Rugby’s new golden age

This column may have been somewhat negative about the future of rugby recently – so how cheering to report a spate of magnificent matches, across both codes and both genders, that provided not only brilliant entertainment but also, as young people like to say these days, ‘learnings’.

The best game of all was the women’s World Cup final at Eden Park, Auckland, when after 80 minutes of spine-tingling rugby union England lost by just three points. Forget any snooty talk you might have heard about women’s rugby. This match had everything: athleticism, a real sense of adventure and far fewer of those interminable caterpillar rucks and reset scrums which clog up the men’s sport. Even the RFU’s chief, Bill Sweeney, agreed: ‘It was a competitive, highly intense sporting event: in many respects probably more entertaining than the men’s game.’ Shame on you if you didn’t rise at dawn to watch it.

Still with union, equally intense but considerably more brutal, with two red cards including one for French skipper Antoine Dupont, was France’s pulsating 30-26 victory over South Africa in Marseille in the Autumn Nations. It was impossible to take your eyes off this nail-biter.

But the most jaw-dropping display of speed, aggression, skill, strength, fitness and guile came in the semi-final of the Rugby League World Cup when Australia, the overwhelming favourites, just held off New Zealand in an epic encounter. At this elite, most competitive level, the game of rugby shows the physical and mental peaks to which human beings can rise. If you don’t enjoy this, team sport is not for you.

But for England’s 15-man side, sterner tests await after last weekend’s mismatch against Japan, not least on Saturday against the All Blacks.