Andrew Mulligan: The quiet before the Cup storm

Former All Blacks captain Taine Randell at the unveiling of the 747 that took the All Blacks to the Rugby World Cup in 1999. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Woodward's slur on 2011 refereeing only spark in lead-up.

The quietest week of rugby happenings in the lead-up to the World Cup has almost passed us by. Here's what's happened, just in case you missed anything, for World Rugby's top 10 ranked countries.

New Zealand flew out last night on an Air New Zealand plane conspicuously missing the front row painted on the tail and Israel Dagg in business class. Never have so many books been read while the safety video is being played. No one is injured and no one is missing. Also there were no signed guitars, propagated grass or stopovers in Corsica planned. Already winning.

Australia will trot out two different starting XVs in their opening two matches versus Fiji and then Uruguay four days later, the Daily Telegraph informing us this was the Wallabies "master plan". The Aussie media are also struggling with this week.

South Africa revisited their divisive quota selections issue again last week but when the court threw the challenge out, everything went quiet from the republic. For South Africa to win the World Cup would be a monumental occasion considering how fractured the state of rugby union is there.

Clive Woodward offered to take the heat by emphasising to the England team that one stupid tweet can undo it all.

Last World Cup a stupid tweet would've been more than welcomed if they had the choice. He was also quoted as saying the French should still be "apoplectic" about the way the 2011 final was refereed. It's just great that someone like Woodward is around to liven things up this week.

Thank you to Wales for providing the most consternation this week and especially to Warren Gatland who seemed to know when Leigh Halfpenny's knee was going to pop an ACL but ignored this information, according to some. Although the knee that went was bandaged against Italy and, yeah, it was Italy.

On a completely unrelated matter, All Blacks assistant coach Ian Foster was asked if they had played enough rugby considering other countries had warm-up games after the Rugby Championship and Bledisloe Cup concluded. Foster answered yes.

Ireland played their worst test in a while in the loss to England and therefore are becoming more and more like the All Blacks under Joe Schmidt, because it's good to get those out of the way and you can only learn from them. Fullback Rob Kearney is the only real fitness concern for the Irish who are a sexy pick to make the semifinals. At least from this end of the world.

But back to national French rugby spokesman Sir Clive Woodward. From what we can gather in limited translation efforts, he said this week that the team and union are still angry at the refereeing display from the 2011 final by Craig Joubert.

This led to the comments sections on the bottom of subsequent news stories that quoted Monsieur Woodward to be closed earlier than expected. It also deflected attention away from almost losing to Scotland in Paris. Former Lions 2005 PR man Alistair Campbell messaged Woodward a thumbs-up emoji via Whatsapp in approval.*

Argentina will decide on the day at the World Cup if they are going to be the team that ran in five tries against South Africa in Durban or the one that was held tryless at home a week later. The All Blacks are hoping it's the latter in the first game of Pool C.

Former Wallabies flanker George Smith will be recognised at the World Rugby awards dinner at the end of the Cup for his efforts to bring trolling of English and Welsh fans to the fore by saying Fiji and Australia are his favourites to get out of Pool A.

As for 10th-ranked Scotland, newly minted Scottish player and Highlander flanker John Hardie is staying at the Martin Leslie residence for first-year Kiwi forwards having been in the country only six weeks.

Let the games begin already!

*None of this actually happened.