The All Blacks wrap up their week in France’s wine capital as NZ Herald’s Chereè Kinnear and Liam Napier look at how the team has made the most of their longest-ever break between World Cup matches. Video / NZ Herald
Phil Gifford highlights five talking points from the World Cup.
Caught in a time warp
Thirteen days with no game before the All Blacks play Italy in Lyon is the longest break between matches New Zealand has ever had at a World Cup.
On the bright side, it gives thewalking wounded - Sam Cane, Shannon Frizell, and Tyrel Lomax - a chance to heal, Brodie Retallick time to get back to full powers, and allows Ethan Blackadder to integrate with the team again after almost two years away with injuries.
If the whole squad emerges energised, then Lyon could be the start of a Cup revival that looked unlikely after the 27-13 opening loss to France.
Belief is a core issue in sport, and with the prospect of a massive quarter-final against Ireland or South Africa, how the All Blacks prepare for the game with Italy, and any selection tweaks they decide on, become hugely important.
Four years ago, when this weird Cup draw was being decided, the prospect of Italy, forever the easy beats of Six Nations rugby, being a vital match would have been laughable. Not now.
Not only France need him
You can only offer French captain Antoine Dupont every possible good wish after his potentially catastrophic facial injury in France’s 96-0 demolition of Namibia.
Dupont, who quite rightly currently holds the world’s best mantle that Richie McCaw did at the 2011 and 2015 Cups, is a player so dynamic and gifted you don’t need to have been born in France to love watching him play. To lose him from a Cup in France would be devastating.
France's Antoine Dupont receives treatment after taking a knock to the head. Photo / AP
Clash of actual giants
The game of the weekend by a mile is the Ireland-South Africa game in Paris on Sunday morning.
To say the Springboks have made their intentions clear is an understatement of the same level as suggesting Donald Trump has only a slight resemblance to a satsuma in a blond wig.
Seven hulking forwards on an eight-man reserve bench, which has become the South African norm, guarantees nine-man, at best 10-man, kick, and chase, and bash, rugby.
It’s been called against the spirit of the game, and while I wouldn’t go quite that far, it’s certainly a cold, grim hand on the throat of exciting, entertaining footy.
That is why I devoutly hope that Ireland, while not exactly a run-and-gun side themselves, win well, and that in the process their runners, like James Lowe, Bundee Aki, and Garry Ringrose, find some space and score tries with daring and class, not brute strength.
A draw that helps unlikely minnows
Given that Australia have won the Cup twice, and that Wales first beat the All Blacks 118 years ago, the harsh reality is that if the Wallabies or Wales, as seems likely, makes a semifinal in this year’s World Cup, it’s a nonsense.
The Wallabies, who play Wales in Lyon on Monday, are in tatters. Eddie Jones copped it about as sweet as he ever does after the 22-15 loss to Fiji, and good on him for joking about having baguettes and croissants thrown at him.
But between his hare-brained selections and injuries to key players, the Wallabies are not so much struggling to fire on all cylinders as barely getting their motor turning over.
However, it’s a measure of how much rebuilding is going on inside the Welsh camp that there’s still a chance of an Australian victory.
Fiji went breathtakingly close to beating Wales, so the TAB odds - Australia favourites at $1.85 with Wales at $1.97 - may be an accurate reflection of how the game will pan out.
Either way, the darkly comic fact is that either Wales or Australia could find themselves playing England in a quarter-final, and there’s certainly a chance there of advancing to a semi.
Lies and damned statistics, or surprising interest?
There was a huge viewing audience in New Zealand for the Women’s Fifa World Cup, which, if you lived in Europe, might have seemed inflated by the organisers given our reputation as rugby fanatics. Living here you knew the interest was real.
At first glance, the figures for television audiences in Europe watching the Rugby World Cup also seem too good to be true. In Germany 3.5 million watching the opening game between France and the All Blacks? Seventeen million in France viewing the game?
If the figures are as authentic as those for the women’s Cup here were, let’s hope for rugby that in the knockout stages in France the boredom of forward domination and kicking for position won’t deplete the ranks of new, curious viewers.
