World Cup Vodoo

Mark Daniell previews the Rugby World Cup semi-finals.

Mark Daniell

Chaos theory states that because of its incomprehensibly complex structure, the universe and everything in it is unpredictable. Established in the twentieth century, the idea is accepted as ‘good enough for now’ by most budding astrophysicists, and lately it would seem by most rugby fans too.

The theory suggests that the tiniest influence, so easily overlooked at source, can have a monumental effect somewhere else, and is most famously illustrated by the Butterfly Effect: a butterfly flapping its wings in London may cause a hurricane in Mexico. (Interestingly, the inverse effect has yet to be studied, but it has been suggested that a combination of global warming and the ‘Hurricane Effect’ is responsible for something of an extermination of London’s butterflies.)

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Either way, a classic example of this was witnessed over the weekend when the chief executive of Australian rugby, John O’Neill, famously stated that he hated the English. A small wing flap that had been intended as a quip to sell papers and mock the old enemy resulted in a colossal England forward performance with the consequence that O’Neill is now flapping his wings back to Darwin.

Considering the previous England performances it was a truly astonishing result. Going into the match, Martin Johnson had tried to temper expectations as he pointed out that Australia had only lost one knock-out match in the last two World Cups. Clearly this isn’t much of a mathematical revelation since a team can only lose one knock-out match per World Cup (hence the term ‘knock-out’) and the point could just as easily have been made that Australia won the trophy eight years ago, but his point was: they’re hard to beat.

Personally, I see O’Neill’s casual aside as unwittingly sparking a St Crispin’s Eve fervour in the England camp which mixed with the knowledge that defeat would mean immediate international retirement for many of this aging band of brothers produced a performance of unforeseen determination.