It is a relatively little known fact that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, was an avid rugby fan. He traveled to France, South Africa and New Zealand to watch matches and wrote in his autobiography in 1924 that he considered rugby “the best collective sport” because of its physical and mental demands. Even Holmes’s faithful companion, Watson, was credited at the time with playing on the wing for England’s oldest club, Blackheath.
So what would the famous detective, almost exactly a century later, have deduced from studying the 2023 Rugby World Cup? It’s easy to imagine him exhaling a cloud of pipe smoke in his Baker Street lodgings and the end of the match ultimately being determined by what didn’t happen. Host nation France were not carried shoulder-high through the streets of Paris with the trophy, the Irish could not fulfill their fans’ fondest dreams and in the final the All Black dog did not bark in the night. They were all eventually outflanked by a South African side that was a little stronger and cuter than the rest.
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Should everyone have seen it coming? Maybe. The bright-eyed Springboks were the defending champions, beating New Zealand 35-7 in their final pre-tournament warm-up match at Twickenham. That same week I happened to be standing next to the same coffee machine as the All Black head coach, Ian Foster, and asked how his team was preparing for the ultimate test. Foster really felt his side were in a good place; Little did he know, the Boks were in an even better situation.
When people revisit the details of the knockout stages, the other overarching conclusion will be the absurdly small margins between success and failure. No team will ever again win a Rugby World Cup in the extraordinary way the Boks won it: three consecutive one-point victories in the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, all built on the back of brutal adversity. It was less about individual performance and more about a collective example of South Africa refusing to be defeated. Elementary actually.
The good
Every World Cup is remembered differently depending on people’s points of view. The last edition was the definitive example. Everyone actually present in France felt the air rush out of the tournament’s tricolor balloons as the defeated hosts collapsed to the ground at the final whistle of their quarter-final. It had been a similar story the night before, after Ireland’s crushing 24-28 defeat to New Zealand. Try telling someone in those two countries to give thanks indefinitely, as is still happening across South Africa, for the bountiful gifts that 2023 has brought.
Still, there were certain unifying themes to refresh even the most jaded palate. To be in the Stade de France as tens of thousands of Irish fans shouted Dirty Old Town and Zombie after watching their team beat the Boks in the pool stages was to experience the special shared community that rugby followers can still generate (if they not be). shouting out Eddie Jones or Owen Farrell on the big screen). The same happened in the glorious final moments when Portugal crossed for the late try against Fiji in Toulouse, which they deserved Os Lobos their first World Cup main draw victory. World Cup games come alive when people are lifted from their seats, and Portugal managed that almost every time they took the field.
But in the end, one man stood out – again. Not Eben Etzebeth, Pieter Steph du Toit, Handré Pollard, Ox Nché or any of the other steel Bok match winners, but their captain, Siya Kolisi. The next time someone talks flippantly about leadership being less important in today’s data-driven, coach-dominated modern sports environment, just direct them to Kolisi’s media addresses throughout the league. Sincerity, integrity, passion, humanity…the boy from the downtrodden township of Zwide in the Eastern Cape has become perhaps the most impressive figure in all of world sport. When New Zealanders lament the 12-11 defeat of their 14-man team in the final and blame the referees for showing a red card to skipper Sam Cane, they forget the remarkable bonds – part spiritual, part group brothers – that elevated South Africa above all others. It takes a rare individual to lead a team to one World Cup victory, let alone two. Rugby Union has never had a better ambassador.
The bad
World Cups can fool the imagination. Was it really just four months ago that Eddie Jones was still being hailed as Australia’s trump card? It feels considerably longer now. Few have left a more extensive trail of coaching wreckage in the past 12 months than Jones, who now awaits his next challenge in the form of a second stint as Japan’s head coach. England, who had sacked Jones last December, could only hand the hospital passes to Steve Borthwick, who had little choice but to draw up the most basic game plans for a tournament that cried out for slightly more layered sophistication. The Wallabies? There have been toddler meals with a less messy ending than Australia’s 40-6 defeat by Wales in Lyon, after which Jones’ days leading his homeland were inevitably numbered.
And as for Johan Deysel: what would have happened if French king Antoine Dupont had not been punched in the face by Namibia’s sincere captain in a pool match that Les Bleus were we already winning along the length of the Champs-Élysées? One premature break, one gigantic hole in a country’s self-confidence. Dupont was back, with a protective headgear, in time for the quarter-final against South Africa, but it would never be the same Musketeer D’Artagnan again. In that split second – with France leading 54-0 in a match they would eventually win 96-0 – the tournament’s biggest asset was immediately replaced by pearl clutching, daily medical bulletins and global frustration. If France could rewrite every moment of their World Cup – including Cheslin Kolbe’s crucial strike on Thomas Ramos’ attempted conversion – it would mean replacing Dupont at half-time in that match in Namibia before disaster strikes.
The ugly one
Rugby’s rulers had the very best of intentions when, on the eve of the World Cup, they confirmed the use of the new bunker assessment system to help on-field referees rule on cases of dangerous or reckless play. Unfortunately, the results were often so hairline and questionable that uncertainty prevailed. Tom Curry was shown a red card in the opening minutes of England’s opening match for the sin of colliding with a falling Argentine opponent and the chances that a lengthy slow-motion examination would have a significant impact on a major knockout match were always high . And sure enough, it happened in the final. Cane’s dismissal was arguably for a less heinous foul than his teammate Shannon Frizzell had committed earlier in the match, but by the letter of the law he had to leave. It didn’t help the game either that the momentous final decision to red card the All Black captain, after a lengthy bunker review process, was ultimately taken out of the hands of a good referee, Wayne Barnes. The idea was to help officials, not make them helpless hostages to fortune.
Worse still was the outpouring of subsequent anger on social media that flowed towards Barnes and his England officiating colleague Tom Foley. Both announced shortly after the tournament that they were withdrawing from international competition, sick of the abuse against their families and themselves. Society’s problem is partly, but increasingly, a rugby problem. Eddie Jones is among those who believe there is a direct link between extended stoppages in play due to video reviews and the booing of individuals on the big screen by bored, distracted fans. The talented Barnes had handled the final with aplomb and yet here he was, still pilloried by the cowardly and faceless. Rugby’s greatest ever tournament had bright, happy moments, but there were also flashes of depressing darkness.
Lesson learned
Let’s start with the good news. The quarter-finals between France and South Africa and Ireland against New Zealand were as good as rugby gets; hard, fast, skilled, resourceful and impressively staged. The only downside was that two of the four best teams in the world were unable to compete in the last two weeks. Next time, the draw will take place closer to the event, reducing the chance of ranking quirks fundamentally reshaping the competition in the same way. The effective duration of the tournament is also reduced from eight to seven weeks: the 2023 edition was so long that even those of us who barely made it to French O-level were almost fluent by the end.
However, if World Rugby could wave a magic wand it would be to increase the number of properly competitive teams to coincide with a planned expansion to 24 countries (from 20) next time around. Beyond concussion-related lawsuits and off-field financial concerns, the international game must still be wary of too many mismatches, a lack of danger and an uneven playing field tilted in favor of the established elite. Success, or otherwise, in 2027 and 2031 will be most effectively measured by the scorelines when the sides ranked 21st to 24th in the world take on the big boys.