All Blacks captain Kieran Read. Photo / Getty Images
All Blacks captain Kieran Read. Photo / Getty Images
COMMENT:
Rugby World Cups have survived all manner of scandals. Allegations of a referee being bribed with a gold watch, supposed deliberate food sabotage, England playing with 16 men, Scotland being ousted by a wrongly awarded penalty and yet the World Cup stands without a smear of impropriety sticking toit.
So strangely it is an act of God, a weather phenomenon beyond human control, that is threatening to damage the credibility of the tournament in a way the hunt for the fictitious Suzie and the mysterious potion she allegedly dropped in the All Blacks' tea in 1995 never did.
The arrival of Typhoon Hagibis has done what the torrential rain in Durban 24 years couldn't do and force the cancellation of two tests and with it create not just a giant logistics headache with millions of yen in ticket refunds to be organised, but a lopsided element where it is now possible that the All Blacks or England could be crowned champions having played a game less than the team they meet in the final.
Equality is the key to credibility and when teams are sent on different paths, however it happens, there's no escaping the sense of dissatisfaction that follows.
There's no one to blame for this. It's not a stitch-up or a moment of administrative weakness.
Far from it in fact. It's the only decision that could have been made. A typhoon is not a grey area. It's plainly dangerous and nature can't be tamed or toyed with.
But that's strangely what makes this scenario hard to rationalise. How to feel when events beyond human control intervene?
Nature can't be screamed at and told to change its mind or say sorry. It's not a dud referee showing a red card when he never should have.
It's not a dumb play or an act of madness by a player who's lost his head.
There's no outlet for the emotions, nothing to rage at to make sense of it all as there is when human error is the cause and instead it just leaves this strange, unsatisfied, dull feeling that can't be put right.
A knowledge that something indelible happened to change the course of history.
But the cause doesn't matter, it's the outcome. The tournament now has an issue, however much it was inflicted by something beyond human control, that not all paths to the final are equal.
This has never happened before and whether the All Blacks or England like it, should they be standing on the podium at Yokohama International Stadium on November 2, there will be just a hint of things not being quite right.
It won't be their fault. It won't be possible to accuse them of having unfairly manipulated things to their advantage, but the taint will be there none the same that they didn't have to endure what everyone else did.
There's no escaping that reality now. It can't be portrayed as unjust or crooked, but instead will sit in the no man's land of being odd; an unfortunate quirk that will leave an asterisk stuck to the victory highlighting there was something unusual attached to their title.
In a curious way, it won't be so different to England's Cricket World Cup win earlier this year which was acquired in circumstances so peculiar they continue to perplex months on.
It won't matter that arguments can be made either way about whether playing three and not four pool games is an advantage or a disadvantage.
It may be an advantage to have less fatigue in the legs later in the tournament: to have a freshness those who have slogged for longer don't.
But the All Blacks would err more towards seeing at as a disadvantage, although will stoically stick to their line of "it is what it is" and "we have to deal with it".
They would much rather have played than not played. They needed one more game with the top side together.
The All Blacks on the training pitch earlier this week. Photo / Getty Images
They needed another 80 minutes in the lungs and legs, and more importantly, they needed that time to refine their attacking patterns.
Another 80 minutes for the Richie Mo'unga-Beauden Barrett partnership to embed the rhythm and flow would have been preferable than yet more training.
Brodie Retallick needed at least an hour this weekend to get himself ready for a quarter-final and the fact he won't is troublesome.
And Italy were in many ways the perfect opponent ahead of the quarter-final. They would have been angry at their last performance, charged up with something to prove: good enough to cause the All Blacks a few problems but not so good as to take lumps out of them.
Not that whether the cancellation is an advantage or disadvantage will matter one jot when the time comes to look back at this tournament. The point is their route to the final was different – regardless of whether it was subjectively labelled easier or harder.
What we will remember is that a typhoon swept into town and had a material impact on a tournament that right now isn't broken but is damaged.
