Just across the Channel, but Wales can't find Belgium

France’s scrum-half Dimitri Yachvili passes the ball during the IRB Rugby World Cup Semi-Final between Wales and France (AAP Image/AFP, Franck Fife)

Bloody hell. The French. After all this time, and the Rugby World Cup final has to end up with the French. Tonight’s semi barely matters, because whatever happens, we’re going to have to watch another game with the French in it.

A World Cup final versus France. It’s not just taking your sister to the dance. It’s having to dink her there on your bike the day she had her wisdom teeth out.

On the other side was the team everyone loved to love. The plucky outsider blah blah condescending cliché.

Wales was the Marcos Baghdatis of this year’s World Cup. Like Marcos, they have only their stupid ponytail and a bunch of drunk Cypriots to make them feel better about things now.

Of course everyone wanted Wales to win. Good things don’t happen to Wales. Nothing good has ever happened to Wales. Things in general don’t happen to Wales.

It’s a tiny, freezing, overlooked crag of rock where nothing of note has ever occurred. A bit like New Zealand, except New Zealand sometimes wins the rugby.

But then suddenly Wales was winning the rugby, and weren’t people lapping it up. Long-forgotten Welsh heritage was suddenly discovered.

“I’m really passionate about Wales,” a drunk bloke was telling the girl next to me in the dying minutes of the game.

“Really?” she said. “They’re a point down with one minute to go in a World Cup semi-final and you’re talking to me instead of watching.”

Spear-tackle.

The stadium was packed though: not just of fairweather fans, but the real ones in full kit. On the long walk down the closed-off thoroughfares to Eden Park, I was stunned. I didn’t actually know there were that many Welsh people in the world.

The French were severely outnumbered, though still present. The street was packed, a happy and easygoing column of people marching. Volunteers were everywhere, waving them on. The organisation was first-rate. Any early kinks were gone.

New Zealand, if you’ll forgive my lack of facetiousness, knows how to get things done.

The festive atmosphere has been obvious right from the start. Even before landing, the Kiwi one seat over from me was three sheets to the wind, having dinged about fifteen red wines on the three-hour flight. He’d reached that charming point of imagining that everything inside his head was of supreme interest to those around him.

“Whassa matter?” he said, as myself and the guy between us both closed our eyes during turbulence on the landing approach. “If you carn take flyin’, doan ged on a fuggin plane.”

“If you can’t take your booze, try a cup of tea,” I suggested in return.

“What, does your mother still have you in a cot?” he asked.

“Did your mother feed you Scotch out of a bottle?”

The bloke in the middle called time-out. Later we watched old mate staggering in circles through the exit lines, collaring every chauffer along the queue and sinking them in unwilling conversation.

You can feel everything gearing up for the tournament’s conclusion. In a place the size of New Zealand, this is the only thing under discussion. On The Great Crusade – the Qantas supporters tour with which I am embedded like an Iraq war correspondent – anticipation is feverish.

Wales and France gave the first taste of the action for myself and some other new folk who’ve recently have come on board.

Sitting next to an American, I found, is a pretty good way to prompt critical thinking about the game of rugby union.

“They should follow the Germans,” said my cabin-mate Gary, after Welsh skipper Sam Warburton was sent off. “The French tried to stop them with a big defensive line, and they just went around through Belgium.”

Ultimately, though, isn’t that kind of what rugby is about? Forcing a defence to concentrate on one side, so you can find a way around it at the edge. Searching for Belgium.

The French played that grinding defensive game that they play so… well? Somehow that word doesn’t seem right. Kick for position, press for penalties, slot them when they come.

The Welsh were also desperate in defence, especially in the moments following Warburton’s dismissal, when the French were deep in attack and it seemed they simply must score. Somehow the Welsh held firm right on their try-line, and turned the tide.

For the entire night, despite the one-man disadvantage, the contest was even. Wales played the better rugby, with more attempts to run and create. But try as they might, they couldn’t find Belgium. France defended stoutly.

And for those contending that Wales should have won, well, they should have, but they can blame themselves, not the referee.

Warburton’s tackle looked terrible live – the stadium reverberated with people’s spontaneous wincing – and worse on replay.

While people have of course been exercising their democratic right to act like outraged twats on the internet, Wales had every chance to win, and failed. They had seven shots at goal – five after the red card – and missed six. They lost by a point. End of story.

And so the crowd favourites are gone. The Wallabies and the All Blacks will duel it out tonight. Regardless of who wins that game, the final will contain tension, pressure, eye-catching skills, and remarkable passages of play. It will also feature France.

France. Your closest relative at the dance. A team who’ve stormed into the final with all the grace and purpose of a man getting caught in a fence.

And not just the most accidental finalists, but the most boring too. Whose game is as enjoyable as eating a bowl of chopsticks using two noodles.

Well, for most of us. “Allez les Bleus!” said a wasted Frenchman to himself as he wandered into the caravan park bathroom at 2 am. He at least seemed pleased.

“The land of a lot of rain,” he muttered to himself in paté-thick Franglois, as water peppered the roof. Let’s hope Kiwiland doesn’t live up to that tonight.