Sunday morning started with another Japanese masterclass in diligence and teamwork as they blitzed Samoa from the outset at Milton Keynes to run away 26-5 victors.
Japan had every detail taken care of in another display of error-free rugby. They were unflappably patient in breaking down the Samoan defensive line, knowing that as smaller men they must make every collision count and never run out of support.
Once tackled, the ball was jealously protected and recycled. Arriving there first was half the battle, using their lower centres of gravity effectively was the other. By the end of the first half the relentless nature of the onslaught was already bewildering. By the final whistle it was magnificent.
Eddie Jones’ Brave Blossoms are giving every team of Davids in the world a blueprint for how to humiliate Goliaths. I’ve never been in a team of smaller men that beat bigger opponents.
I’ve been in plenty of smaller losing teams, and I know how good the showers feel after getting smashed by 20 stone Islanders, and I wasn’t the only one watching feeling like a veil had been lifted.
The swarming Japanese simply would not let the Samoans keep the ball. The Samoans, apparently infuriated by being on the receiving end of a beating by smaller men, reacted badly.
Harassed into errors and unable to escape their torturers, they vented frustration with early, late and high tackles, meaning the sin bin saw heavy traffic.
Their humiliation really began when the Japanese scrum marched them backwards for a penalty try, but then right wing Akihito Yamada bounced out of Alesana Tuilagi’s tackle to dive over in the corner, they were confronted with a 0-20 scoreline and they began to realise how badly and publicly they were being flogged.
They hit back with a Paul Perez try way too late in the second half. It was one of few times they were able to keep possession for longer than a couple of phases.
Then the Springboks saw off a gritty Scottish challenge 34-16. Schalk Burger got the opening try, hurling himself between tacklers beside the posts, but he needed assistance from two other Springboks in grounding it. Next, after a lineout drive set the Scots’ heels on their own line, big wing JP Pietersen burst onto a flat pass and proved too hard to stop.
That try on the stroke of half-time looked decisive, but the Scots kept their shoulders to the wheel. Defending well, they got Handre Pollaed to push a pass, which flyhalf Duncan Weir intercepted and slalomed 75 yards before being brought down. His offload from the ground to left wing Tim Visser kept the movement alive.
Right wing Tommy Seymour ran hard and straight onto Visser’s pass for the try, giving Scotland a ray of hope, but then the Springboks battered their way into scoring position again, Bryan Habana drove through the tackle of Sean Lamont for a third try, and the wider margin was a fairer reflection of the merit of both teams’ performance.
Finally it was time for the much anticipated Wallabies v England clash. In the end, after all our expectations of a bruising fight to the death, it wasn’t even close.
Unlikely man of the match Bernard Foley opened the scoring, selling England halfback Ben Youngs a dummy and wrong-footing fullback Mike Brown. This was slick enough, but nothing compared to what Foley was about to cook up with Kurtley Beale.
It was a pre-planned move, and more remarkable in that it was planned for second phase rather than set piece. With a ruck midfield and the English defence fanned, halfback Will Genia picked up and feinted left. At the same moment Foley and Beale moved as one to the right behind the ruck, effectively making Genia’s twist-and-pass to Foley a scissors move.
The defence to the right was caught unawares. Foley and Beale ran straight at Youngs, slicing either side of him just after Foley gave the inside ball to Beale, and the forwards who were scrambling to get across from the left were too late. With lightning precision it had become a two-on-one with Brown, and Beale committed the fullback neatly to give Foley an untouched run in.
It was the strike move of the tournament so far. Foley celebrated by ten-pin-bowling the ball over the dead ball line, which would have been a harmless enough celebration except for it smashing square into the telescopic lens of the prettiest photographer at the ground and blacking the eye she was viewing with.
English winger Anthony Watson claimed a small amount of payback by busting between Foley and Beale for a try, and Owen Farrell kicked a penalty to make it 13-20, meaning that ever so briefly it looked like a close finish was a possibility.
The officials botched a yellow card call badly. Farrell was binned for shoulder-charging Wallaby second five Mat Giteau, when really Giteau got what every space-congesting dummy runner who makes contact is crying out for in my opinion, a hard shoulder in the guts.
Meanwhile between them, referee Romain Poite and TMO Shaun Veldsman had completely missed replacement Sam Burgess collaring the actual ball-carrier, Michael Hooper, with an ugly high tackle.
It was bizarre watching them cock the whole thing up, knowing they were getting it wrong while watching the real action happening in the 80% of the screen they weren’t looking at.
A counter-ruck soon afterwards and a Foley skip pass put Adam Ashley-Cooper away down the right, with Giteau in support for the dive into the corner.
The Australian loose forwards, especially David Pocock, were devastating at the breakdown with steal after steal.
The Australian scrum was also dominant, making it hard for the English to sustain any momentum. Not that they’ve had much to begin with in the last couple of years. Four years into a contract which ends in 2020, Stuart Lancaster will have difficulty making the case either for building or rebuilding.
By the time Australia had trounced England the sun was up and the world looked bleary. An honest evaluation of my emotional ride through the night was instructive, however, and I am now in a position to diagnose the cause of a nagging unease many of us are suffering from.
We’re worried that Australia will win a third title. It’s okay, we can admit it.
We’re confident South Africa won’t get there and we’re certain now that England can’t.
We wouldn’t begrudge the French a title, and both Ireland and Wales would be popular champions. If by some miracle an Argentine win happened, we’d have to be ankle-deep in blood from start to finish of knockout, but we wouldn’t make a fuss.
The Wallabies though? Coached by Michael Cheika? That’s the Doom awaiting? Oh God…
I think the greatest clash the World Cup has never seen is an All Blacks v Wallabies final. But you know the problem with worrying about one team in particular is that it’s exactly when you lose to another team.
We who were so pleased with the World Cup we hosted and won, I predict, will be happily admitting at the end of this one that the overall standard of rugby was better this time around.
These tournaments have always produced an epic or three, like in 2011 with Ireland and Australia’s (no tries) pool clash, Tonga upsetting France and the celestial form of the All Blacks in that semifinal… but by my count this Cup has already seen three upsets, one the biggest of all time, and four other flat-out classics which came as surprises, and we’re only two thirds of the way through pool play.
Add to that contention the cold hard fact that an average of 20,000 more spectators per match are in the grandstands, voicing support for an all-round higher level of skill, and with knockout guaranteeing drama no matter what, you’d be hard pressed arguing this World Cup isn’t the best yet.
Maybe not the nation-unifying opportunity that 1995 turned into, but incontestably with the best on-field stories.
Go on though, if you partied with Dallaglio in 1999, stood beside Nelson Mandela at a urinal in 1995 or had a thousand on Samoa to beat Wales in 1991, let me know, because I remember those and all other previous tournaments principally as a kaleidoscope of missed tackles, dropped goals, controversies and cricket scores, all excused of course by the intensity of the drama, until 2011 when mental illness ruled me unfit to judge.
The rugby tourists who made the pilgrimages and sampled the atmospheres of the first seven Cups without exception would claim their dollars, pounds, francs and rand were well spent. Their cashed-up MasterCards were the lifeblood of those early Rugby World Cups which took the sport to the threshold on which it now stands.
But this 2015 tournament, game after game, has rewarded the faith of the rugby traveller by setting a standard for skill and excitement far higher than its predecessors.
The best value ever transacted by a rugby tourist was 20,000 yen for a seat in the grandstand at Brighton. The uncommon valour on show that day, a rip in the cosmic curtain which turned the rugby world on its head, had small axes sharpening for big trees everywhere.
No champion can disappoint from here.
Back-to-back Black, Cheika’s Wallabies making off with two thirds of our trophy cabinet almost out of nowhere, the Springboks back from the dead, fairy tales for Ireland, Wales, France or Argentina… then finally a truly exotic location in 2019, with the Japanese hosts wanting every game to be as much fun as Brighton… this tournament has come of age.
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