2023-10-09 08:10:00
Started on September 8, the Rugby World Cup has just ended the group stage, leaving twelve teams in the lurch, when the other eight are preparing to play the final phase in the form of knockout matches. The opportunity to look back on a month of competition rich in emotions, before vibrating harder next weekend for the quarter-finals, which will see Fabien Galthié’s Blues “ready to give everything” against South Africa. South Sunday.
The three Musketeers
Three nations, Ireland, South Africa and France, in order of entry into the world rankings before the opening of the competition, already largely dominated rugby at the beginning of September. Each held their place, qualifying without trembling with, overall, a level of play so high that we see less than ever who could create a surprise, if not the All Blacks, transgenerational legends of rugby, fallen to the rank of outsiders, who, inevitably mortified, will only fall (against Ireland, in the quarter-final) with weapons in hand. At home, France mastered its subject, without creating any fear, with Ollivon, Penaud, Alldritt and Ramos rising to the occasion. A bright smile… until the grimace following the injury of boss Antoine Dupont, which plunged everyone into an abyss of conjectures.
Fiji, fall hit?
In a sport where, historically, half a dozen nations leave others only the crumbs of the feast, every (half) surprise is welcome. At the beginning of September, we bet a coin on Georgia and Fiji. If the former disappointed, the latter, on the other hand, brought this salutary breeze of freshness, by almost equalizing with Wales and, above all, by dominating Australia, certainly in zombie mode. Very likely qualified (subject to having taken at least one point against Portugal, Sunday evening, after the closing of this newspaper) for the third time in their history in the quarter-final, the Fijians, who have no shrink but a reverend on their staff, will challenge England. A miraculous nation, given its poor results over the past two years, we can’t wait to know if it has really regained its colors or just benefited from an absurd draw (because it was carried out three years in advance!) which catapulted into one of the two weakest groups of the event.
The main surprise of this first month of rugby games is the very probable elimination of Australia (a first at this stage in the World Cup)… barring a spectacular Fijian failure. Double winners of the event, the Wallabies have never seemed so weak. Recruited after leading England into a dead end, Eddie Jones once again found himself in the hot seat: reviled by the media, the coach had chosen (by default?) to focus on youth. A fiasco, like opener Carter Gordon, a blooper in his own right, who failed everything he tried – namely, almost nothing.
Titan gaps
This observation is not new (see an Australia-Namibia score in 2003 at 142-0, or an All Blacks-Japan score at 145-17 in 1995!): a gulf separates the stars of the oval from the trimmers, who come to make up the numbers – and get beaten up. With a cruelly ironic lucidity, the Chile coach, Pablo Lemoine, speaks of “clowns” and “big owners”. As a result, matches are already over before kick-off, where the avalanche of tries, often spectacular because they are conducive to riding, struggles to mask the lack of adrenaline.
Of the 40 group matches, less than a quarter ended with a defensive bonus (synonymous with a difference of at most seven points) for the loser, an irrefutable translation of an abysmal difference in level which ends up harming the credibility of the test – at least in the group stage. Why not imagine a test limited to twelve or fifteen nations, which would also last less time? On the exact opposite, World Rugby is however considering a next World Cup with 24 teams, on the grounds (hypocritical, fallacious and mercantile – more countries, therefore more broadcasters, therefore more…) that it is the the only context in which the barefoot can rub shoulders with the titans. Which, given a rugby lesson every four years, obviously doesn’t help the schmilblick move forward.
Tell me, when will you come back ?
Promoted to national hero even before the start of the event – and head of a sport which now fully lives with its times, in the advertising, communications and marketing sense of the term – Antoine Dupont hastily left his partners in the 45th minute of France-Namibia, September 21 in Marseille. Since then, without having studied medicine, the whole country has an opinion on how to treat a maxillo-zygomatic fracture which makes no one laugh. In 1972, Gotlib and Jacques Lob imagined Superdupont, a comic book hero capable of defending the values of France. Half a century later, its quasi-homonym is hoped for as the messiah against South Africa, the reigning world champion, in the quarter-final.
Logistics success
As hoped and planned, the World Cup is indeed a great celebration, cordial and noisy, where, even on the threshold of an alcoholic coma, the most stubborn of supporters knows – once the Pena Baiona, the Hunter and others have been wrung out. ‘Emilie – don’t cross the threshold of the bawdy song bellowed in unison in the metro or tram. The organization was generally up to par, the initial hiccups were quickly resolved, and the security forces, deployed massively, twiddled their thumbs (we even saw CRS in uniform busy filming the crowds joyful with their smartphones or making crosswords between two parked trucks).
Almost all the stadiums were full, from Lille to Toulouse, to a Uruguay-Namibia without any stakes, to Lyon, where the protagonists (sometimes amateurs) could not believe their eyes to find themselves in front of almost 50,000 people . The other side of the coin is the bludgeoning of the “lemonadiers” who, at 12 euros per pint around the Stade de France (compared to 8 in Lille), would undoubtedly like the Cup to remain full for a very long time. On the TV side, audiences climbed high, with TF1 exceeding 15 million for the opening match, France-New Zealand.
The bunker, stronghold of arbitration
Technological contribution, video assistance to refereeing (appearing at the beginning of the 21st century) now allows eight minutes to analyze remotely, in a “bunker”, fouls which, after re-re-re-re-viewing , can, on the principle of immediate appearance, entitle a player, initially temporarily excluded, to see his card change from yellow to red. This prevents meetings from being too choppy and, a priori, guarantees a certain fairness.
It should also be noted, in a sport known to be violent, that there was no pitched battle – barely one or two “old-fashioned” squabbles – nor deliberately aggressive gestures, the most serious faults always falling within the technical error, bad reflex or fateful “act of play”. Which doesn’t make them any less potentially dangerous.
Capped at the posts
If not all players excel on the wings or at the heart of the rucks, there is another way to break the screen: hairstyle. Thus, each major international competition brings its share of very risky looks. In the long run, we ended up getting used to the little blond and feathery crest of the English pillar Joe Marler, a familiar figure in continental games. Even the unique dreadlocks in jumping pigtails of the Japanese Shota Horie.
But, since their teams have left the event, this is the moment or never to send a compassionate salute to the baldness thwarted by long hair which hangs in the nape of the neck of the Chilean pillar Esteban Inostroza, to the impossible blond mullet (ah this mullet, which would destroy the power of seduction of Timothée Chalamet or Louis Garrel, but continues to wreak havoc in sport and elsewhere) of the Samoan scrum half, Jonathan Taumateine, or the big peroxide tuft, just outside back of the skull, of the Tongan pillar Siegfried Fisi’ihoi. Among other cases lost, until further notice, for the hair cause.
The bobo game
Whether you get injured in a match or in training, this is called the risks of the job (high, in rugby). But a player falling down the stairs or a spider bite depriving you of ground seems more unusual. Such, however, is the misfortune experienced by Scottish hooker David Cherry (who had just celebrated his first selection, playing twenty-four minutes against South Africa) who fell in the middle of his day off in his hotel in Nice, where of the Namibian second line, Johan Retief, 1m90, 110 kilos, savagely attacked in the plexus (hence, according to his coach, “big abscess” and “small operation”), in Aix-les-Bains, by a creature weighing a few grams and centimeters (whose guilt, however, could not be formally established).
World Cup quarter-final posters
– Saturday October 14 at 5 p.m. in Marseille: Wales – Japan or Argentina – Saturday October 14 at 9 p.m. in Saint-Denis: Ireland – New Zealand – Sunday October 15 at 5 p.m. in Marseille: England – Fiji (or Australia , according to a scenario whose degree of probability escapes us for the moment) – Sunday October 15 at 9 p.m. in Saint-Denis: France – South Africa
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