Congratulations to the Springboks on their World Cup success.

However the clarity of their win does not mean that no questions are raised by rugby events from recent days:

* Did South Africa know England’s lineout calls for the World Cup final?

It is not disputed that Matfield is the best defensive lineout exponent in world rugby. However for the first few English lineouts of the World Cup final it was almost as if South Africa were throwing the ball in, so smoothly did they steal possession.

With these two teams having already played each other 3 times in recent months, and with coaches White and Jones being noted aficionados of video analysis, is it unreasonable to speculate that the South Africans took to the field knowing the English lineout calls?

* Do any players in the All Blacks and Wallabies believe that the South Africans are a better team than them?

Although South Africa are World Champions, it should not be forgotten that they came last in the Trinations in both 2006 and 2007.

* Could it be said that South Africa have done a Steven Bradbury, the Australian who won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics of 2002 because the 3 other skaters in the final, all ahead of him, fell over within sight of the finish line?

There is no taking away from South Africa that, as the old cliche goes, they beat all the opposition put in front of them, and that they could not do any more than that. But the fact remains that they won the World Cup without having to play New Zealand, Australia or France, the teams ranked 1, 2 and 3 respectively going into the tournament.

On this point, an interesting historical note is that New Zealand in 1987 is the only previous occasion on which a World Cup winning team has had to defeat only one major nation in the process (New Zealand-France in 1987, South Africa-England in 2007). Isn’t this interesting in view of New Zealand’s well documented World Cup problems since then?

* Conventional wisdom is that forwards may play on until well into their 30s, but that backs are well past their prime by this age. Is the latter true?

Consider that Mike Catt, age 36, was England’s best back in the semi-final and final; that Jason Robinson, age 33, was England’s most dangerous back throughout the tournament; that Percy Montgomery, age 33, had a grand tournament and was one of South Africa’s best in the final; that Australia based its World Cup campaign on its ageing 9-10 combination, and that Larkham’s injury is considered to be one of the key factors behind Australia’s early exit; that Augustin Pichot, age 33, was one of the dominant players of the tournament; that a major reason for New Zealand’s meltdown against France is that it ended the match with young, inexperienced backs in the decision-making positions of 9, 10 and 12; and so on.

* Players who have been in two World Cup winning XVs: John Eales, Tim Horan and … Os du Randt.

Yes, it is remarkable longevity for big Os to have spanned from 1995 to 2007, but will history regard him as being in the same exalted class as the two Australian greats?

* John Eales 1999, Martin Johnson 2003, Victor Matfield 2007. There is an obvious pattern here: the team with the world’s foremost second-rower wins the World Cup. So if one wants to speculate on who will win the 2011 World Cup, one should ponder this question:

Who will be the world’s foremost second-rower in 2011?

This question is not as wide-ranging as it at first seems, because two restrictions may be noted:

1. Just as Eales, Johnson and Matfield had all played in preceding World Cups, so it may be anticipated that the dominant second-rower in 2011 will have played in the 2007 World Cup.

2. As Spiro Zavos has pointed out, there is a stark reality that undermines all the triumphalism from English journalists about northern hemisphere rugby: 5 out of 6 World Cups have been won by South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

So noting that Matfield and Chris Jack are heading off to European contracts, here is the question that gives the best indicator for 2011: which of Dan Vickerman, Ali Williams or Bakkies Botha will be the best second-rower by then?

(Incidentally, it follows from this that the ARU should do all that it can to keep Vickerman on Australian shores until 2011.)

* The wisdom of coaches, part 1: Graham Henry has maintained all year that South Africa was New Zealand’s biggest threat at the 2007 World Cup.

Why then did Henry remove his best 22 players from the 2007 Super 14? This more than anything else enabled the Bulls and Sharks to be successful, which in turn is what kick-started South Africa’s World Cup campaign. As the old saying goes, never give a sucker an even break. Graham Henry has only himself to blame.

* The wisdom of coaches, part 2: Jake White has maintained all year that defence wins World Cups, not attack.

He should know: he was Kitch Christie’s video analyst in 1995, and this time he was South Africa’s head coach. But is White really correct, or did he fashion the 2007 World Cup final so that it was won by defence? After all, it was not as if South Africa were playing a team that posed a lot of try-scoring threats.

And while one can admire the Springboks for not conceding a single try in two World Cup finals, what should one make of them for themselves not scoring a single try in those two matches? There have only been two World Cup finals that have been tryless, and South Africa have been the common denominator – and winner – in both. Are the Springboks good for world rugby? Is it fair that England is portrayed as the most boring team in world rugby?

* The wisdom of coaches, part 3: Jake White hired Eddie Jones as a “technical advisor” for the Springboks’ 2007 World Cup campaign.

The wisdom of administrators, part 1: John O’Neill has acknowledged of Jones, “He may well have found his niche as a sort of technical director, he really put a bit of polish on them.”

Was this to be foreseen?

This writer has maintained for many years that Eddie Jones is an assistant coach rather than a head coach. His work ethic is second to none, as is his technical knowledge of the game. There may be some disputing his tactical acumen in his continued adherence to the multi-phase, highly organized approach of the Brumbies, even as other paradigms overtook it in success. But in general Jones is still regarded as having a superb grasp of tactics.

Really the common factor in all of Jones’s coaching travails has been man-management problems: the Wallaby assistant coaches who walked out on him, the trenchant berating of young Queensland players for mistakes that any reasonable coach would accept as inevitable with highly inexperienced players, the loss of morale of the Wallabies under Jones, and so on. All these problems arose from Jones being a head coach. Remove him from man-management roles, and he surely remains one of the world’s premier rugby coaches – just ask Jake White!

* The wisdom of administrators, part 2: Syd Millar, retiring head of the IRB, openly tells the world’s press “We need to make rugby more exciting … We need to free the game up a bit, make it easier to play, easier to referee, easier to understand and we have to produce more options for the players.”

Yes, to all except the coterie of Stephen Jones, Millar is stating the obvious. But hasn’t a sport reached a truly dire state when its head, the person who should be its most passionate advocate, openly admits that the sport is a dead duck as a spectacle? Self-honesty is admirable, but how bad a look is this for the game of rugby?

* The wisdom of administrators, part 3: The IRB admits that referee Wayne Barnes and touch-judge Tony Spreadbury made some crucial errors in the France-New Zealand quarter-final, and because of this they decide that the other touch-judge that day, Jonathan Kaplan, would not be appointed to officiate on the final weekend of the tournament, no matter that Kaplan’s refereeing of the England-France semi-final was superb.

What sort of rough justice is this, that Kaplan pays the price for the incompetence of his fellow officials?

* The wisdom of administrators, part 4: Will New Zealand host the 2011 World Cup?

Unbelievably, they are once again courting disaster, this time on the following two fronts: (1) Where almost everyone else in the world has decided that 20 teams remains the way to go for a World Cup, New Zealand is refusing to commit to this number, and clearly would prefer the tournament to have only 16 teams. (2) The newly elected mayor of Auckland has stated he will not back down from his election promise of not providing any council funds for the upgrade of Eden Park to the promised capacity of 60,000. From where will the necessary $300m come? What happens if it doesn’t arrive?

* The wisdom of administrators, part 5: The NZRU has announced an “independent review” to “come up with some answers over the All Blacks’ worst World Cup performance”. But at the same time NZRU chairman Jock Hobbs said that the findings of this review “would not be a factor in the appointment of the new coach” (quotes taken from The Press, Christchurch, 20 October 2007).

How bizarre is this? How believable is it? Are these statements a reflection of the old adage that the performance of a sporting team reflects the competence of the administration behind it?

Then again, how to explain the Springboks if this is the case?

* The wisdom of administrators, part 6: The NZRU will not decide on the next coach of the All Blacks until Christmas, whereas the ARU wants to appoint the next Wallaby coach by the end of November, and the Welsh also plan to make a new appointment soon.

It would seem that the NZRU’s slowness is a deliberate ploy to deter leading Kiwi coaches such as Robbie Deans and Warren Gatland from accepting offers from Australia and Wales respectively. But will this backfire on the NZRU?

Are this and some of the other points above examples of what Brendan Gallagher has termed the “pure, unattractive arrogance” of those in New Zealand rugby, a belief that all in rugby revolves around them?

* Polls reveal that 66% of New Zealand rugby fans want Graham Henry retained as coach of the All Blacks.

This is hard to understand given what happened to John Hart (1999) and John Mitchell (2003) before Henry: they had inferior personnel, they made it further in the tournament (to the semifinals), and yet they were summarily dismissed for their failure. Has New Zealand matured in its reaction to World Cup defeat? Could Graham Henry really do a Clive Woodward, i.e., learn from the mistakes of a first World Cup campaign to emerge triumphant at a second?

And if Graham Henry is reappointed (or his assistant Steve Hansen, with whom Deans is estranged), will that be to the advantage of Australian rugby by pushing Robbie Deans in the direction of the Wallaby coaching position?

* Domestic rugby, part 1: Auckland won the New Zealand provincial championship, becoming the first team since the Auckland team of 1990 to go through a season undefeated and win the Ranfurly Shield.

An adage in New Zealand rugby is “When Auckland is strong, the All Blacks are strong.” Is this no longer true? Or is it true but it just didn’t show at the World Cup? Or did coach Henry simply not select enough Auckland players?

* Domestic rugby, part 2: ARC champions the Rays were given little chance of even making the final four before the tournament started.

Why is this given that they fielded a virtual NSW-strength backline, containing Brett Sheehan, Sam Norton-Knight, Sam Harris, Ben Jacobs and Peter Hewat?

And on this point it should be mentioned that backline of the ARC minor premiers, the Rams, included Josh Holmes, Kurtley Beale, Chris Siale and Lachlan Turner, four of the most exciting young backs in Australian rugby.

* The ARC was dominated by teams with the best backs (see point immediately above) whereas World Cup success was largely determined by forwards (think England, Argentina and South Africa).

Could this have anything to do with the ARC being played with the so-called Experimental Law Variations, whereas the World Cup was played under the old dispensation? Or does this just reflect the different mentality towards rugby in Australia?

* Could there be any more powerful argument for adopting the Experimental Law Variations than England’s success at this World Cup?

* If New Zealand had won the World Cup, then wouldn’t the hated “rotation” and “reconditioning” strategies have become permanent features of New Zealand’s rugby, and therefore probably everyone else’s?

Paradoxically, is New Zealand’s failure at the World Cup was no bad thing for New Zealand and world rugby?

* Aren’t calls for the diminution of the value of drop goals a case of missing the elephant in the room?

Consider the following facts: while Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal against France was much celebrated, the match was already won at this point and he had missed several attempts prior to this. Similarly, he missed his only two drop-goal attempts during the final. Doesn’t this tell that drop goals are actually very difficult to execute successfully, and therefore that they are well worth their 3 points? Further, they are relatively rare, and they are not decided by the whim of the referee.

Now consider the situation with penalty goals. In the World Cup final, the South Africans kicked 5 from 6 attempts, with only Steyn missing an angled, long-range attempt. Wilkinson kicked 2 out of 2 for England. This tells that penalty goals are relatively easy to kick and that they are common.

Even worse, they are at the whim of the referee and the laws. The penalty goal by Steyn that put the final out of England’s reach at 15-6 was for an obstruction that wasn’t: Mark Cueto did not run behind any team-mate. On the other hand, England’s second penalty was for South Africa killing the ball, and thereby denying England a deserved try after the most exciting run of the final by Matthew Tait. In other words, 3 points in both cases, one for a trivial offence that wasn’t, the other for a grave offence that probably denied England 7 points.

So aren’t penalty goals rather than drop goals the real blight on rugby? What to do about this? Should rugby league be looked, where penalties rarely decide a contest, or does rugby need to find its own solutions?

* Stirling Mortlock will miss the entire 2008 Super 14 season as he recuperates from the third shoulder reconstruction of his career.

Presumably this means the Wallabies will require a new captain, yes? Is this a good or a bad thing? Should it be a caretaker appointment or should it a permanent one, with a view to the future? Either way, who should it be? Are Giteau, Smith and Waugh the only contenders? Could Waugh seriously be considered given that he cannot command a starting spot?

* Should I keep writing questions like this in the future?

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