Who’s hot and who’s not: Rugby World Cup finalists confirmed, records at risk and online controversy

Planet Rugby
Split with All Black Will Jordan and Springboks director of rugby Rassie Erasmus.

Split with All Black Will Jordan and Springboks director of rugby Rassie Erasmus.

It’s time for our Monday wrap of who has their name in lights and who is making the headlines for all the wrong reasons after the weekend.

THEY’RE ON FIRE!

Ox Nche: It was a moment to saviour for the Springbok prop who came off the bench and delivered one of the best scrummaging cameos one will ever see as he changed the game completely. Nche’s influence at the set-piece quite simply won South Africa the semi-final through several penalties, one of which resulted in a try from a line-out, while the other was the winning kick from Handre Pollard.

Brutal All Blacks: New Zealand were simply superb on Friday evening as they convincingly swept aside Argentina in brutal fashion to claim their spot in the Rugby World Cup final. Ian Foster’s side ran in seven tries and conceded none, securing an impressive 44-6 victory over Los Pumas. On this evidence, and with the extra day’s rest, they will be tough to stop in the showpiece event at the Stade de France this weekend.

Will Jordan hits eight: Speaking of tries, Will Jordan etched his name in the history books, joining Jonah Lomu, Bryan Habana and Julian Savea, who have dotted down eight times in a single Rugby World Cup tournament. He has been in absolutely sparkling form and has an opportunity to claim the record outright in the final. In fact, he could have already reached nine had Richie Mo’unga not messed up an opportunity late on.

Finn Russell fires for Bath: The Scottish magician was in fine fettle for Bath as he dictated play against Saracens, setting up a try and knocking over two shots at goals to inspire a 25-16 win over champions Saracens at the StoneX Stadium. Russell made a mistake for Sarries’ try, with his attempted kick over the top being charged down by Andy Christie, but he responded excellently and was a key part of his team’s victory.

Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu kick starts Stormers’ season: The brilliant 21-year-old rising star was in sublime form in the opening URC game of the season, scoring two tries, including a stunner where he flexed his footballing skills. He also nailed two penalties to steer the Stormers to a narrow 35-33 victory. It is a big year for the youngster, who could force his way into the Springboks reckoning with a good season.

Taranaki claim NPC title: The Naki are NPC champions for the first time since 2004! It is was a thrilling final in New Zealand’s provincial tournament, with Taranaki leading 22-19 in the final stages of the match. Hawke’s Bay had the scrum feed and were looking to launch a match-winning play, but Taranaki disintegrated the Hawke’s Bay pack at the set-piece to seal the win.

BROKEN THERMOSTAT

World Cup draw: We all know that it was lopsided and to a degree undermined the competition, but the whingeing after the first semi-final, especially from Irish pundits, fans and journalists, was rather amusing. Ultimately, if the draw had seen the top four teams in the world separated then we would have had uncompetitive quarter-finals, which no doubt would have drawn criticism from observers. Having Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and France in the semi-finals wouldn’t have automatically made it a better tournament, particularly when the last-eight contests were quite rightly viewed as some of the greatest ever seen. Instead, as a result of the draw, five of the last six matches have been outstanding, with the All Blacks v Argentina encounter the only outlier.

COLD AS ICE!

Pumas pummelled: As good as the All Blacks were, Argentina were disappointingly poor and did not really put up much of a fight. They started off brightly but, once New Zealand got into their stride, the match was effectively over as a contest. Unlike Italy, who were thrashed 96-17 in the pool stages, Michael Cheika’s men at least showed up physically, but there were too many errors, both individually and structurally, as shown by the 50 – yes 50 – missed tackles. That’s inexcusable in any game, let alone a World Cup semi-final.

Referee review leak: It came as a big surprise when French publication Midi Olympique revealed details of Ben O’Keeffe’s performance review after France’s quarter-final defeat to the Springboks in Paris. According to the report, World Rugby reportedly identified five major errors New Zealand referee O’Keeffe made during the match. Knowing that someone at the governing body of the global game is leaking the performance review of an official after such an important game is concerning and needs to be investigated.

Referee slamming: On the subject of referees, it was disappointing to see the match officials at the World Cup receive criticism over the past week. France captain Antoine Dupont started the trend when he laid into O’Keeffe after the hosts crashed out of the tournament against South Africa in the quarter-finals, while Argentina boss Cheika also slammed Angus Gardner following his team’s thrashing in their semi-final against New Zealand. While it’s understandable that players and coaches are unhappy after losing matches, taking their frustrations out on the match officials is unacceptable and hopefully World Rugby takes action against the guilty parties.

Bongi Mbonambi’s alleged racist remark: It has been claimed that the Springbok allegedly called England’s Tom Curry a “white c**t” during the game. Curry was heard on the ref mic telling O’Keeffe that Mbonambi had allegedly used the racist slur towards him in the first half. The situation is still developing and the Springboks have confirmed they are investigating the incident. If true then it is completely unacceptable from the Boks hooker and he needs to be punished, but ultimately we will know more about what went on as the story develops this week.

Sorry Sarries off to a slow start: No doubt some will point to the players that are currently away on international duty, but the issues seem to be deeper than that at the moment. The teams they put out both the previous week against Exeter Chiefs and on Saturday against Bath were very talented sides, but that is so far not being shown in the performances. Christie – a Scotland international – scored a try in the opening minute, but after that Johann van Graan’s men were pretty comfortable. The start will certainly concern director of rugby Mark McCall.

Cobus Reinach death threats: It was horrifying to see the Springboks scrum-half receive death threats following their World Cup quarter-final victory over France. Reinach, who plays his rugby at Montpellier, was subjected to some vile messages from a French ‘fan’, while this person also seemed to target the 33-year-old’s son. This quite simply should not be happening and our full support is behind Reinach and his family.

Rassie’s ‘misogynistic’ tweet: We all like to see players and coaches interacting on social media and it is great that the Springbok director of rugby wants to share his thoughts on X (formerly Twitter). However, there are times when he oversteps the mark and that happened ahead of the semi-final when he attempted to mock journalist Ben Smith, consistently using the word ‘her’ in the message, seemingly as an insult. Erasmus followed that up by saying it was a ‘typo’, but many people weren’t having it and he later deleted the tweets. Whatever the intention of the Bok boss, it was pretty unedifying and completely needless.

READ MORE: Rugby World Cup 2023 final and kick-off time confirmed

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