This month has been great for footy, whatever your code. A fortnight ago Geelong proved too much for Collingwood in the grand final of the AFL and Manly beat down the Warriors to walk away with the NRL premiership. However, there’s another high profile footy tournament currently underway, alarmingly unremarked upon: the IRB Rugby World Cup.
Unlike the other two tournaments, which are both annual and domestic, the Rugby (Union) World Cup runs once every 4 years, and is played to an international standard. The Wallabies entered the tournament ranked No. 2 in the world, with a young team under a relatively new coach. Australia has at last found a forward pack capable of contesting with the best teams on the planet. With all this in mind, it seems a little odd that for the majority of the tournament thus far, Rugby Union hype at ANU has been conspicuously MIA.
For curious readers, 20 teams qualify for the World Cup, and are divided into four pools. Each team plays every other team in their pool once, and the top two scoring teams go through to the knockout stages, which began last weekend (8th October) Pool A saw New Zealand dominate France, her most competitive opponent, 37-17. France did not have a great campaign during the pool stages and was humbled by Tonga a fortnight ago 14-19. Unfortunately, Tonga’s earlier loss to Canada put them out of the running for the quarter finals. Pool D proved uneventful. Everyone beat Namibia; Fiji and Samoa didn’t pose much of a challenge to the top seeded South Africa and runners-up Wales.
Pool B was much more dramatic, seeing a close contest between England, Scotland and Argentina competing for the 2 qualifying positions. The top ranking England, in their very first game, scraped a desperate win over Argentina, 14-9. Argentina went on to find a 13-12 win over Scotland with a glorious late second half try. Despite an inspirational performance a fortnight back, Scotland were knocked out of the competition in the rain by England 16-12. England won the pool, followed closely by Argentina.
The biggest upset of the tournament thus far, unfortunately, came in Pool C. On the 17th of September, in a try-less game, the Irish forward pack outplayed the Wallabies to walk away with a 6-15 victory. Australia entered this game off the back of a 32-6 thumping of Italy, the only other Pool C contender, and went on to comfortably win its matches against Russia and the USA. This left Italy and Ireland to play a decider last Sunday (2nd October). Given the points distribution, if Italy won, Australia would have topped the pool, (giving us a much easier run in the knockout stages), and Italy would qualify in second place. If Ireland won, they would win the pool and take Italy out of the tournament. Despite some fantastic rolling mauls from the Italian forward pack, handling errors and an intrusive referee prevented them from putting any significant points on the board. The 36-6 score line in favour of Ireland, who eventually topped pool D, was not a reflection of the quality of the game.
The knockout stages began on Saturday (October 8th) with Wales trouncing Ireland 22-10 in the most outstanding 80 minutes of rugby this commentator has watched all tournament. 5 minutes into the second half it was 10-10. Tommy Bowe and Brian O’Driscoll looked dangerous for Ireland but the Welsh defence held.
In the game that followed, after losing to Tonga, France turned everything around to bring England to heel 19-12. England had conceded just one try in its four pool stages matches thus far, but France put two on the scoreboard before half time, leading 16-0. England fought back with two tries of its own, but two penalties kicked by Dimitri Yachvili, the French scrum half, and a well earned drop goal from replacement no. 10 Francois Trinh-Duc kept the French ahead.
On Sunday afternoon Australia scraped a heart-pounding win from a South African side that on every statistic should have a spot in the semi finals. With 20 minutes remaining, two penalties and a drop goal from Morne Steyn had put South Africa ahead, 9-8. In response, with 8 minutes on the clock, James O’Connor slotted a penalty to bring Australia to 11, and putting us into the semi finals. Thank god.
In the last quarter-final, Argentina fought gallantly against New Zealand but were brought down in the second half 22-10.
