POSTED AT 11:58am 26 OCT 2011
Knockout stages failed to live up to pool excitement
MEMORIES of the 2007 World Cup are still strong in my mind. England’s recovery from a 36-0 pool-stage humiliation against South Africa to battle their way to the final is one, Fiji’s win over Wales is another, but the big story was Argentina’s progress to the semi-finals, upsetting France and Ireland on the way to really make their mark on the world game.
In 2003 it was all about Jonny’s drop goal, 1999 brought us that brilliant semi-final between France and New Zealand, while 1995 brought us Nelson Mandela and Jonah Lomu - two giants in very different ways.
And 2011? Well, I’m struggling. Enjoyable though it mostly was, it’s hard to find any moments in this tournament that will stand out in the memory in years to come. In fact, I think once the pool stage was over it was a bit of a stinker.
New Zealand won for the first time in 24 years, but given how far ahead they’ve been of everyone else in the last eight years that was no great shock. There was a kind of routine feel to it, however close France got to them in a mostly disappointing final.
World Cups are supposed to build to a crescendo, but we had two good quarter-finals - Argentina’s first-half resistance against the All Blacks and Wales’s fearless showing against Ireland were both a pleasure to see - and two rubbish ones - England didn’t turn up against France while South Africa dominated Australia but just couldn’t finish them off.
The first semi-final was spoiled by the red card to Wales skipper Sam Warburton, not simply, as most pundits said afterwards, because it was an unfair decision (I agreed with them at first but I’m not so sure now) but because it made France think they’d already won the game so they stopped trying. Australia had a chance of upsetting New Zealand and we went into the game thinking that if only the Wallabies could get at the
All Blacks early, knock them off the stride, apply some early pressure, we would have a game on our hands. Then Quade Cooper put the kick-off straight into touch and all that went down the drain.
Perhaps for northern hemisphere viewers the morning kick-offs and the feeling of being so far removed from the action put a downer on things, but to my mind this World Cuplimped to a finish having started off so brightly.
The talking point after the opening few matches was how well the lesser nations had performed and there was a lot of debate as to whether the gulf between them and the top tier has narrowed. Clearly it has - IRB
funding has played a large part in that as has the spread of the professional game. In the first half of the pool stage, the handicap underdogs rewarded their backers in 15 of the 20 matches. Quite a few odds-compilers I spoke to said they would be re-assessing the Tier Two
and Three teams, but even if the handicaps did then drop a few points I’m not sure that’s the whole reason why only eight out of 20 handicap underdogs came in during the second half of the pool stage.
Less talented teams are able to make life hard for better sides if they are fit enough and organised enough, and the time they can show that is surely in the opening stages before fatigue sets in and a tougher schedule takes its toll. As for the Tier One teams, they know it’s going to be a long haul and possibly aim to ease themselves into the tournament. It’s only a theory but I would be surprised if teams like Romania, Japan and Georgia, who pushed their opening opponents hard to
stay well within the handicap line, would be able to do the same in a one-off Test next year. The World Cup has a special feel to it and prompts a particular approach. Normally it provides great spectacle and
entertainment. Let’s hope that 2011 was a blip and 2015 brings us a host of thrilling memories.
