KEY POINTS:
Let's hope this year's World Cup is the last where 20 teams are involved.
The first month of the tournament is largely a yawn where perhaps 10 of the 40 pool games grab you, the rest just take up space.
My interest dwindles when results are inevitable. This
is supposed to be a World Cup and, to my mind, that means contests between the elite, not walkovers for the stronger teams.
Spreading the rugby gospel around the globe is fine but the World Cup is not the place. That old amateur ethos about the honour and glory of taking part should no longer apply.
The All Blacks meeting Romania, the Springboks against Namibia, the Wallabies playing Japan - those matches are not my idea of top-level competition. All the minnows will get is a beating and a badge to say they played. Whoopee doo.
Other games like Georgia against Namibia or Canada against Japan may be much more even but the standard will be way down and, for me, so too the appeal.
IRB boss Syd Millar suggested the 2011 tournament here might be trimmed to 16 sides to remove the inequities of matches between professional and amateur sides.
Sounds fine but we also heard the IRB say 15 years ago the World Cup had to be held in one country and this year there are pool games in Scotland and Wales and even a quarter-final (probably with the All Blacks) in Wales while the rest of the competition is in France. England had a concept of the top eight sides all playing each other but that would stretch the tournament out too far.
The World Cup needs more teams capable of challenging the top nations and the IRB should be working on strategies which assist that aim. Greater financial assistance to the tier-one and two nations, linked with more meaningful competitions to attract their players with the incentives of world rankings counting for the next World Cup.
The present system where sides are ranked on where they finished four years ago in Australia is laughable.
England, now ranked seventh in the world, are top seed for this year's tournament while Argentina, who have risen to sixth, are punished by their last tournament results and shoved into the Pool of Death with France and Ireland.
The IRB has little control on much of the game. Member nations or alliances such as Sanzar have that power because of their self-interest.
But the IRB does organise the World Cup and is trying to sort out some of the anomalies. You would just like that change to happen a shade quicker than the present mollusc-like tread.