Why send minnows cruising for a bruising?

THE Rugby Europe Championship was back up and running this weekend, with the Netherlands facing Russia in Amsterdam, and it will not be long before we know who has earned themselves the right to be smacked by 50 points a game (if they’re lucky) at the World Cup in France in two years’ time.

Assuming the top European qualifying spot goes to the Georgia, who are well ahead of the field at the halfway stage, the honour of sharing a pool with Ireland, Scotland and, joy of joys, South Africa is most likely to fall on Portugal or Romania. The choruses of “can’t wait” must be filling the air in Lisbon and Bucharest.

Where do the World Cup organisers think they are going with their shop window offering? It is impossible to secondguess their thought processes without a PhD in cognitive psychology, but it must surely be dawning on someone somewhere that the format is not fit for purpose.

This column has argued previously for a slimmed-down, 16-team elite tournament aimed at minimising mismatches, accompanied by a “shadow” competition for those nations who, at a guess, might actually enjoy playing games they have half a chance of winning.

The calamitous 100point hiding suffered by the United States at the hands of an understrength New Zealand has reinforced the point.

So, too, have events at the T20 World Cup currently unfolding in the Arabian Gulf – a spectacle so compelling, it has made many bish-bash refuseniks, your columnist included, rethink their prejudices.

Frankly, there is no reason for anyone with a sporting soul to watch the All Blacks put a zillion points on “Africa 2” when there is a dog to walk and a pint to be sipped. Pakistan versus Afghanistan, on the other hand…