It’s a sometimes cruel fact of life, as the French and Irish have just found out, that Rugby World Cups dwarf all else in the game. What happens between tournaments matters at the time but doesn’t linger in the memory. As Australia’s 1991 World Cup-winning captain Nick Farr-Jones put it: “What ends up on your rugby coffin is how you went at the World Cup.”
World Cups deliver the things we love about sport and some of those we don’t. There’s drama, controversy and unbearable tension, as in watching the All Blacks withstand a four-minute, 40-phase assault to win their quarter-final against Ireland. There’s heroism, such as All Black captain Richie McCaw playing through the 2011 tournament on a broken foot. And there’s heartbreak, lots of it since there can be only one winner.
There’s low comedy, for instance Australian coach Bob Dwyer, apparently indifferent to the sensibilities of Her Majesty the Queen who was sitting close by, bawling “Kick it the shithouse” in the dying seconds of the 1991 final. Occasionally there’s farce, as in South African Rugby boss Louis Luyt trying to force an expensive gold watch on the referee whose mistake propelled the Springboks into the 1995 final.
Herewith 10 stand-out moments in the Men’s Rugby World Cup’s progress from humble beginnings to being one of the biggest, most eagerly anticipated, most intensely followed events on the sporting calendar.
1987: The original try from the end of the world
French fullback Jean-Luc Sadourny’s match-winning try at Eden Park in 1994 – the last time the All Blacks lost at their fortress – was dubbed “the try from the end of the world”. But seven years earlier at the same ground, All Black wing John Kirwan scored an equally spectacular try in the opening game of the inaugural World Cup. France’s try involved seven players and nine passes; Kirwan did it on his own, going the length of the field and beating most of the Italian players at least once. Beforehand, no one knew quite what to make of the World Cup concept – Eden Park was barely half-full. With Kirwan’s tour de force, rugby’s global tournament was well and truly launched.
1987: The healing hug
Veteran hooker Andy Dalton was named All Black captain but, when injury ruled him out of the tournament, the captaincy passed to halfback David Kirk. At the player level they represented the two sides of the issue that had bedevilled and divided New Zealand rugby – and the nation – for decades: maintaining the great rivalry with the Springboks, the pre-eminent sporting symbol of apartheid-era South Africa. While Kirk became the first captain to hold the Webb Ellis Trophy aloft, his subsequent embrace with Dalton symbolised the rugby community making peace with itself.
1995: Mandela transcendent
In many ways, Nelson Mandela’s long and harrowing journey from anti-apartheid activist and political prisoner – he was imprisoned for 27 years, most spent in a damp 2.4m by 2.1m cell on Robben Island – to South Africa’s first democratically-elected president culminated at the World Cup final at Ellis Park, Johannesburg, a temple of Afrikanerdom. The instantly iconic image of South Africa’s first black head of state, a terrorist according to the old regime, in a Springbok jersey with number 6 on the back as worn by Springbok captain Francois Pienaar, a flaxen-haired Afrikaner, perfectly encapsulated Mandela’s message of forgiveness and reconciliation.
1999: Coup de Theatre
An English scribe called France’s semifinal victory over the All Blacks at Twickenham “the biggest upset in the entire history of rugby union”. That claim could well be the biggest over-statement in the entire history of rugby writing since throughout the 1990s no other nation matched France’s 50% winning record against the All Blacks. But it was the nature of the victory that prompted the hype: down 10-24 shortly after halftime, Les Bleus found inspiration, producing a bravura display of French flair that left a talented but mentally fragile All Black side dazed and confused. Final score: France 43, New Zealand 31.
2003: White Orcs on steroids
In the 1970s, southeast London football club Millwall became a media byword for hooliganism. Millwall fans responded by adopting the chant, “No one likes us, we don’t care.” That’s pretty much the attitude successive England teams have taken to World Cups: they’re not out to entertain and have zero interest in making rugby romantics purr with approval. The template is the 2003 team who were portrayed as “white Orcs on steroids” after monstering a young All Blacks team in Wellington. They went on to win the Northern Hemisphere’s one and only World Cup, beating hosts Australia in extra time, and wore the derisive label as proudly as their winners’ medals.
2007: Barnes storm
It’s sometimes said the mark of a good refereeing performance is that afterwards you can’t remember who the referee was. By that criterion 28-year-old Englishman Wayne Barnes had a shocker in the All Blacks-France quarterfinal in Cardiff. After a game in which the All Blacks dominated everywhere but on the scoreboard the focus was firmly on him rather than the players. All Black coach Graham Henry, as he then was, supposedly threw up when reviewing a tape of the game, so numerous and egregious in his eyes were Barnes’ sins of omission and commission. Barnes, now the most experienced referee in rugby history, will take charge of this weekend’s final. Such is his current stature that one suspects not even Sir Graham objected to the appointment.
2011: Leave it to Beaver
To win a World Cup you must cope with a curveball at some point in the campaign. The All Blacks had several chucked at them: they lost match-winner Dan Carter to injury during pool play; his replacement Colin Slade was crocked in the quarter-final; Slade’s replacement Aaron Cruden had to leave the field after 30 minutes of the final. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Having assumed his All Blacks career was over after a poor game against the Wallabies the previous year, Stephen “Beaver” Donald hadn’t focused on his physical conditioning, as was evident from the uncomfortable tightness of his jersey when he entered the fray. But he kicked the winning goal, thereby becoming a folk hero and ending the long, angst-ridden and often acrimonious wait for our second World Cup.
2015: The Brighton Miracle
Japan’s Brave Blossoms went into the tournament having lost all but one of their 24 games at previous World Cups. They could hardly have drawn a more daunting first-up assignment than the Springboks, two-time World Cup winners, a team of giants whose set piece expertise and confrontational approach seemed perfectly suited to the task at hand. Japan won 34-32, an achievement that merited the journalistic extravagance cited above and inspired a feature film The Brighton Miracle. It stars Temuera Morrison as the Blossoms’ Australian-Japanese coach Eddie Jones, a notoriously hard taskmaster, and begins with Japanese rugby officials dwelling on the national team’s 145-17 loss to the All Blacks at the 1995 World Cup before making the decision to appoint him.
2015: A Farewell fit for heroes
The All Blacks-Australia final at Twickenham was the swansong for five of our greatest-ever players: first-five Dan Carter, flanker and captain Richie McCaw, midfielders Ma’a Nonu and Conrad Smith and hooker Keven Mealamu. (A sixth, prop Tony Woodcock, missed the final through injury.) The nature of sport is such that happy endings are never guaranteed and often not forthcoming. On this occasion, however, the legendary warriors got the farewell they deserved. A left-footed kicker, Carter’s final act was to convert the winning try with his right foot, an appropriately nonchalant curtain call for a player who made international rugby look far easier than it is.
2023: Redemption beckons
With due respect to their semifinal opponents Argentina, the All Blacks are in this weekend’s final because they overcame Ireland in the quarters. Ireland were the world’s number one team, had won five of the past eight games between the two sides and were widely favoured to win - even in this country where picking against the All Blacks borders on treason. That sentiment was partly an acknowledgement of Ireland’s quality, partly lack of confidence in coach Ian Foster who has been criticised, dismissed and sometimes vilified throughout his tenure. The final is Foster’s last hurrah. You’d like to think all Kiwis, including his harshest critics, are hoping he has the last laugh.