not necessarily by the team with more
rugby skills, but by the team that had more men standing at the end.
Hail rugby’s variety. It was not infinite, and we have not been presented with
a torrent of new attacking ideas. But coaches can once more choose a way to
play. This was the World Cup that could elevate the jagging side-steps of
Seru Rabeni, the gorgeous all-round class of Juan Martin Hernandez and the
frightening power of Andrew Sheridan and Schalk Burger.
What we feared most – too many predictable outcomes – never came to pass. If
you disagree with me, you must have expected New Zealand and Australia to be
packed off home, and known that Argentina would beat France in the opening
game and then smash Ireland to pieces. You must have been sanguine as
Georgia led Ireland, as Tonga and Samoa menaced England and as Fiji came
level towards the end with South Africa. You must have expected the
cheetah-quick Bryan Habana to be beaten for pace on the outside by an
American, and not been surprised as Habana, prone, gazed at the retreating
back of Takudzwa Ngwenya.
It has been obvious by the day here that the old world order is changing.
Therefore, it is incomprehensible that the International Rugby Board (IRB),
whose investment in the other tiers of rugby did so much to bring about the
improvement and which is amazed by the pace of it, should even countenance
the possibility of reducing the number of teams in the World Cup finals. But
it is.
And so today, I repeat the call we made last week. Would the New Zealand Rugby
Union, hosts of 2011, please announce immediately that it wants 20 teams.
Otherwise we shall see merit in the arguments of those who say that New
Zealand have overreached themselves, that they do not have the beds, the
stadiums or the public to stage a proper World Cup to rival this French
phenomenon. For them and for the IRB, it is more than a question of beds and
bums on seats. It is a question of morality, of a vision, and a question of
rewarding those so-called lesser nations that have made the past two months
a joy.
What next? How big can rugby get? On these occasions, everybody seems unable
to avoid comparisons with football, as if rugby’s progress will drag it into
football’s orbit. It is nonsense. Football will always be far bigger and
different. Rugby does not want to be football, to emulate it, to rival it.
It certainly does not want to import any of football’s vicissitudes,
although in my opinion, rugby is best in those places where it shares
football’s appeal to the masses.
In November, all of rugby’s so-called stakeholders will gather – among them
unions, professional clubs, referees, sponsors – to discuss the future of
the game.
The idea is to reorganise Test rugby, to avoid burnout and silly tours, to fit
all the competitions into a structured season and to ensure that it can
continue to prosper without devaluing the currency of the international
game; and to talk about the shape of the game itself.
It would be wonderful to think that they will take a global view, rather than
sitting around trying to feather their own nests. And while any aspirations
to football’s dominance are preposterous, one thing is obvious. If rugby
makes the correct decisions in the next few months, it has a future in terms
of size and prosperity and a pull on the world’s sporting public that was
unforeseen as recently as a decade ago, or even five years ago. It has not
only a playing attraction, it has values that appear to be more coveted as
time goes by.
What else must we demand of our grandees of the game? Most definitely, that
rugby should not try to copy football. Rugby was put on this earth for a
purpose. It was put here for those who want to be irked, occasionally. It
was put here for those who do not expect perfection but who are prepared to
wait, sometimes for ages, for the perfect moment; for those who do not want
to be patronised by the idea that only smooth sporting action can be
entertaining. For people who want things to come tough.
It was put here for participants who expect to have to fight for territory and
honour, and put here for people of all shapes and sizes and both sexes. It
is 15 against 15, using a violently unpredictable oval ball, carrying the
action through an arcane series of set-pieces and loose conflagrations.
Sometimes in wind and wet, with a useless ref. I ask you. Was rugby ever
meant to be perfect?
And yet again we find it at the crossroads. Yet again we find that people in
authority, or people who think they are in authority, have decided it must
be made simpler, more flowing, with more scores. Yet again people are
reacting to the success of the sport, especially in Europe and especially in
France 2007, by making potentially catastrophic assertions about what comes
next.
Swilling around the game at the moment are the ELVs – experimental law
variations. They are currently being trialled. Some of these will profoundly
alter the face of rugby. Their sponsors, and the committee that breathed
life into them, point out that they do not depower the game, do not reduce
the importance of the tight phases and produce quasi-basketball. If that is
correct, then why last week did the three southern hemisphere rugby giants
demand that they be allowed to use the experimental laws in all their big
rugby almost immediately, before the trial periods have even been assessed?
I do not fault the motives of the IRB’s technical people. I am suspicious of
the motives of people in authority in Australia and New Zealand, who have
recently been pasted by European teams. The laws are meant to be for the
good of the sport. When was the last time you heard a major southern
hemisphere union pass a resolution that was for the benefit of everyone? I
strongly suspect that down south, the ELVs are seen as a means to fight
private battles against other sports in their own arenas, and to try to
reduce the playing and commercial power of rugby in Europe.
How fatuous can rugby get? At a time when the box office has never been so
busy, when it is playing to packed stadiums and when a clamour of television
and commercial interests are hammering on the door, it wants to make the
same mistake that it has made several times in the past, and wants to chase
a bogus concept of entertainment. The truth is that rugby, in its lovely,
teeth-gnashingly frustrating way, has never been so entertaining. IT HAS
been impossible to spend time in France these past two months and not be
assailed by a barrage of images on the eye and the mind. Today they will
remove the giant rugby ball and the laser posts from the Eiffel Tower and
the old Meccano set will be restored to its austere self. All that is left
this morning are the warm memories of the emotion and competition of the
sport and the aftermath, with the giant brotherhood and sisterhood that the
game attracts. They say back at home that the kids have been enchanted. In
my mind I can still see the scene at the end of the first game, when
Argentina had sensationally beaten France. A riotous group of Pumas were
celebrating on the field.
In the middle of them was the tiny figure of Agustin Pichot, the man of this
tournament. The Argentina captain was trying to cool the frenzy. He knew
that the job had started stunningly but had not yet finished. Gus was
fighting a losing battle. His team was enveloped in something high as a
kite. It has been impossible to pour cold water on the experience and the
dramas. In France 2007, even for the cynical and the seen-it-all, it was
impossible not to be all-consumingly excited by the whole thing.
Team of the tournament
Full-back
Jason Robinson (Eng) Hail and farewell to the inspirational tiny giant
Reserve: Chris Latham (Aus)
Wing
Vilimoni Delasau (Fiji) Genius. He made space when there was none
Reserve: Sean Lamont (Sco)
Centre
Stirling Mortlock (Aus) Played with power and class. One of the game’s
greats
Reserve: Seru Rabeni (Fiji)
Centre
Seremaia Bai (Fiji) Brilliant stepping and running, and he reproduced
it at fl y-half
Reserve: David Marty (Fra)
Wing
Bryan Habana (S Africa) If he got the ball in space, wave goodbye to
the Bok rocket
Reserve: Sitiveni Sivivatu (NZ)
Fly-half
Juan Martin Hernandez (Arg) Maestro. Not the archetypal fl y-half but a
genius
Reserve: Jonny Wilkinson (Eng)
Scrum-half
Fourie du Preez (S Africa) Not always on his game but when he was, what
a range of talents
Reserve: Mosese Rauluni (Fiji)
Loose-head prop
Andrew Sheridan (Eng) This man had dynamite in his hands when
scrummaging
Reserve: Rodrigo Roncero (Arg)
Hooker
Mario Ledesma (Arg) The old legs carried him heroically
Reserve: Marius Tincu (Rom)
Tight-head prop
Carl Hayman (NZ) He did his bit up front. Talented and aggressive
Reserve: Census Johnston (Samoa)
Lock
Simon Shaw (Eng) Lineout banker, great power and showed an ability to
handle the ball like a fl y-half
Reserve: Alun Wyn-Jones (Wal)
Lock
Victor Matfield (S Africa) So he is the real thing, after all.
Outstanding lineout man
Reserve: Patricio Albacete (Argentina)
Blindside flanker
Schalk Burger (S Africa) He added the gift of sporting wisdom to his
all-out aggression
Reserve: Louis Stanfi ll (USA)
No 8
Sisa Koyamaibole (Fiji) With respect, the others were nowhere.
Wonderful power runner
Reserve: Julien Bonnaire (Fra)
Openside flanker
Juan Smith (S Africa) What a player. Big, fast and harsh, a
game-breaker who ate up the field
Reserve: Thierry Dusaustoir (Fra)
