Rugby World Cup: déjà vu encore une fois

On the last occasion when one of my bouts of blogging coincided with the Rugby World Cup, back in 2011, I lamented the predictability of it all and commented that for me the tournament held little excitement, even though I’m a keen rugby fan.

At that stage only four teams had ever won, only one more had appeared in a final, and a total of just eight had ever reached the semi-final in the six World Cups that had happened to that point. And four World Cups later, that statistic still holds good. Saturday's final will be contested by two teams who between them have won the last four tournaments.

For only a handful of games in the pool stages could it be said that the result was in doubt before the kick-off and the result mattered in deciding who qualified for the next stage. While it was good that Fiji beat Australia such meaningful contests were relatively few.

The contrast with football is stark. In the last 10 FIFA World Cups, seven teams have been champions, two more have appeared in the final without winning and 10 more have reached semi-finals. There is a sense that any game could spring a surprise and help decide who goes through to the next round.

This year's Rugby World Cup was supposed to be different. Ireland, who had never previously got beyond the quarter-finals, were ranked number one in the world. The hosts France seemed genuine challengers too. More teams than ever before seemed to be in with a real chance of progressing to the later stages, even if the lopsided draw put meant only two of the top five teams could reach the semi-final.

At first it seemed this change to the traditional order was a reality. Ireland and France beat South Africa and New Zealand respectively in the pool stages. But with these fixtures reversed for the quarter-finals the traditional giants of the southern hemisphere edged out the northern pretenders.

So now we have a final where I don't really want either team to win. I suppose we can draw some comfort between an apparent narrowing of the gap between the traditional top dogs and the historic also-rans and have to hope that this will continue so that the 2027 tournament is the one that sees the traditional order overturned.