Marta try was my favourite moment
A weekly look at the game's other talking points
SO that's a wrap and after this final debrief I suggest we shelve everything for the World Cup for at least two years, otherwise the four-year cycle becomes all-consuming to the detriment of everything else. We have all overdosed recently, become World Cup addicts, and need to go cold turkey for a while.
Let's concentrate instead on trying to breathe life back into elite club rugby in England; restoring the European Cup to its former glory; making the game truly democratic rather than a cruel sporting imitation of North Korea or communist China; nurturing the boom rugby markets of South America and the Iberian peninsula, making sure Georgia don't regress through neglect which is what I fear is happening.
But before we change our focus entirely let's indulge in one last World Cup wallow. RWC2023 the verdict… My take, for what it's worth, is that, although too long by at least a week and although a competition with significant flaws, RWC2023 reached heights never scaled before by any other World Cup with four properly great teams slugging it out and providing memorable head to head encounters all along the way. That of course reached its zenith during an extraordinary quarter-final weekend when even the two undercard games were crackers.
There was much talk about the premature draw but that's a red herring really. If Pool D came out the hat as Pool B which could easily have happened, there would be no complaints then. A curse on micromanaged draws I say, a touch of randomness does no harm, in fact the perfect draw which everybody seemed to crave would probably have given us four routine quarter-finals so it's swings and roundabouts. And it did give us the wonderfully helter skelter, anything goes Pool C which entertained us royally.
The crowds were huge – over 2.4 million paying spectators and projected tournament profits are somewhere in the region of £450m. The fans' experience was excellent, except on some match days with poor transport and long security queues – although they are a fact of life, and you need to travel early – while overofficial jobsworths in the media areas reportedly made life very difficult. Perhaps it's a French thing. RWC2007 was brilliant save for all the caveats listed above.
The biggest downside for the TV viewer was the reffing. The lack of consistency from match to match is a big bugbear but to a certain extent we have grown used to it – but for me the use of the bunker system only confused the issue. It succeeded in a modest form at the Junior World Cup in June when refs only referred decisions that they thought might warrant more than yellow. That worked well enough but its wider brief at the Rugby World Cup was premature and needs revisiting.
I could write a lengthy treatise on this and bore for England but in essence I don't want the referee's authority undermined. At Saturday's final I wanted the world's best referee – Wayne Barnes – in control making the decisions, not an over-eager TMO and a man in a van in a car park at Roland Garros. Like the Stig, his identity is never revealed.
Barnes had the perfect view of the Shannon Frizell incident in real time and was not alarmed, he waved it on. He saw the Sam Cane and Siya Kolisi incidents and did not ask the TMO to check, Tom Foley came in of his own accord. Then you get the super slomo shots which are so unfair to players and the pressure builds to get players off the park.
It's the old story. If you live in Russia or China you will at some stage be breaking a law and liable to arrest. Ditto rugby, the laws are so complicated, illogical and open to interpretation that there is no question a refereeing team could issue 60 penalties per match minimum. It just matters when the sword of Damocles falls. It's the ref who has a feel for a game and the overview of what should and shouldn't be allowed on the night. He should not be marginalised like this.
Meanwhile a few random thoughts to finish with. Realistically any side wanting to win the World Cup must build a pack to match South Africa. They won't change, they aren't going anywhere so unless you can go toe to toe with their 15 forwards you will lose. Now this might not be pretty because there is also a growing demand in the game to play pleasing fluid attacking rugby, which can look great but doesn't win World Cups.
Rassie Erasmus, innovative coaching genius? Jury is out for me. I enjoyed the mark and scrum in their own 22 and his use of the bench is clever, so full marks there. Elsewhere, much of it is just distracting fluff and ego massaging. The traffic lights from the coaches' box is a nonsense and hints at control freakery; the sudden tactical substitution of Bongi Mbonambi after the hooker had three minutes of medical attention and limped off was just childlike grandstanding because he or the Boks' think-tank like to appear ostentatiously clever while in my opinion the main reason the semi-final with England was so close was the Boks' rigid determination to keep hoisting high balls for Freddie Steward to gobble up. They played to England's one super strength.
And what of Portugal? A breath of fresh air. Proper old style attacking rugby, it was like watching an outstanding school side or the France U20 teams of recent vintage. Speed of thought and limb, clever skills, uninhibited attacking and great tackle technique. Absolutely the moment of the World Cup for me was on a perfect late summer's evening in that queen of all rugby cites Toulouse, with the crowd going nuts, when Portugal dared to believe and attacked yet again at the death to secure their match winner against Fiji. Rugby heaven, pure and simple.
