THE training camps are over, the warm-up matches done. Twenty teams are as ready as they will ever be to compete for the Webb Ellis Cup, known to its friends and admirers as Bill. The action starts at Twickenham on Friday, when England take on Fiji. It ends at Twickenham too – apart from a short foray into Cardiff, the whole tournament will be held in England – on October 31.
So will the host nation go all the way and emulate their success of 12 years ago in Australia, when they became the first and only Northern Hemisphere side to win the Rugby World Cup? To have a chance, they will first have to negotiate Pool A, this year’s obligatory group of death, in which Wales and Australia will also be very much in the running for the two quarter-final places.
There could be a three-way shoot-out in Pool B too, where South Africa are favourites to go through as group winners and Scotland and Samoa seem set to compete for second place. Scotland are at least in far better shape than they were during the Six Nations Championship, not only because they actually won two of their warm-up games, both against Italy, but also because their defeats by Ireland and France were narrow ones.
Vern Cotter’s team created enough chances to win both those matches, and they finished strongly in all four games, suggesting they will be one of the fittest sides in the tournament. Their match against Samoa on October 10 could be decisive, but they know they cannot simply presume they will win their opening games against Japan and the USA, two testing fixtures that have only four days between them.
New Zealand, the first winners of the competition in 1987 and the holders thanks to their triumph on home turf four years ago, are strong favourites to win Pool C. They face Argentina in their first game, and if they win that, the rest of the pool should be plain sailing. The Pumas will expect bruising battles with Tonga and Georgia, but after an encouraging Rugby Championship should beat those two countries and also Namibia to reach the last eight in relative comfort.
In Pool D, Romania and Canada are the makeweights, Ireland and France the favourites, and Italy are somewhere in the middle. Ireland were recently as high as No 2 in the World Rugby rankings, and although they have since fallen to sixth, they are still a place ahead of a French side who have been in patchy form. The teams meet in the last pool game, and as things stand Ireland will be favourites to go through to the last eight as winners.
In all, it is probable that seven of the top-eight teams in the world will reach the quarter-finals. Scotland, ranked 10th, should be the lowest ranked to make it, with fifth-ranked Wales likely to miss out. The reward for winning a group is a quarter-final against a runner-up from one of the other three pools. That will not necessarily confer an advantage. If the Springboks win Pool B, for example, they will progress to a quarter-final at Twickenham, where they can expect to meet either England or Australia.
In other words, while the big guns can expect one or two straightforward encounters in the pool stages, there will be no easy games in the knockout stages. New Zealand are the perennial favourites, but they have always been uneasy with the tag, and crumbled under the pressure in the semi-finals in 1999 and in the quarter-finals eight years later, losing both times to France. Another meeting with the French – if one wins their group and the other is runner-up – will not be welcomed by the All Blacks.
Because the top teams are so evenly matched, it is hard to see one winning this tournament that has not done so before. Experience counts for so much at the highest level, and only four countries – New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England – know what it takes to win the tournament.
Ireland, the only home nation never to have reached the semi-finals, should end that unwanted distinction, and might even get the better of England in the last four. But if the All Blacks lie in wait after overcoming France, then South Africa, they should become the first nation to retain the trophy.
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