Loose Pass: Did we witness the best weekend of international rugby ever?

Lawrence Nolan
Loose Pass image 18 October 2023.jpg

Mateo Carreras of Argentina, Ardie Savea of New Zealand, Danny Care of England and Pieter-Steph du Toit and Handre Pollard of South Africa.

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with perhaps the best weekend of international rugby ever, and what comes after…

Well, was it? Both afternoons, we perhaps had the warm-up shows; both evenings we certainly had the star-studded extravaganzas. A lot has been said about the disparity between one side of the draw and the other, but it has rarely been so starkly apparent as it was over the weekend.

France in tears

Tears are everywhere in France. There’s no escaping the fact that it’s partly been a good World Cup because there was a real chance the hosts could go all the way. Rugby is a sport that thrives on atmosphere; players love the roar of a home crowd. Might the whole Spiel somehow all fall a little flat now the French have nothing to shout for? Especially since that back-up green army is now also on its way home?

It’s possible. The 2015 edition’s latter stages were marked by plenty of spectating and lots of good rugby, but precious little hair-on-the-neck tumult in the stadia. 2019 was a lot of fun for all survivors in the final stages on neutral territory, but it was not a conclusion you’d remember for the visceral nature of the roars that greeted its denouement.

Whether that will be different this time depends on how the home populace deals with its grief. Will they opt to back anybody playing their new nemesis? That would mean siding with England, a tough one to contemplate. Do they remember the classic clashes they’ve had with the All Blacks and side with their old friends? Perhaps all those Argentineans who have graced the Top 14 down the years will be remembered enough that the Pumas get the locals’ vote.

Or perhaps, as happened on Sunday night, they simply drift away in a stunned silence, unable to process that the actual difference between the zenith of dreams and the chasm of despair they currently occupy might be little more than an injudicious shuffle of Thomas Ramos’ right foot, or even, looking further back, the cudgel of misfortune that took away Romain Ntamack and Paul Willemse pre-tournament.

In which case, the tournament finale will suffer a bit. There are all sorts of clichéed observations about our hosts: they love an underdog, they love a bit of a set-to in a game, they love to have a sing-song and a party, but anyone who was at the Wales-Fiji game, for example, will not have failed to recognise the boost a partisan and involved French crowd can give a team and an occasion if the teams throw themselves at it.

If the atmosphere suffers from the hosts’ exit, the tension may suffer from the imbalance of the draw. All four games were good, tight and tense finishes, but two were classics for the ages. The gulf in class between the South African, which kept throwing counter-punches to France’s thrusts before the defence got its stranglehold, and the England team, which laboured to a win over a Fiji team who could have been better, is enormous. Argentina are now a lot better than the headless shower who were stuffed by England, but can you really see the New Zealand defence in its current incarnation even registering a breach? All those memes going around about England being the only northern hemisphere team left, and the only unbeaten team left are fun, but nobody is fooled. A final that is not South Africa v New Zealand will be a staggering surprise. The quarter-finals were full of danger for all eight teams, which made it a great weekend, but the semi-finals look out of whack.

We’ve been here before, though too. In fact, when it comes to semi-finals – and with the exception of Japan beating South Africa eight years ago – some of the best and biggest surprises and ambushes have been here. England playing a near-perfect game four years ago, France denying Jonah Lomu at Twickenham in 1999, Serge Blanco’s moment of glory in 1987. All is most definitely not lost this weekend.

End of the road for several global stars

Lost to us now, though are a whole host of global star players who are all likely to grace World Rugby’s hall of fame in years to come. The loss of Jonathan Sexton and Dan Biggar will be a relief to the beleaguered referees and many an opponent, but to watch Sexton’s little boy console Ireland’s pivot with such obvious and pure devotion is to be reminded that Sexton is not only the guy who marched onto the pitch at the end of the Champions Cup Final to give the referees an undistinguished earful. He and Biggar were also pretty handy fly-halves too, the former the best in Europe for a long time, the latter an integral part of the system that allowed Wales to be greater than the sum of its parts for so long.

Had Peter O’Mahony received an accolade from Sam Cane along the lines of “you’re just a poor man’s Alan Quinlan” in the final minutes of Saturday’s clash, he’d have deserved it, but he also deserves every accolade going as one of Europe’s best ever back-rows. Ireland in general, as Andy Farrell alluded to after the game, is about to go through a huge reset in terms of generations. Keith Earls is already gone, several may see out another couple of Six Nations, but this will be a very different-looking squad in four years’ time.

Meanwhile, there were other afters to consider. Some individual decisions for sure, but also some undistinguished barbs at referees. It should be a matter of record that all four referees this weekend – five if you count Jaco Peyper – distinguished themselves under some of the highest pressure imaginable. You don’t have to agree with every decision to recognise excellent officiating. Antoine Dupont’s and Waisea Nayacelevu’s post-match inferences were not becoming of players who did so much in the games they played in.

Food for thought

Afters, also, in the analysis. Were both Dupont and Sexton left on too long? Certainly, the latter seemed barely able to manage more than about 70 per cent pace in those final minutes, while Maxime Lucu would be forgiven for some bitterness of his own after he played so well against Italy. He’s a wonderful player, but France’s dependence on Antoine Dupont is not right. Did Ireland pay the price for not ticking the scoreboard over early? Is the next challenge facing Warren Gatland to discover the depth in the squad, which was so palpably lacking, so that Wales can kill games off properly?

Or was it just individual moments that made the difference? Cheslin Kolbe’s boundary-pushing charge. Richie Mo’unga’s divine break and pass. Conor Murray’s ill-timed tug on Jordie Barrett’s shoulder. Did Owen Farrell kill off Fiji with his ultra-professional knock-on? The call made for Wales to run a familiar move that Nicolas Sanchez saw before it had started. The superhuman hold-up of the ball over the New Zealand line. The list goes on. All the lists go on.

So many things, so many moments. Only one game was decided by more than a try, and that only from a try scored four minutes from time.

You can lament the lop-sidedness of the draw; you can find flaws in the refereeing; you can find mistakes in the players, the coaching, the strategies; you can compare and contrast the teams. But for simple, pure rugby fun, it was very difficult to beat last weekend.

READ MORE: Rugby World Cup semi-final referees and match officials confirmed

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