We’re 50 days out from the Rugby World Cup and, if you’re not me, you might be considering a bit of a flutter. Before you dash out to place your bets and make your fortune based on what’s written here, I should put my hand up and say I incredibly rarely gamble cash on anything and I’m a very poor rugby pundit. However, it’s a matter of record that only four countries have won the Rugby World Cup: New Zealand and South Africa have won three times each, Australia have won twice and England once.
How Are The Historical Main Runners Shaping Up?
The Good
New Zealand have looked fallible over most of the last three years – good at times but poor at others – rather than the all consuming, all conquering Darkness of World Cup cycles of yore. So too defending champions South Africa. They haven’t always looked great, but when they do, they really do. However, losses to the likes of Italy don’t help their cause. While I happily applaud the improvement Italian rugby has shown, centred around the likes of Capuozzo and Garbisi, they shouldn’t be beating a top four in the world type side, not yet anyway. In addition, injuries seem to be plaguing the Bokke at the worst possible time.
However, we’ve now seen both of these sides in two rounds of The Rugby Championship and 2023 looks to be a new year in more ways than one. One of my friends is French and she’s really nervous about the opening match, France v New Zealand, now. You get the feeling, with both of these sides, that they’re coming into full strength, some injuries aside, around now and, if you’re a fan, you’ll hope that they’re building towards October. You can look at both sides and pick out areas that they still need to improve. But you’re looking at gilding the lily rather than trying to find a plan.
The Bad and The Ugly
Australia and England have both changed coaches less than a year out. For England, they had the Six Nations under Borthwick to try and get it together and they looked very ordinary. If you consider that the Welsh players were seriously considering a strike in the week before the England match because of issues with the WRU, and England just beat them that gives you a clue how poor England really were. England finished fourth, above Wales and Italy. It was reasonable to expect Wales to struggle to find an identity when week-to-week the players on either side of the few that carried over were different. England didn’t have that excuse but, if anything, seemed even more lacking in identity. Can Borthwick and his team create more of an identity in their remaining matches to give them a chance of running deep this year? Do England actually have the talent to do so?
Australia are in a worse position, if anything. They dumped Rennie for Jones shortly after Jones was released by England. However, Jones and the players haven’t had a chance to work together, to let Jones see what he can do with them, until The Rugby Championship started this month. The problem that arose? We didn’t really see anything that looked like a plan, beyond Jones picking just about the heaviest Wallaby side he could. What we did see was a lot of the same old problems; poor discipline, tackling optional, lack of thought. In the first game you could argue they were just outclassed by a South African team on fire. But, even before injury required a rejig in the backs, the same issues were there against Argentina. Was it the players or the coach who was most to blame?
Should We Only Look At The Top Four Sides?
The Context
We can only go back to July 2007 to see how teams that went on to win the World Cup
were rated at this point. The World Rugby (the WRC as they used to be) released their first rankings after the 2003 World Cup. So, from 2007 to 2019 the team that has won it all has been a top four side at this point in every year, except 2019 when South Africa were fifth. However, if you move it on to mid-August 2019 they were fourth – in 2019, the top six were all very close and positions switched with almost every match.
So this year, looking at the top four might be more reasonable. While we might agree that the World Rugby rankings are not ideal, currently there’s a clear top four, and then a break to the next cluster of six or more. We might argue about what the order of the top four should be, but I don’t think many people would, hand on heart, argue that Ireland, France, New Zealand and South Africa are clearly ahead of the rest at the moment. Of course, we’ve already looked at two of these, but what about Ireland and France?
Ireland
It’s easy to dismiss Ireland as the team that ‘never got past the quarter finals.’ If you look at the way that Leinster played in URC semi-final and the Heineken Cup final you have to wonder about their tendency to choke in the big games. It certainly still seems to be there. Leinster and Ireland are not quite interchangeable, but almost, but they lost to Munster in the URC semi-finals despite the team sheet looking like Ireland vs ‘who the hell are they?’
Toulouse, who won the Heineken Cup are certainly littered with stars of the French team in fact both 1 and 15, are typically starters for Toulouse and France, but you can’t say it’s France 1 to 15 despite that. There are many non-international club players on the team sheet too. In France, their national players are spread, much like in England, across several of their top teams, yet they basically bullied Ireland-lite. Possibly more worrying, England, that same England I described as searching for an identity above, were really troubling Ireland until Steward was given a red card just before half time. Now, it’s possible Ireland would have regrouped and pulled away with Farrell giving them the hairdryer treatment over oranges, but the second half didn’t really play out like that. It seemed more that England still troubled them until the fatigue of playing a man down let Ireland start exploiting holes late in the game.
Are teams working out how to play both Leinster and Ireland? It might not be a popular opinion in the Emerald Isle, particularly around Dublin, but it’s certainly one you can justify. We also have to factor in the Sexton effect. He’s been handed down a three-game ban for behaviour “confrontational and aggressive towards and disrespectful of the match officials” as a non-playing captain after verbally attacking Jaco Peyper. This means he’ll miss all of Ireland’s warm up games and that he’ll come into their first game in the World Cup not having played any rugby since the Six Nations in March. Does that make him well rested or rusty? He’s got two matches, Romania and Tonga, to get back to full match fitness, before Ireland play South Africa on September 23rd. If Ireland play well they are certainly good enough to win it all. However, questions remain about their mental ability to win those three knockout games in a row.
France
Galthié seems to have achieved the impossible. There is a robust team defence, something France rarely have, and we should applaud Edwards for that really. However, Galthié has also produced a solid team that works for each other in attack and clearly has team tactics yet doesn’t suppress the individual flair and brilliance that makes them so dangerous. Is that enough to win a World Cup?
Although this isn’t the time and space for a truly in-depth analysis of the history of France in previous World Cups, they have reached the final on several occasions, in years when they’ve had a robust, but generally not world class, defence and one of a solid team structure attack or jouer, jouer flair. Having all three, and this time a world class defence, surely makes them much more of a threat, as does playing at home.
Arguably, as Ronan O’Gara rather ungraciously but accurately suggested, the better team lost the Top 14 final. La Rochelle looked like a more cohesive, better organised team to many, including me. Toulouse, didn’t play badly, but not as well as a collective as the Rochelais. However, they had more moments of magic. France can do that, and have done it, against anyone, at any time. It’s hard to defend against and gives them a way to win any game. They only need to do that once, possibly twice, to win it all. Why only once or twice? Because they are also good enough to win as a team, based on solid tactical play as a unit, and that can win them one or two of the big knockout games too. Ireland supporters will point to the comfortable (32-19) victory in the Six Nations this year. Possibly an indicator of things to come. French supporters will counter with the fact that about half the team were playing their first match back from injury and Glathié spent most of the Six Nations experimenting with possible Plan B’s for France and hardly playing Plan A at all. Including in this game.
This might be clever in two ways. First, France have tried several possibilities, under fairly severe stress. They have a good idea of what plan B works for them and probably a good idea of how to tweak the rest. Second, no one can look at their recent games and predict what their alternative options might be. If you develop a counter to plan A and tactics to shut down some of the stars, it’s pretty clear France will have a plan B. But which of the options they’ve tried will it be? No idea yet. Defence coaches everywhere will be wondering how to prepare because do you prepare for a team with five different plan B’s, a solid plan A and all those moments of individual genius? France seem like a good shout to at least reach the final, but can they take that last step and actually win it? I can’t really answer that, but they are certainly in with a good chance.
The Pools
Because of Covid, and pre-selecting the pools for the top seeds, there is a side of death and a side of relative ease. Pool A has New Zealand and France and sorry everyone else. Pool B has South Africa and Ireland, in theory Scotland could emerge but realistically not this year. These two pools cross over in the quarter-finals so the runner up of one plays the winner of the other and vice versa. This means only only two of the current top four sides in the world will be in the semis. That seems pretty hard on the losing quarter finalists from these pools to be honest.
Pool C is Wales, Australia, Fiji, Georgia and Portugal. After recent results I’m not going to confidently predict who will emerge. It ought to be Wales and Australia, but Fiji have upset Wales at previous World Cups, and Georgia beat them in November. Both Wales and Australia swapped coaches around Christmas and who knows what the new coach will bring. You can argue that Wales know more, but the Six Nations really showed Gatland looking at everyone available. We didn’t see the squad that will be going to France. That’s been exacerbated by a rash of retirements based on injury and the cash crisis in Welsh Rugby. Australia have played a couple of matches and are still looking for their best side, still haven’t put a plan out on the field that seems to make sense. It would be polite to say it hasn’t gone all that well so far. There aren’t many games before the big show to get it right. I’m not confidently predicting who will emerge from this pool, certainly not confident whoever it is will win a quarterfinal.
Pool D is England, Japan, Argentina and, with the greatest of respect, two also rans. I think it’s likely that England and Argentina will emerge, but Japan prepared like crazy for 2019 and could be doing the same again here. Their results against the All Blacks XV are not great, but they still have time to improve and a settle team and coaching staff. They could beat both of them. Argentina have recently beaten all of the Southern Hemisphere sides, but also lost to them, they could easily beat whoever emerges from Pool C in a quarter final, then potentially face a southern hemisphere side in a semi-final. With a recent win and Cheika firing them up another victory is not impossible, and there you have Los Pumas in the final.
So, of the teams in this half of the draw, I think Los Pumas are the most likely team to reach the final. I wouldn’t like to bet on it, but you might feel it’s worth it. We haven’t seen them put three great games together under Cheika, but that doesn’t mean they can’t. Historically they like playing in France as well. I don’t believe, at the moment, any of the sides in Pool C can string together three wins in the knockout stages. Likewise, while England will probably reach the knockout stages, they don’t currently have the identity to win three in a row. A long set of warm up matches and training camps might change that. They are playing Wales home and away, Ireland away and Fiji at home. Is that going to be enough to let the squad and coaches develop a genuinely cohesive plan and get it into place? England supporters will tell you that the signs were there against Ireland, it was starting to emerge, but has it faded away since March? We will have to wait and see. My biases say no, there’s not enough time to get it together for them.
It might surprise you to read that I think Argentina are the team most likely of these teams to threaten to reach the final. It might not seem like it from the performance against the All Blacks, but the improvement they showed against Australia was marked. I don’t think they’ll beat the Bokke, but they’re on the right trajectory. Unlike Australia, where it’s all new, and a new coaching set up, for Argentina it’s a case of gelling again and building on what they’ve established over the last 18 months or so. That’s a different proposition.
I know two teams from pools C and D have to reach the semi-finals, the competition is structured that way. However, whoever wins the pool C vs D quarter-finals will be facing the survivors of France, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, at least most likely two of those four. Now, injuries, suspensions and red cards during the match could certainly see things going the other way, but this far out, whichever two of those sides it is seem stronger than whichever two you pick from pools C and D.
Final Thoughts
Rugby is, perhaps, more unpredictable than ever. There are more ways to get red cards and it’s almost impossible to imagine that at least one, probably more of the knockout matches won’t be affected to some extent by one. Even a red card in the last two minutes, if it’s to the wrong player, could have a dramatic impact. Can you name France’s replacement scrum half without looking him up? Imagine Dupont being shown red in the last few minutes of the quarter final and getting a four match ban. What chance France to lift the trophy then? To save you looking up the normal replacement for Dupont, Maxime Lucu from Bordeaux is the name I’m willing to bet most of you didn’t know.
However, I’d expect a final between two of France, Ireland, New Zealand and South Africa, and thus one of those to win. That’s not narrow enough to let you bet on each of them and make your money back. On the other hand, it does make the pool of likely winners wider than we’ve had in years gone by.
It’s exciting from that perspective.
