KEY POINTS:
We might be just one week into a seven-week tournament but this much is obvious: the Southern Hemisphere giants and Argentina have hit the ground running, while the northerners have just hit the ground.
In the north, we have the Six Nations' teams - stodgy and, to a
team, unimpressive to date. From the south, the Tri Nations sides - dominant, powerful and accurate. In rugby terms they're, well, poles apart.
This is not an obituary. As Graham Henry is wont to say: "I think the current world champions are European - well, English anyway."
Come October 20, the world champions might still be European. Eighty minutes of inspired rugby here, the bounce of the ball there and who knows? Certainly nobody in Camp All Black will write off the Europeans.
Second five-eighths Aaron Mauger has no doubt France and Ireland are still threats, despite being the worst performed Six Nations sides in the opening round. Still, he is as mystified as anybody by the slow start.
"Two weeks ago, everyone was saying we might be a bit rusty while those guys have played warm-up games so it's hard to put it down to one thing.
"Maybe it's because we played the Tri Nations and had good games in that, so we're a level ahead. I'm sure it won't take those teams long to start performing and hit their peak."
That's a point echoed by assistant coach Wayne Smith, who feels the Tri Nations was several steps up in intensity than the series of 'friendlies' embarked on by the likes of France and England.
"The initial games are just a reflection of what teams have come out of," Smith said. "We've come out of probably the toughest Tri Nations we've played in the past few years. A lot of guys have played Air New Zealand Cup at a high level, at a high speed.
"The Northern Hemisphere teams have played friendlies. It's a reflection of that and they'll come up to speed pretty quickly, I'd imagine."
But whoa, it might be time to back the horse up a bit. It wasn't too long ago northern scribes and pundits were dismissing the Tri Nations and Super 14 as all froth and bubble, lacking the intensity of the Six Nations, European Cup and Zurich Premiership.
Now it seems the long-sprigged shoe is on the other foot.
Sale coach Kingsley Jones told The Guardian newspaper that the Northern Hemisphere teams were simply not as aggressive as they needed to be. It was a point echoed by former Scotland and Lions coach Ian McGeechan.
"We seem to have lost the aggression in the contact areas," said Jones. "I was educated in New Zealand and it's the same in the Welsh valleys, where they hit lumps out of each other. We seem to have lost that in the Premiership. For me, that's the biggest thing that has been evident [at the World Cup]."
Said McGeechan: "You have to say they have all been much sharper, more intense, more consistently aggressive with their rugby and certainly playing at a different pace."
If it's aggression that ultimately allows you the latitude to play expansively, then the Six Nations teams are clearly deficient.
Even against the minnows, they have tended to look timid. Joe Rokocoko stirred the pot last week when he described the Scots and Welsh as looking "frightened" and said France looked like they didn't want to be there.
The European coaches, though, figure their problems are even more fundamental than a lack of aggression and far more easily fixed; they just need to play better.
"They are not a bad team, they just played badly," Ireland coach Eddie O'Sullivan said after his team's shocker against Namibia. "It was like shooting yourself in both feet. Of course we are concerned. It was a very bad performance by any standard."
You could ditto that for Scotland, France, England and, to a lesser extent, Wales. There is clearly time to fix it, so you won't get any smug smiles from the Tri Nations coaches yet.
"It's too early to tell and we'll have to wait to see how things pan out," Henry said. "We're just at the end of the first round so I don't think we should be assessing where teams are. After four rounds, we'll have a good indication."
After four rounds, it might be time to start penning those obits.
