Time to stop humiliating sides at the World Cup
World Cups produce non-playing “villains” as well as rogues of the on-field variety. Frenchmen and Scots alike would happily throw Craig Joubert of South Africa in the stocks for his – how best to put this?– idiosyncratic refereeing in 2011 and 2015, while the Italians would leave a horse’s head in the bed of the fixture planner who cost them so dearly in 2003, if only they could find him.
Yet some of the accused are less guilty than others. Take the case of Romeo Gontineac, who coached Romania at the global gathering in New Zealand a decade ago and waved a white handkerchief by asking ten second-teamers to do pool-stage battle with England.
The reaction among the game’s privileged class was predictably purple-faced. A second-string? Against the former champions? Who the hell does this bloke think he is?
Gontineac knew precisely who he was. He was a coach in a fix. The England match, which he knew his players could not possibly win, was in Dunedin on a Saturday. Romania’s fixture against a well-rested Georgia, in which they might just prevail with the grace of God and a full-strength side, was slated for Palmerston North the following Wednesday.
Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Gontineac held his nose and jumped. There was no happy landing, sadly. Romania lost by a landslide to England – hardly surprising, with the hooker Marius Tincu, the prop Paulica Ion and the back rower Mahei Macovei being held back – and then came up short against their Eastern European rivals before flying home feeling they’d been royally rogered by the rugby elite.
Tournament administrators have done some useful tinkering round the edges since then, but the cards are still stacked mountain-high against the lower-ranked teams. At the first four World Cups, there were only ten losing margins of 50 points or more. At the subsequent five, there were 37.
Strangely, there are people out there who argue for expansion of the current 20-team format. Yes, honestly. They believe a 24-team World Cup in 2027 would somehow add to the gaiety of nations – that watching South Africa stick 15 tries on Hong Kong would be a fun way of spending an evening.
This column approaches things from the opposite direction. Forget expansion and embrace reduction instead. A more concentrated 16-country format – four groups of four – would crank up the intensity of the pool stage and give the schedulers a chance to level a playing field that remains so steep for the have-nots, a team of Sherpas would think twice about performing on it.
Would such a change not make a mockery of rugby’s claim to be a major international sport? Not if you run a parallel ten-team tournament (two
“For far too long, rugby’s meek have not so much inherited the earth as eaten dirt”
groups of five) alongside the main event, with the bottom teams from each World Cup pool joining the top two from the “World Shield” equivalents at the quarter-final stage.
And not if the winners of that final secure a seat at the big table next time around, together with a significant package of financial incentives and guaranteed home-and-away, revenueshared matches against Tier One nations to help with preparation – a massive prize.
If such a system was implemented for the first time tomorrow, the World Cup proper would feature the eight foundation unions and the three usual suspects from the Pacific islands, together with Argentina, Japan, Italy, Georgia and the USA.
These countries currently fill the top 16 places in the international rankings, but once the format was up and running, the top three from each pool at the previous tournament would be granted an automatic place.
For illustrative purposes, a rankingsdriven field for the first “Shield” would include Romania, Uruguay, Russia, Spain, Hong Kong, Namibia, Canada, Portugal, Belgium and Brazil. In reality, regional qualification tournaments would decide who participates and who doesn’t.
What’s not to like? There would be an open door between the tournaments – a crucial factor in “growing the game” – and the broadcasters would get many more bangs for their bucks. With intelligent planning, there could be a meaningful match almost every night for six weeks.
More importantly still for those of us with a romantic streak, the poor, downtrodden likes of Namibia might finally discover the joy of conceding fewer than 60 points every time they set foot on the pitch (pretty much the default score against them over their 22 World Cup outings to date).
We all hoped, back in the day, that exposure to big-time tournament rugby would be of tangible benefit to the lowliest qualifiers and that the sport would grow as a consequence. Those things haven’t happened. There is barely a gnat’s crotchet of difference between the performances of the five weakest teams at the 1999 tournament – average defeat 51-12 – and those in Japan in 2019, where the equivalent humiliation was 45-10.
For far too long, rugby’s meek have not so much inherited the earth as eaten dirt. The major nations avoid them like the proverbial plague for three and a half years of every fouryear cycle, publicly humiliate them for a month, then ignore them all over again.
Rugby should start imagining something better for itself. Why not start at the top?