Gerry Thornley: Why All Blacks and South Africa are more fancied for Rugby World Cup than Ireland

The countdown to the Rugby World Cup begins in earnest today or at any rate, the European sides start trying to play catch-up with their southern hemisphere counterparts by cramming in three or four warm-up matches after their off-season hiatus.

Scotland and Italy played their first Test since St Patrick’s Day last Saturday in Murrayfield when Gregor Townsend’s side won 25-13 with the help of a man-of-the-match performance by Ben Healy on his full debut.

The Scots, who are Ireland’s final World Cup Pool B opponents on October 7th in Paris, host France today before playing Les Bleus in Saint-Étienne next Saturday and then play a fourth preparatory game against Georgia, while the Italians host Romania and Japan in the build-up to the World Cup.

Wales, who play South Africa in a fortnight, and Ireland, who have a training camp in Portugal next week before playing England and lastly Samoa in Bayonne, have each opted for three games

The French are also playing four matches in total over the coming four weekends, with further home games against Fiji and Australia, and ditto England, who meet Wales over the next two Saturdays before their trek to the Aviva and a home game against Fiji.

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By contrast, Wales, who play South Africa in a fortnight, and Ireland, who have a training camp in Portugal next week before playing England and lastly Samoa in Bayonne, have each opted for three games.

This would appear to be the bare minimum required to get a squad up to speed for a World Cup.

The latter game against Samoa was a relatively late addition as well, but this is still one Test less than Ireland played in each of the last three pre-World Cup schedules. Perhaps this is partially due to the way Ireland’s pool fixtures have fallen, with the games against Romania and Tonga leading into the clashes with South Africa and Scotland, which are also a fortnight apart.

By comparison to the European sides, the southern hemisphere countries are carrying on from their annual Rugby Championship into further warm-up games and then the World Cup itself as a more seamless continuation of their season.

It has been ever thus. In fact, the inaugural 1987 World Cup was even more lopsided in favour of the southern hemisphere teams. In addition to being hosted jointly by New Zealand and Australia, it was held in May and June, with the northern hemisphere sides out of season.

The IRFU, in their wisdom at the time, decreed that players should not even keep ticking over after the Five Nations by playing for their clubs for the end-of-season run-in, leaving them even more underdone come their opening 13-6 defeat by Wales on a typically windy day in Wellington.

Thereafter, the World Cup has been held between just after the resumption of the European seasons, between September and November. This doesn’t explain why the southern hemisphere countries have won all but one of the previous nine World Cups, but they have always been more fine-tuned teams.

Even with an abbreviated Rugby Championship of three rounds as opposed to six, as happened in 2015 and 2019, this again applies now. The Springboks seem a little hindered by their switch to the URC and the mixture of players who’ve had a proper off-season and those who haven’t, with fears in South Africa that their players might be a little weary.

We shall see, but the All Blacks have regrouped and completed three bonus-point wins in the Rugby Championship. So far advanced are they in their preparations that after today’s Bledisloe Cup meeting with Australia, they will announce their World Cup squad in Napier on Sunday. They feel they only need one more warm-up game against South Africa on Friday, August 25th, at a sold-out Twickenham, which says it all really.

They have now hardened to 13-5 joint-favourites to win the World Cup alongside France, with South Africa next in the betting followed by Ireland at 5-1.

The Leinster lads; when they come into camp they don’t see themselves as nothing but Irish. They don’t see themselves as Leinster boys, they just think about what they can do for this team they’re involved in

—  Andy Farrell

This shows that plenty of water has passed under the bridge since Ireland’s Grand Slam, not least Leinster’s defeats by first Munster and then particularly that second successive Champions Cup final defeat by La Rochelle. This has been interpreted by some as another example of how to derail Ireland as well, but the final a year ago didn’t prevent Ireland from going on to beat the All Blacks in a three-Test series that summer, much less the unbeaten season which followed.

There’s a temptation to read too much into one game and Andy Farrell clearly thinks so.

“It hasn’t been mentioned. I 100 per cent understand the question and I see why people would say it, but for us it’s completely different.

“It’s completely different, in the sense that the Leinster lads; when they come into camp they don’t see themselves as nothing but Irish. They don’t see themselves as Leinster boys, they just think about what they can do for this team they’re involved in.

“They’re so proud to be involved, playing for their country that it doesn’t even come into the reckoning really.

“Why? Leinster are just as successful as us, but I can’t help but be myself. So, the way that I coach is completely different. The environment is different, the coaches are different, the management is different. “The way that we play, for all that people might think that we’re similar, everything’s different, you know? Everything we do is different. The knock-on effect is irrelevant at this stage.”

If anything, though, the one victory by a northern hemisphere team, namely England in 2003, underlines the point more than any of the eight World Cups which have been won by the All Blacks, Springboks and Wallabies.

Even at the time, and even more so in hindsight, it felt as if that vintage Martin Johnson-led English side produced their best rugby in completing an overdue Grand Slam earlier that year, after four painful near misses in a row.

This was especially so when beating Ireland 42-6 at Lansdowne Road in an all-or-nothing shoot-out, albeit England even scaled that achievement on their ensuing three-match summer tour to Australasia when beating the New Zealand Maoris, All Blacks and Wallabies.

By contrast, although Johnson went on to lift the William Webb Wllis trophy in Sydney, they never reached those heights in performance at the World Cup. Having struggled past Samoa in the pool stages and Wales in the quarter-finals before France imploded in a rainswept semi-final, England were indebted to Jonny Wilkinson’s late drop goal in extra time to eventually overcome Australia in the final.

For Andy Farrell, this will be his fourth World Cup as a player or coach and so he has long since become acquainted with the imbalance in the timing of the competition. Needless to say, a man who has also made a virtue out of embracing all manner of disruption, takes the view that it is what it is.

If you’ve got the right environment, continually playing like a club side, it definitely has to have its advantages. It’s just common sense, isn’t it?

—  Andy Farrell

Nevertheless, even Farrell more or less conceded that northern hemisphere teams are placed at a slight disadvantage by the World Cup’s timing in the calendar every four years.

“Am I complaining about it? Definitely not. But I’ve always thought that way. Even when I wasn’t a coach, even when I was a player involved in a World Cup, even when I wasn’t even a player, when I was playing the other code, I always thought looking at it that it was an advantage.

“But I can also see both sides of it. I can also see that the more games you play, what’s the law of averages for people getting ruled out of World Cups, etc? And burnout, etc.

“If you’ve got the right environment, continually playing like a club side, it definitely has to have its advantages. It’s just common sense, isn’t it?”

Indeed, and let’s put it another way. Simply imagine if the World Cup had come in the wake of the Six Nations, when Ireland were Grand Slam champions with all the momentum in the world?

Countdown to the World Cup

Test results since the Six Nations

July 8th – Rugby Championship: South Africa 43, Australia 12; Argentina 12, New Zealand 41.

Japan XV 6, All Blacks XV 38.

July 14th: Tonga 27, Australian XV 21.

July 15th – Rugby Championship: New Zealand 35, South Africa 20; Australia 31, Argentina 34.

Japan 27, All Blacks XV 41.

July 22nd – Rugby Championship: Australia 7, New Zealand 38; South Africa 22, Argentina 21.

Pacific Nations Cup: Samoa 19, Fiji 33; Japan 21, Tonga 16.

July 29th: Samoa 19, Fiji 33; Japan 21, Tonga 16.

RWC warm-up: Scotland 25 Italy 13.

Fixtures

Saturday, August 5th

New Zealand v Australia (3.35am, Sky Sports); Scotland v France (3:15pm, Premier Sports 1, Amazon Prime Video); Wales v England (5:30pm, Premier Sports 1, Amazon Prime Video); Ireland v Italy (8:0pm, RTÉ 2, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video); Argentina v South Africa (8:10pm, Sky Sports Mix); Uruguay v Namibia (7pm), Chile v Argentina XV; Romania v United States (6pm),

Saturday, August 12th

Georgia v Romania (4pm); England v Wales (5:30pm, Premier Sports 1, Amazon Prime Video); France v Scotland (8:05pm, Premier Sports 1, Amazon Prime Video); Portugal v USA (9pm); Chile v Namibia (10pm).

Saturday, August 19th

Wales v South Africa (3:15pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video), Georgia v USA (4pm), Ireland v England (5:30pm, RTÉ 2, Amazon Prime Video); Italy v Romania (5:30pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video); France v Fiji (8:05pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video).

Friday, August 25th

New Zealand v South Africa (7:30pm, Sky Sports Main Event).

Saturday, August 26th

Spain v Argentina (1pm), England v Fiji (3:15pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video); Italy v Japan (5:30pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video); Scotland v Georgia (5:30pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video); Ireland v Samoa (7:45pm, RTÉ 2, Amazon Prime Video)

Sunday, August 27th

France v Australia (4:45pm, Premier Sports 2, Amazon Prime Video).