Stuart Barnes in the times so unfortunately can't link it
Warburton rose to the occasion and leaves with his reputation enhanced (Jason O'Brien)
From the ashes of Wales’ heartbreaking 14-man semi-final defeat, a team will rise capable of soaring in song, having their own Hymns and Arias written alongside the great Welsh teams of the 1970s. A team forged by the iron in the soul of one of the World Cup’s outstanding performers, Sam Warburton, their inspirational 23-year-old captain.
On every step of this ultimately agonising Welsh journey through New Zealand, Warburton has led from the front. He reminds me of the young Richie McCaw.
Injuries aside, it would be a shock if he is not captain of the Lions when they next tour New Zealand in 2017. It will be incomprehensible if he is fit for duty and is not chosen to lead the Lions to Australia two years from now.
British and Irish rugby has witnessed the burgeoning of not so much a new talent as another force of nature with a burning will to succeed and a physique with the capacity to take him to the outer limits of what a rugby player might achieve.
Had Warburton not been dismissed, Wales would have been looking forward to taking part in next Sunday’s final, and with a decent chance of winning it, too. To lead a team that the world had dismissed to within a hair’s breadth of a crack at Australia or New Zealand is an astonishing achievement; perhaps even more astonishing than the frequency and the ferocity of his determined defensive drive that so inspired Wales throughout this tournament. It takes an exceptional man to achieve what Warburton has managed in so short a time.
Referee Alain Rolland made the calamitous error but it is the Cardiff flanker who will be haunted by the official’s lack of empathy. Hopefully his manager, Warren Gatland, will console the captain. He does not deserve to feel the pain. The camera cut frequently to the Welsh bench to provide a study in sporting heartbreak; the man who has galvanised Wales on the pitch sat, often with his head in his hands, helplessly looking on as France scraped their way into the final.
Doubtless his night was one of sleepless misery, punishing himself for somebody else’s mistake. He will take the blame that a natural leader accepts as his lot. The man commands by example and others follow. This inspiring and quiet commitment has turned him from Martyn Williams’ Cardiff shadow into captain and leader of his country at such a precocious age. He will be a presence in the European game for the foreseeable future.
Call it his destiny, but Warburton has always been a leader through the various Welsh age groups and the speed with which he has stamped his standards upon Welsh rugby marks him as those rare generational talents: think Brian O’Driscoll, Lawrence Dallaglio, Martin Johnson (the player, not the manager); this is the sort of rarefied level at which he is destined for command performances.
Warburton has an aura. He is reputedly no great orator, but Leigh Halfpenny — another Welsh success — claims that the emotional tug of his scant words forced him to patriotic tears in the different junior Welsh teams the flanker captained with the current Wales full-back by his side. Both are set to soar to where the air is thin.
Warburton is a natural. He may be a man of few words but he has an insatiable demand for work. And what work! While Lewis Moody toiled ineffectively at the breakdown, Warburton has joined the southern hemisphere elite of David Pocock, Richie McCaw and Heinrich Brussow at the high table of outstanding opensides; his ascent to the dark world where descent on the ball is everything has been startling.
Williams, one of the technically most accomplished British players of the past decade, deserves great credit. Warburton’s cunning has been honed, and quickly, by the man he replaced as Wales openside. What Williams could not give him was the physique to take his own cleverness to new dimensions. The youngster’s speed into the tackle on the fringe of the breakdown has been one of the highlights of this tournament.
Kiwis rave about him and no country knows the value of a No 7 more than New Zealand. All the accolades that have come his way are merited but none of them will count for anything as he replays the moment he lifted the French right wing and let him fall to the floor rather than usher him to the ground.
It was a terrible end to a terrific tournament and no consolation should be offered but by the time the dust had settled on Wales’s quarter-final victory over Ireland, British Lions’ supporters already knew the identity of the captain for the 2013 trip to Australia. The possibility of Warburton against Pocock in tandem with the potent Toby Faletau and Sean O’Brien is enough for any supporter to start plotting that trip to Australia now.
Before that, Warburton has the more immediate matter of ensuring his country’s resurgence is not another isolated pocket in the recent history of doomed attempts to restore Wales to the elite of world rugby. Looking at the allies available to him, this seems eminently achievable.
Faletau was utterly heroic at No 8 while Dan Lydiate plays the quiet man Richard Hill role to perfection. Priestland, Jamie Roberts, Jonathan Davies, Halfpenny and the 19-year-old sensation, George North provide Wales with a core for future success. Yes, from those bitter ashes of Eden Park a strong Wales will grow, with Sam Warburton at the very epicentre of it all.
