Wales will highlight the Warburton incident but they’ll conveniently overlook the soft penalty they were given by Alain Rolland in the 75th minute

SO, THE hosts have reached the World Cup final, despite, along the way, losing their, and the world’s, best player, by dint of beating Japan, Tonga, France, Argentina and an exhausted, slightly-misfiring Australian team who had made 147 tackles in somehow beating South Africa with 24 per cent territory a week before.

Now, standing in their way, are a mutinous, minimalist French team effectively without a head coach, who they beat by 20 points in the pool stages and who have reached the final with an emergency scrumhalf at outhalf and, pretty much, on the back of one half-way decent and relatively inspired 40 minutes against a hapless, toothless, gormless, joyless England before playing uninspired dross to beat 14-man opponents by a point.

Getting to finals or winning World Cups should be tougher than this, no?

A team can only win a tournament by beating what’s put in front of them, but the All Blacks can now win the World Cup without playing one other pool winner. While it is a repeat of the inaugural 1987 decider, this actually has greater echoes of the Springboks’ triumph four years ago.

Then, South Africa won the World Cup without having to beat either of the other two Tri-Nations teams or the hosts, France, instead overcoming Fiji, Samoa and Argentina in between beating England twice.

In the same sense that Australia probably did the All Blacks an almighty favour by knocking out the holders South Africa in the quarter-finals, so it would appear that France did likewise in somehow beating Wales despite not putting one decent move or passage of play together.

For sure, Wales would probably have won, but for the 17th-minute dismissal of their outstanding captain Sam Warburton. But just one last observation on this much debated incident. On June 8th, 2009, a memo was sent to referees, citing commissioners, judicial officers and non-legal judicial committee members the world over from Paddy O’Brien, the IRB referee manager, and Tim Gresson, the IRB judicial panel chairman, on the subject of dangerous tackles.

The memo clearly brackets both driving a player into the ground or dropping him to the ground in the same category, and specifically stated: “The lifted player is dropped to the ground from a height with no regard to the player’s safety. A red card should be issued for this type of tackle.” It added: “Referees and citing commissioners should not make their decisions based on what they consider was the intention of the offending player.”

Furthermore, the memo included a recent decision of the judicial officer Jannie Lubbe SC, in which he over-ruled the decision of the match-day referee, Stuart Dickinson, and touchjudge, Jonathan Kaplan, to issue the Bulls’ Tewis de Bruyn with a yellow card for tip-tackling Odwa Ndungane and dropping him to the ground in a Super 14 game against the Cheetahs. Ndungane was not seriously injured and would later score a try.

But despite hearing evidence from both officials, who stood by their decision, Lubbe deemed it a red-card offence worthy of a mid-range offence and a six-week suspension, reducing de Bruyn’s ban to three weeks in recognition of his disciplinary record and remorse. As the identical suspension to Warburton underlines, along with four previous suspensions for tip-tackles in this tournament, not to mention O’Brien repeating the aforementioned edict before and during the tournament, Alain Rolland really was a hostage to fortune.

It’s extremely tough on Wales and Warburton, who assuredly wouldn’t have been able to lift, say, Imanol Harinordoquy (108kg) or Lionel Nallet (115kg) as readily as he did Vincent Clerc (90kg). But if nothing else, such a high-profile case will reinforce the IRB’s campaign against spear tackling and perhaps, ultimately, save a player somewhere, some day, from sustaining a very serious injury.

In fact, there was very nearly a greater miscarriage of justice when Rolland, perhaps affected by that earlier red card to the Welsh captain, awarded Wales a 75th-minute penalty a metre inside the French half against Nicolas Mas for supposedly coming in from the side.

For starters, Luke Charteris, having been tackled by Harinordoquy, prevented the French number eight from picking up the ball by illegally holding on to it on the ground, and then repeated the offence to also prevent Mas from doing so when the ball was clearly out.

France, despite hardly having the ball, otherwise didn’t concede a penalty in the last 27 minutes of the match and didn’t deserve to here. If anything, it should have been a penalty against Charteris. Only the revolutions of the ball stopped Leigh Halpenny’s penalty from striking the bar. It was that close.

Imagine how Mas would have felt had it gone over, his offence thereby denying his country a World Cup final? Nor is it true that Rolland’s decision denied Wales any chance

of winning the game, for they still had opportunities to do so aside from Stephen Jones’ conversion hitting the outside of the upright and also, prior to Halpenny’s near miss (their fifth of the game), when Jones absolved himself of the responsibility to take on a drop goal in a manner Ronan O’Gara, for one, would never have done.

So, what odds France learning the lessons of 1987, when beaten 29-9 by New Zealand, or 1999, when Australia beat them 35-12 after, according to their current, eh, head coach, Lievremont, the squad celebrated their famous semi-final All Blacks win for three nights? Not good judging by Lievremont’s latest public utterings about his “spoilt brats”.

Conceivably, their desultory semi-final win may be no bad thing, and as such clear underdogs, the final is ideally set up for one of those one-off, swing-from-the-hip French performances. They also have history on New Zealand soil to give them hope, having scored the “try from the end of the earth” at Eden Park in 1984 to complete a 2-0 series win in New Zealand, and in Dunedin two years ago in drawing the series 1-1.

Alas, it would appear Lievremont still picks the team. For all Morgan Parra’s individualism, no one supported his three breaks against Wales, and for France to have any chance they surely need Francois Trinh-Duc at outhalf and, given Maxime Medard’s struggles at fullback, a shift to the wing for him with Cedric Heymans recalled in an all-Toulouse back three. But that probably won’t happen, and the bookies’ 11 to 2 and 15-point underdogs looks about right.