I slept very badly last night, and didn’t watch Wales v Australia in the Rugby World Cup play-off for third place, this morning London time, as it happened. But my recording machine had been set and I now have watched the game. Sadly, in the middle of watching it, I blundered upon the result (an Australian win by 21-18) while looking for something completely different in the www. Pity.
The last try by Wales didn’t stop Australia winning, but it at least ensured that the Northern Hemisphere as a whole was that much less seriously beaten in this tournament than it might well have been, and might still be. Ditto that earlier Ireland win against Australia. After that Ireland win, commentators said: This reflects well on the Northern Hemisphere. But commentators also said: This makes things easier for a Northern Hemisphere side to get to the final. Which gave the game away. What they meant was: As opposed to the Southern Hemisphere monopolising the final stages, which is probably what would have happened had there been Southerners in both halves of the draw, instead of the final stages being neatly divided, North and South.
The sad thing about rugby is how much injuries influence matters. Dan Carter, the New Zealand All Blacks first choice fly half (the rugby equivalent of a quarterback), is already out of it. The Welsh first choice fly half also missed the last two Welsh games, both of which they lost narrowly. Partly as a result of such mishaps, this tournament has, for me, been rather an anti-climax, and not just because England never turned up, as they say. The France Wales semi-final was disappointing because of the unsatisfactory way that France squeaked through, without ever playing as they can. Wales lost partly because the Welsh captain was sent off early on, and partly because Wales, who later scored the only try of the game, missed so many penalty kicks.
In general, this tournament has somewhat lacked dazzle, I think, of the sort that France Wales matches used to supply in abundance, way back when. Shane Williams scoring a try for Wales against Australia in this latest game epitomised the problem. Instead of creating a piece of video to treasure for ever, with a searing run and several dazzling side-steps, Williams scored his try with a forward pass to him, followed by him kicking it forwards some more, and him then catching the lucky bounce and plonking it carefully down over the line. Not the stuff of legend. Watching a TV show the other night about the 1971 Lions tour of New Zealand really brought home what’s been missing, for me. Had the sublime Barry John played in this tournament, he’d have gone out injured after the group games. (When I tried googling for barry john lions, I got a lot of stuff about John Barry, and his music for The Lion in Winter. But rugby fans will know exactly who I mean.) The early stages of this tournament at least had lots of games day after day, and variety, and fun when minor teams threatened to do well against major ones. The later rounds, with those long, tedious gaps between fixtures and self-cancelling defences, weren’t nearly such fun. I know what you’re going to say: it’s always like that. No, it isn’t. There have been some great quarter-finals and semi-finals in earlier World Cups. France Australia semi final, in the very first World Cup. Ireland nearly beating Australia, some time around then. Rob Andrew last gasp drop goal for England against Australia, and then England getting trampled all over by Lomu. France All Blacks Twickenham 1999 with 33 unanswered second half French points in the space of about half an hour. The pick of the later games this time was probably Australia beating South Africa, simply because Australia were on the back foot for the whole game – tackling, tackling, tackling – and it was so improbable.
So, what of the final? Who knows? If France beat the All Blacks on Sunday, that would certainly make this World Cup climactic enough for anyone.
What most people now seem to expect is that France, who always seem to manage one decent performance in each World Cup campaign, will try to supply such a performance now, in the final. But, it is further expected that such a French effort, although maybe good, won’t be good enough, and just as in the previous World Cup South Africa rather narrowly but nevertheless firmly beat an England side that they had earlier annihilated in a group game, so too, this time, New Zealand will be too strong for France.
In that last World Cup the England players pulled themselves together, apparently despite their uninspiring coaches. In this one, the French players are now said to be doing something similar, despite their barking mad coach.
But the French never do what is expected of them. Accordingly, I predict one of the following two results.
Either: yet another amazing, bewildering, French win over the All Blacks, lucky bounces, forward (scoring) passes, choking All Blacks and all.
Or: France will be utterly, totally, completely, ripped to tiny pieces, by the biggest margin of victory ever in a World Cup Final. All that All Black rage at not winning one of these things since 1987, despite everyone agreeing that they’re always by far the best team in between times, will erupt, and it will be a slaughter.
Meanwhile, France coach Marc Lièvremont’s strategy, insofar as he can be said to have had one, seems to have been to try to contrive the exact circumstances which have now transpired, which is that France have now arrived in the final without once having given a great performance. Lièvremont has contrived this by swapping the French team around relentlessly, never allowing them to settle, for year after year after year before the tournament, and during the tournament by such cunning devices as picking a totally untested fly half against the All Blacks. In a word, Lièvremont has been not so much a coach as a saboteur, worried not about France peaking, but about France peaking too soon. What he most wanted to avoid was his team playing an early game brilliantly, and then saying: “Right, that’ll do, that was brilliant, that’s what everyone will remember. Who the hell cares what happens in the final? Hand me that bucket of wine.”
At all costs, a brilliant win against the All Blacks in that earlier group game had to be avoided, for that would have ended France’s chances of winning this tournament. They’d all have said: Well, aren’t we wonderful? And they’d then have lost their next game and gone home, still feeling smug about having beaten the probable eventual winners. Instead, France lost to both the All Blacks and to lowly Tonga, while nevertheless getting through. Then, they played just well enough to beat a lacklustre England, and then they limped luckily past Wales. Everyone now thinks they’re rubbish and that they don’t deserve to have got anywhere near the final. Parfait.
Meanwhile, Lievremont has cunningly made himself look like a total ass, by doing things like moan about his players in public and then apologise about it. That way, the French players will now be believing that if they win this thing, it will be them that wins it, not their coach. Since all sports tournaments do in fact have to be won by the players in the winning team, with the coach powerless to add anything significant once the game starts and not that much before that, this is good psychology. It gets all the French players thinking in exactly the right way to win.
So, the upshot is now a French team that is not only in the final, but which actually wants to win the final with their one and only brilliant performance in this tournament. There is a distinct chance, I would say, that the French team will do exactly this. Lièvremont will then say: “They did it despite me. I am a plonkair.” Or maybe: “My cunning plan has worked. You are all fools to have doubted me. Fools.” Either way the journos will have a bit of a think and after a few days will all say what I have said, and Lièvremont will get whatever a knighthood is in France.
Or, as I say, the French team could just collapse, thinking, once they start to lose, about how they’ll blame Lièvremont for everything instead of about how to turn the game around.
But, like I say, who knows? I will definitely be watching this one live, on Sunday morning, no matter how badly I have slept beforehand.
The betting, everywhere I’ve been able to find, seems to be paying about 7:1 or 7.5:1 if France win (and 1.1:1 or so for the All Blacks).
I do expect the ABs to win but that seems like crazy odds. Almost tempted to put a few dollars on France, disloyal though that would be. At least it would be consolation if the country is in mourning on Labour Day.
Nice of you to pass along the spoiler.
(Not that I’m worried about it myself. I’m just saying…)
What, no cricket? (ducking for cover…);-P
“Tout le monde hates us, mais on s’en fout!”
France is the new Millwall.
Spoiler? Nine hours after the game had finished? Am I expected to keep quiet about this result until you have watched the repeat showing of the highlights, twelve hours later?
cricket is very good
This has been a very good World Cup.
Defence can be just as exciting as attack. I particularly cite Wales in the first half of their match against Ireland but that was by no means the only excellent defensive performance of the tournament.
The refereeeing has been of variable quality.
Mr. Rolland’s decision to send off Warburton in the semi-final can be argued either way (except for the fact that this is rugby, not soccer, and the referee is right ) but his decision to award a late penalty to Wales when a Welsh forward was cheating on the ground was one of the worst decisions I have ever seen, and could have given Wales victory.
Mr. Joubert is the right choice for the final.
In the final I expect New Zealand to win by at least 15 points. For non-rugby union fans that means that France would have had to score at least 3 times to overhaul New Zealand.
New Zealand are able to vary their attacks, both close in and wide, and they attack with power and pace.
They will both smash and shred France.
After the Wales v. Samoa game my dream was to see Sam Warburton lift the cup. I would have given Wales a 40% chance against New Zealand, catch New Zealand on a slightly off day and this Wales team could have beaten them. But it didn’t work out that way.
But in any game that this current New Zealand team play, if both teams play well then New Zealand win.
It’s like Djokovic and Nadal; Nadal might win, but if both play well in the same match then Djokovic wins.
I expect to see New Zealand play well tomorrow, that means they will win.
But in any game that this current New Zealand team play, if both teams play well then New Zealand win.
This has been true of pretty much every New Zealand team of the last 30 years, though. To varying degrees, sure, but true 90% of the time, if not more. And yet, they have not won the World Cup since 1987
I also watched the BBC documentary on the first and only victorious Lions tour to New Zealand and was struck by just how much more skillful the players of that era really were.
Having been brought up in Wales in the 90’s, I always assumed the almost mythical stature of the Wales and Lions teams of the 70’s was largely the result of rose-tinted nostalgia. But having watched the grainy footage in that programme, I was amazed by the offloading, the side-steps, the quick rucked ball and – in the case of Colin Meads – the juggernaut-like ball carrying. They really were superior footballers than todays players. They just were.
The quality of tackling was the most obvious deficiency compared to modern standards, but their offensive skills, their ability to play ‘heads up’ rugby (to use the terminology of Guscott & Jonathan Davies) was simply in a different league. Modern players are bigger, stronger, faster and fitter… but ‘better’? More skillful? I just don’t think so. Shane Williams is perhaps the only modern, Northern Hemisphere player with the skills to have succeeded in that era, and he shall be hanging up his boots before the end of the year.
Having said all that, I have enjoyed this World Cup, although I believe too many matches have been decided by which team had the better kicker, and rugby should be about so much more than that. Which is why I would change the scoring system to 6 points for a try, 1 for a conversion and 2 for a penalty. Under such a system, Wales would have beaten France and be facing the All Blacks in the Final.
Funny, that.
Last team to beat All Blacks at Eden Park: France.
Last team to beat All Blacks at Rugby World Cup: France.
All else is propaganda.
Brian, again, just to be clear, this is not an issue for me directly. I’ve never worried of spoilers too much of any kind and not for this match in particular.
However, not everyone gets to see the match as soon as it is played. You yourself had it DVRed. The matches are played at wee hours of the morning local time here so it’s not unreasonable that people could be watching it later. In fact, I myself ended up watching last Saturday’s match Monday night (yes, that’s a bit extreme).
I will be watching tomorrow’s match in Nashville at 12pm Central time which, if clocks changing hasn’t messed the calculation, is 6pm blighty standard time. I’ll be sure not to visit any political websites in the morning 🙂
Anyway, seems like no one is actually bothered, so I won’t bang on about it. I’ve seen people raked over the coals for less though.
Bruce, don’t waste your money Mun! France will be annihilated tomorrow.
France only have two modes of play. Either they come out and play like magicans on motorbikes or the come out and play like they’ve had a three hour lunch and would rather a long nap than a game of rugby. The latter is the way they have played throughout the World Cup. The chances of them changing to magicians at this stage is zero.
If they could only beat Wales by one point, having a man advantage (and the captain at that) for three quarters of the game, then New Zealand will destroy them tomorrow.
Er Wales was bleeding robbed! Not the slightest bit biased mind you butties, and to be fair we should have won on the missed penalties alone.
Wales V new Zealand would have been a fitting final, but Wales would still have lost gallantly. France will be a complete rout.
Brian Micklethwait wrote:
You could have searched on “Barry John” in quotes, and included some more specific information.
I did. I still got lots of John Barry stuff. No, I don’t know why either. In fact I think I googled precisely what you did, but didn’t get what you got. Bizarre.
Not bizarre at all, if you have your Google cookies enabled: it “tailors” your search results for you, based on your search history.
Spoiler alert. Are you reading the comments on a World Cup posting, just after the World Cup Final ended, but do you not want to know what happened? (a) You are a twat. (b) Look away now.
All Blacks 8 France 7.
Well, who got that right? Not me. No French “inspiration”. No French disintegration. No All Blacks domination.
And only three successful conversions.
The one thing I got right was the thing about fly halves getting hurt. Two more went down today. The NZ fourth choice fly half ended up kicking the penalty that decided it. The French replacement fly half missed the penalty that might have won it for France.
Nice ref.
The poor All Blacks had to cling on to the player they tackled for a few seconds to get their breath back.
So that’s all right.
Louis XIV got paid back for the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
As Rod Stewart sang ‘Look how wrong you can be.’
2 hours before the game I was happy to give France a 7 point start in the bet I struck.
But what a game!
A mixture of superb play and mistakes.
Who can remember an All Black pack being so well beaten in scrum, line-out and loose as they were throughout the second half?
Yet they held on.
I have one serious gripe about the immediate post-match interview: Ian Smith did not invite Richie McCaw to comment on the performance of the French, and Mc Caw did not mention them himself.
I hope that by now some praise has been given to the French, without taking any credit away from New Zealand.
I hope that McCaw, Reid and Kaino can enjoy a good drink in the company of Bonnaire, Harinodoquay and Dussotoir tonight. And that goes for all the players.
Well done, all.
Funny old game innit?
The french team finally turned up wanting to play Rugby.
On that showing, if Wales had gotten to the final, we could have taken NZ and would now be World Champions, and there wouldn’t have been a sober person in the Principality from now until the start of the Six Nations. 😉
The referee missed at least 4 high tackles committed by New Zealand on the French. And had the French got one or two other decisions, it would have been a miserable night for the Kiwis.
On the other hand, the Kiwis missed some kicks, which had they gone in, would have increased the margin of victory. I guess these things cancel out.
It was a nerve-wrenching final, but not a classic for attacking rugby. The Kiwis defended like Trojans.
I watched the documentary on the British Lions tour of New Zealand 1971 last night on iPlayer. 99% of the team were Welsh, the likes of Barry John, JPR Williams, Gareth Edwards etc. If you love good rugby, those of you who can, watch it, it is the most sublime stuff you are ever likely to see!
One thing I noticed though, Rucks. They seemed to be much looser affairs in those days. I was taught that when tackled, you released the ball immediately, which was what seemed to be happening in 1971. Consequently there was a much better chance of a turnover and the game looked more open and conducive to running flowing rugby. Now the tackled seems to get to hand the ball back for his gathered rucking team-mates. Was that a recent rule change? cos it does slow the game up a hell of a lot?