Frank Keating

Five tournaments that shook the rugby world

Twenty teams turn up for rugby union’s World Cup but, realistically, less than half a dozen can ever possibly win it — the heavyweight trio from the southern seas, New Zealand, South Africa or Australia and, from the north, 2007’s hosts France and, in any given year, one of the four from the British Isles.

Twenty teams turn up for rugby union’s World Cup but, realistically, less than half a dozen can ever possibly win it — the heavyweight trio from the southern seas, New Zealand, South Africa or Australia and, from the north, 2007’s hosts France and, in any given year, one of the four from the British Isles.

Twenty teams turn up for rugby union’s World Cup but, realistically, less than half a dozen can ever possibly win it — the heavyweight trio from the southern seas, New Zealand, South Africa or Australia and, from the north, 2007’s hosts France and, in any given year, one of the four from the British Isles. The northerners’ record in the five tournaments staged so far is humdrum in the extreme: England have made two finals and won one, Wales and Scotland have each reached one semi-final and, that’s it.

Brace yourself for longueurs, too: if you can bring yourself to remember the drawn-out 47-day tedium of cricket’s World Cup in the spring, rugby’s at 44 days also threatens some elongated ennui, I’m afraid. Be prepared, too, for some ‘look away now’ wincing when no-hope makeweights are nuked by the flint-hearted trained-to-a-T bully boys. This time the tournament’s second weekend promises to be the most pitilessly sadistic: New Zealand v Portugal in Lyon, France v Namibia in Toulouse, and Ireland v Georgia in Bordeaux. Most ruthless century-up was in the 1995 competition: New Zealand 145, Japan 17; the cleanest annihilation Australia 142, Namibia 0 in 2003.

1987, New Zealand/Australia: They were downbeat beginnings. The first of rugby’s, so far, five World Cups had only half-hearted and reluctant encouragement from Twickenham’s Rugby Football Union which, 20 years ago, still considered itself guardian of the game’s amateur ethos and turned a wary bloodshot eye when the progressive marketeers Down Under insisted on staging it.

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