The minnows
It is the last day of the pool stages and all is how it should be. No pesky minnow has made it through to the last eight and the world rankings system is a model of fairness. Must be. From now on, two-thirds of the Six Nations and the entirety of the Rugby Championship will sort it out among themselves, free after four rounds from the flailing willingness of the part‑timers, the lower pros and the great Pacific-Island diaspora.
For that last source, the most generous purveyors of rugby talent, this was a hard World Cup. Fiji, champions of the Pacific Nations Cup, were drawn in Pool A. Samoa left it until their final match, against Scotland, to breathe fire but it was not quite enough. Tonga were disappointing, given what they have done in past World Cups. They must turn and head for their clubs and leagues across the globe.
No minnow in the quarter-finals, but there is of course the matter of the harpooned whale. To be writing about England in the farewell letter still seems downright peculiar. On a more uplifting front, Japan made history with their victory over South Africa. It turned out to be only the sharpest dig in the flank of a dozing lion, but as rugby turns its attention to the height of the tackle, safety at the scrum and the obligatory use of arms by tacklers and ruckers, there is a chance the whole game will swing away from rule by size towards technique.
The pathway for the skilful Brave Blossoms is already marked out. Japan will host the next World Cup and their new franchise, the Sunwolves, will compete in Super Rugby as early as the southern hemisphere’s next season. For Georgia, who had wins over Tonga and Namibia here, the future is less promising. They will grind away in the European second tier, the invitation to the join the Six Nations as yet unwritten.
The Six Nations is a stubborn creature. Italy, the newest members – and the weakest – are hardly likely to vote to make themselves vulnerable, but is it not time to contemplate a double-header play-off between the bottom of the Six Nations and the top of the B tournament, the European Nations Cup? The old family may well contemplate it, but they will reject it.
Despite the old guard’s reaction, gradually the playing surface grows more even, with equal rest periods between games at this World Cup for rich and poor alike. There is a long way to go before Japan, Georgia and Fiji make up three of the four semi finalists, but next come the Rio Olympics in 2016, with sevens as a new sport. Whole new chains of investment will be forged and the game will have a growth spurt. Rugby is changing. Ask Japan. Ask England. Eddie Butler
The atmosphere
From the moment the tournament kicked off at Twickenham you could sense there was something different afoot. The England rugby crowd has always been a full-throated one, but no one had heard the national anthem sung so loud before – or seen the stands so white with replica shirts. The ghost in the Olympic machine has infiltrated this World Cup. It has made its presence felt throughout the tournament infrastructure – the smiling marshals, the videos explaining the sport – and it was evident, too in the crowds. Whatever was happening on the pitch, the atmosphere in the stands was more a festival celebration than a grim, tribal encounter.
There were constant surprises. Who knew, for instance, that there were so many Argentinians in England, until their fans turned up en masse at Wembley for their electric first game against New Zealand? No one could have predicted that Brighton would win a place in rugby history – or that Japan would find themselves roared on by Gloucester supporters, their self-appointed cherry and white army, in their next game. And while the transport situation did not get off to the best start, the free shuttle buses laid on to get people to and from the stadiums proved a big hit.
Rugby crowds are always a pretty jovial bunch, but even they seemed to feel that this was a special occasion. After all, it’s not often they make their way to a ground through their own “guard of honour”, manned by DHL (a tournament sponsor) employees cheering them through like sporting heroes. They congregated in the spectator plazas, where beer was a vaguely reasonable £4.80 a pint. They adopted ironic identities – pretend lumberjack beards for Canadians, Obelix outfits for the French – and experimented wildly with face paint. The only elements of the fan experience that did not get a universal thumbs up were the specially constructed fanzones, whose popularity seemed to vary depending on location – and the Newcastle one, which was popular, had to be closed when it was battered by rain.
The atmosphere did not seem to suffer notably when the hosts went out. The day after England’s exit, the sea of Irish fans engulfing the Olympic Stadium certainly seemed in an even better mood than usual, and Stadium MK went on beating its own attendance records. The nice volunteers standing outside each venue continued to hand out free flags to wave. And if you declared yourself neutral, they insisted you take one of each.
The World Cup has travelled from Exeter to Newcastle, from Gloucester to Leeds, but for the knockout stages returns to its traditional international heartland.
Given how the tournament has been embraced across the country, the relocation to Twickenham and Cardiff for the knockout matches is perhaps a shame. Indeed, it is these union strongholds that have experienced the main logistical problems, with transport issues the main blight on the competition so far. Emma John
The organisation
A record number of tickets were sold –more than 1.5 million people streamed through the turnstiles during a group stage that was one of the most compelling in World Cup history. On two consecutive Sundays the attendance record for a World Cup match was broken at Wembley Stadium, with the ultimate mark of 89,267 for the match between Ireland and Romania likely to stand until a World Cup takes place in South Africa, where Soccer City’s biggest rugby crowd is 94,713, or the United States.
The Newcastle fanzone had to be closed for two days owing to bad weather, but the appetite among locals was clear – reports stated 34,000 people attended the north-east zone on its opening day, while supporters in Leeds and Birmingham have been similarly enthusiastic.
There have been numerous ticket touts on the ground, while the tournament organisers, England 2015, have repeatedly warned customers not to purchase tickets from unofficial channels online. Before the England v Australia game they were being sold on Viagogo for £4,000 each. But it was a different story in the build-up to the England v Uruguay dead-rubber, when hundreds of tickets were available for knockdown prices.
Logistically, the main problems have been transport related. Train companies have come in for serious criticism for not providing sufficient extra services, particularly between London and Cardiff. After the England v Wales game at Twickenham, which kicked off at 8pm, the last train back to south Wales left Paddington at 10pm. Other supporters have been jammed into carriages en route to the Millennium Stadium. James Riach
The rugby
The tournament began with refereeing and TMO overload. On the first and second nights, Fiji and France were denied tries when new evidence came to light during celebratory slo-mos. Nothing at the 2015 World Cup would be left to chance, but here it was, on the receiving end of the cry of the Shed in Gloucester: “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The games settled down and the refs stayed out of trouble – until, that is, Alesana Tuilagi was banned for five weeks for kneeing Harumichi Tatekawa, and the viewing world cried that rugby was going soft (again). For what it’s worth, my rheumy eyes saw a case to answer, in that the Samoan winger raised his knee beyond the high point of his running gait in order to make contact with the Japanese centre about to tackle him. Five weeks did seem a long sentence.
The message concerning the neck-roll at the breakdown, the “protocol” of choice going into the tournament, seems in general to have been absorbed by the players. They seem more resistant to another prompt, that they must use their arms as they charge into a ruck. This is a minimal acknowledgement of a very simple – and long ignored – law: that a player entering a ruck or maul must be bound to one of his own team. Every time Bismarck du Plessis, bless him, goes into a post-tackle situation he breaks the law.
Such wipe-out rugby has been matched by enterprise. There have been no 100-point mismatches – and no sense of anyone being so far out of their depth that we should worry. It remains to be seen if daring can survive the tightening of the vice in the three weekends ahead. The tension will mount, the glitter will be less shiny. Pleasurable pain or painful pleasure. And that’s just the life of a TMO. Eddie Butler
