Analysis: Au revoir, France – thanks for a truly memorable World Cup

Analysis: It was a World Cup that glittered with quality and gripping intensity. But it also highlighted some of the game’s issues, writes Patrick McKendry in Paris.

The big show is over and now that the winners’ Champagne bottles have been emptied and cleared away (possibly), and the tears have dried from the faces of the losers (maybe), it’s time to review a World Cup which spanned the course of three climatic seasons in France but seemed to last a lifetime.

At the end, a tournament which began in sweltering heat at the wonderful Stade de France in St Denis, an unlovely suburb in the north of Paris, and finished at the same place on a cold and wet night lit up by the Springboks’ celebrations seven weeks later, may be remembered most for the quality of its knockout matches.

The New Zealand v Ireland quarter-final was an instant classic, a match played with white-knuckle intensity and serious skill by both teams. It was one of the best Tests I have seen live and a match in which the All Blacks defied expectations to play with accuracy and, apart from the two yellow cards for Codie Taylor and Aaron Smith, discipline. Unfortunately for them, it wouldn’t last.

It was a match neither team deserved to lose and the devastation on the faces of the Irish, so confident going into the match despite never having made a previous World Cup semifinal, was clear. It would be reflected by the All Blacks two weeks later.

Argentina’s come-from-behind victory over Wales in their quarter-final in Marseille which kicked off hours before the All Blacks’ win was earned through similar commitment played out in front of a highly-emotional crowd at the velodrome stadium. The celebrations after Nicolas Sanchez’s late intercept try will live long in the memory.

Fiji’s six-point defeat to England was similarly watchable before South Africa’s extraordinary 29-28 victory over a French side that appeared the better team but who played without the requisite maturity and knockout mentality.

Halfback Antoine Dupont has many qualities but at 26 he still has plenty to learn about managing a game and the absence of first-five Romain Ntamack, ruled out of the tournament before it started, was strongly felt by the hosts.

The Springboks did it again against England – another one-point win thanks to Handre Pollard’s late penalty which came at the end of what was easily their worst performance of the World Cup.

The All Blacks were utterly untroubled by the Pumas in their semifinal, only to run into a hailstorm of card controversies and Pieter-Steph du Toit’s shoulders a week later.

In the end, a match they had no business being on the brink of winning after Shannon Frizell’s yellow card (for a ruck cleanout which would have been legal but for hooker Bongi Mbonambi’s knee injury), Sam Cane’s red card (for a high tackle which appeared to contain more mitigation than the TMO allowed for), Siya Kolisi’s yellow card (for a high tackle which involved more force than Cane’s) and Cheslin Kolbe’s yellow card (for an intentional knock-on), was lost by the width of a goalpost.

We won’t forget Ian Foster’s belief and stoicism, or Cane’s grief. Nor will we forget the skipper’s performance against Ireland, many of Will Jordan’s eight tries, Ardie Savea’s all-round brilliance, or Jordie Barrett’s performance in effectively playing both flanker and midfielder in the final.

All truly memorable, as was Portugal’s utter joy at winning their first World Cup match when they came back to beat Fiji by one point in Toulouse after their bitter disappointment at drawing against Georgia when they missed a late penalty.

Nor should we forget the skill and ambition with which they played in their sadly rare opportunity in the sun.

The same goes for Fiji, who were desperately unlucky against Wales and fully deserved their win over the Wallabies, their first over the Australians in nearly 70 years. It didn’t surprise many given the shambles over which the now former Wallabies coach Eddie Jones reigned.

England’s efforts in beating Argentina, despite playing without the red-carded Tom Curry for most of it, will be remembered – as will their single-mindedness against the Boks in their semifinal defeat, which ultimately was also their undoing.

Ireland had the best fans and they came en masse. A Parisian journalist, born and bred in the city, told me the Irish fans’ gathering outside bars and cafes to drink and laugh and sing brought an anticipation before matches he had never seen here.

Now for the gripes.

Games kicking off at 9pm local time makes commercial sense from a television perspective but it adds an unnecessary layer of stress for spectators trying to get home afterwards in streets deserted by taxis.

Too many pool games were one-sided and spread too thinly. The next World Cup in Australia in 2031 will at least address the latter thanks to the addition of four nations for a 24-team tournament made up of six pools of four.

The television match official – so worryingly prominent in the All Blacks’ warm-up defeat to the Boks at Twickenham – became an unwelcome intrusion into many games, not least the final.

How someone watching a match on a monitor can rule out tries but not penalties, see some things but apparently miss others, and give what on the face of it seems wildly inconsistent advice to the poor official in the middle is one of the biggest issues in the game.

Maybe World Rugby’s bigwigs could take a leaf out of France’s attitude to the law of the land handed down from the days of Napoleon.

According to my French friend, there is the law, and then there is the spirit of the law. It is the reason why one can run a red traffic light here, be stopped by police and then have a “conversation” about whether or not it was illegal.

A final plea after the final. For the love of all things oval, World Rugby, please reconsider a 20-minute red card sanction. Everyone knows it makes sense. You must too.

Au revoir.