By Mitch Phillips
PARIS (Reuters) – The 2023 World Cup began amid a hail of criticism for its skewed draw but, unfair as it might have appeared, that produced the greatest weekend of rugby in the tournament’s history and then only the second final between the sport’s two superpowers.
Over seven weeks there were incredible matches, agonising late defeats, immense bravery, amazing skill, fortitude, luck, injuries and controversies, all watched by record live and TV audiences.
Portugal and England gave stark reminders of how two totally contrasting ways to play the game can still bring results, while, as in every previous tournament, Tier Two Nations departed with a plea for more meaningful competition to avoid them being mere canon-fodder.
World Rugby addressed that with a major overhaul of the calendar they described as “the most significant development in the sport since the game went professional” but those long-suffering countries are going to have to suffer for a few years yet before they start to feel the benefits.
Rugby’s shortage of truly competitive nations means that its big guns have got used to being nicely seeded, with usually only one pool containing three Tier One countries, and quarter-finals that generally have clear favourites.
That went out of the window this time as, due to a combination of COVID and the organisers’ bizarre insistence that they need to know the location of teams years before the event, the draw was made on the basis of the rankings at the end of the 2019 tournament.
It meant that the top five teams in the world at the start of this event were on the same side of the draw and that three of them – Ireland, South Africa and Scotland – were in one group.
France beat New Zealand on a memorable opening night then Ireland beat defending champions South Africa to underline their status as world number one and raise hopes of a second northern hemisphere triumph after England’s in 2003.
Elsewhere, England overcame a terrible build-up to win all their pool games and Fiji shocked Australia to go through alongside Wales.
FABULOUS BRAND
Fiji’s final pool game against Portugal was one of the best seen at a World Cup, with the Portuguese playing a fabulous brand of all-court rugby reminiscent of France at their pomp.
Amid emotional scenes and roared on by neutrals the world over, they secured their first-ever World Cup victory in the last minute, with Fiji scraping through via their losing bonus point.
And so to the mother of all weekends, fully deserving of its “epic” tag and surpassing even the heights of the 2007 quarter-finals played in the same Marseille and Paris venues.
Wales will forever rue their missed chances in the first of them against Argentina before Ireland and New Zealand produced an absolute classic.
Ireland were tipped to end their quarter-final curse on the back of the best form in their history, but despite playing superbly, the dream was brought to a shuddering end by an extraordinary All Black team that did not make a single handling error.
Fiji looked dead and buried against England but scored two classic offloading tries in four minutes to draw level, only for Owen Farrell’s boot to bring England home.
All of France then tuned in for the host nation to take the next step on a path to the final that had seemingly been mapped out in the stars.
Inspirational scrumhalf Antoine Dupont returned from his broken cheekbone and France were on fire early on. But, as so many times before, the simple, awkward bounce of a rugby ball undid four years of building work as South Africa absorbed the blows, kicked and chased and showed their own iron will to fight back and win by a point.
They then did the same in the semi-final, where a prosaic but supremely accurate and aggressive England looked destined for a surprise victory until Handre Pollard’s 77th-minute penalty secured a 16-15 win, a day after New Zealand had brushed aside Argentina 44-6.
England beat the Pumas for the second time at the tournament to go home with bronze medals before the sport’s biggest guns, and the newly-introduced bunker review system, took centre stage.
New Zealand captain Sam Cane became the first player to be sent off in a final and three others were yellow-carded in a brutal, incredibly tense clash where Pollard’s kicking made the difference in a 12-11 victory that gave the Springboks a record fourth title.
(Reporting by Mitch Phillips, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
