Marcus Agnew: Rugby next in line in year of world cups

All Blacks captain Kieran Read will be hoping to bring home the World Cup to sit alongside the Freedom Cup he is pictured holding aloft. Photo / File

For the old school sports fan 2019 is a great year. It's one of those years that rolls around one in every four, whereby it's world cup year.

Three world cups in one year, with three of our biggest and most traditional team sports all taking the stage.

With the results so far at the cricket and netball world cups we are in pole position against our rivals, and now it is just for the rugby boys to put the nail in the coffin to pronounce ourselves as overall winners across the three World Cups combined.

On the back of the netball girls getting the win, the rugby boys have a chance to complete the World Cup double – something we have only done once before, 32 years ago in 1987 when the netballers took it out in Scotland, and the rugby boys here in New Zealand.

Sadly, our mates across the ditch have already done the Netball-Rugby World Cup double twice - in 1991, 1999 – not only that, the did the full Cricket-Netball-Rugby treble in 1999.

I remember 1999 with a fair amount of pain, like plenty of other antipodeans I made the pilgrimage to England that year for a working OE to follow the cricket and rugby world cups.

I had the pleasure of attending both semifinal defeats, a thumping from Pakistan in Manchester for the cricket, and a gutting loss to France at Twickenham in the rugby.

Aussie went on to win both those tournaments, and just to put a painful nail in the coffin Aussie beat our netballers with an agonising 1-point defeat in Christchurch.

The netball has had an amazing rivalry with Australia, the recent victory in the final was absolutely vital in getting that rivalry back on track.

Finally, a 1-point victory to us – after they had amazingly completed three of their own 1-point victories against us in the World Cup finals of 1991, 1999 and 2011.

In the last World Cup year of 2015 we made the final of all three World Cups, all three finals against those Aussies – they thumped us in the cricket final in Melbourne, edged us by three in the netball final at Sydney, with us winning the rugby final on neutral turf in London.

This year the rugby boys have the chance to make this the most successful World Cup in our history across the three sports.

The cricketers did incredibly well but it was seriously bittersweet. A 'sweet as' tournament with the boys really stepping up in the final stages to knock out India in the semi, and play so well in a desperately tight and tense final. But a wickedly bitter finish to the game, with a ridiculous final chapter that no one would have scripted.

To have the upper hand in the final over, only to tie the game after an extremely rare four overthrows deflecting of the oppositions' bat – it was literally hard to believe, with many of us left as stunned mullets on that horrible Monday morning. I hadn't seen an overthrow deflection for four runs like that, since the mid-80s in an Australian test, and here we get it at a vital moment with three balls to go in the final – OMG.

Thankfully the sporting gods smiled on us the next Monday morning, and we got to see Laura and the team leap around in unbridled ecstasy, with the Aussie girls on the wrong end of a nail-biter for once.

Marcus Agnew

So on to the Rugby World Cup, kicking off next month in Japan. How the worm has turned for our Rugby World Cup campaigns – it wasn't long ago our biggest mental challenge was to get over choking, now our biggest mental challenge will be to get over the complacency of winning the last two.

Shag and his men will no-doubt get them focused, and hopefully they can pull off an unprecedented three-peat. They need to take the chance to do it, as it will likely never happen again.

And if they can, they will round off an incredible world cup year for our major Kiwi sports teams. Three world cup finals without a defeat. Yes – unbeaten.

* Marcus Agnew is the health and sport development manager at Hawke's Bay Community Fitness Centre Trust and is also a lecturer in sports science at EIT.