SCOUTING REPORT

The impression that Michael Cheika, the Wallabies head coach, is in no hurry to show his hand seemed confirmed yesterday when he named his team for their opening match against Fiji.

No fewer than seven World Cup debutants are included in the line-up - Scott Sio, Kane Douglas, Scott Fardy, Michael Hooper, Bernard Foley, Tevita Kuridrani and Israel Folau – but it is still a very experienced team which sees Matt Giteau make his first Test appearance in the tournament since 2007 and Will Genia returns to the starting line-up for the first time in two months.

The Australian willingness to find ways of accommodating their best players is also once again in evidence with both of their outstanding openside flankers Michael Hooper and David Pocock in the back-row.

“It’s important to give everyone an opportunity early on.We’ve done that throughout our lead-up to this tournament, and I believe it’s a good way to go,” said Cheika, who indicated that there will be wholesale changes for their second match against Uruguay ahead of what are expected to be their decisive Group A encounters with England and Wales.

In similar vein all bar three of France’s squad members will have started one of their first two matches following their meeting with Romania.

Of the side that overcame Italy at the weekend only Louis Picamoles, their No.8 and Fijian-born winger Noa Nakaitaci have kept their places in the starting XV.

The defending champions are meanwhile delighted with their first match, in spite of having failed to win a four try bonus point in a pool match for the first time ever.

“We’ve got out of it exactly what we wanted, a tough contest, a challenge in some areas, we’ve got some areas we’ve got to improve on but the most important thing is that we got a win and it gives us the opportunity to control our own destiny to be top qualifier if we win all our games,” said Steven Hansen, their head coach.

GOOD DAY

Georgia were the biggest climbers as the new world rankings were confirmed yesterday, rising three placed to 13th, just one behind Scotland and having begun the World Cup aiming for a third place finish in their Group to guarantee their participation at the next finals they can now dare to dream of reaching the quarter-finals.

Victory over Argentina’s Pumas on Friday’s would take them a long way towards that target since they would then need only to beat Namibia, the weakest team in the their group to finish second and while Mamuka Gorgodze, their inspirational French-based captain accepts that they must perform even better than they did in beating Tonga to have any chance, he is excited by the potential rewards.

“There is a lot of confidence for our next match, but we know Argentina is a big team with a lot of experience and some very good players,” he said. “I am sure there will be a lot of areas where we can improve and the coaches will tell us this. We’ve got to finish strongly at this World Cup and if we do, rugby in Georgia will become even more popular than before.”

BAD DAY

Cory Allen has gone from the elation of being the first player to register a try hat-trick at this year’s World Cup, to the devastation of being told his tournament is over because of a torn hamstring.

He is replaced in their squad by Tyler Morgan of Newport Gwent Dragons, a 20-year-old who won his only cap during last month’s warm-up defeat to Ireland.

It is not only Allen who would have swapped the tries he scored for finishing the game against the weakest of Wales’ opponents uninjured since, having already lost Leigh Halfpenny, their full-back who is probably the world’s best goal-kicker, their resources are beginning to look very stretched ahead of a string of tough matches against England, Australia and Fiji.

There was disappointment, too, for Fiji’s Dominiko Waqanburotu who fell foul of Scottish disciplinarians.

Douglas Hunter, the citing commissioner, cited the forward for a ‘dangerous tip tackle’ during Friday’s meeting with England and he was given a week’s ban after appearing before Lorne Crerar, the independent judicial officer.

The offence was deemed to be at the lower end of the scale which is a recommended two week ban, but “mitigating factors including his admission and remorse and the absence of aggravating factors,” further reduced that and he will onlymiss one match.

TALKING POINT

The sight of Joost van der Westhuizen surrounded by a group of hulking opponents was once one of the most thrilling in sport as he sought to find a way around them but yesterday it was warming and chilling in equal measure.

A photograph issued on Twitter and accompanied by the message “Thank you @manusamoa for my surprise visit. Incredibly blessed to be a part of the int #rugbyfamily.Good luck for #RWC” by the finest Springbok,it has been my privilege to see play demonstrated the very best of rugby, but perhaps also its very worst.

The memory of first seeing him play remains vivid as he danced his way through the entire Scottish pack for one of his tries in the 34-10 win at Murrayfield in 1994 which offered the first indication of what was to come at the following year’s World Cup where the scrum-half’s courage in repeatedly cutting down the gargantuan Jonah Lomu was a feature of his side’s famous victory over a team thought unbeatable.

Close up there was a cold, calculating intensity to Joost’s eyes which suggested a feral cunning which has now been dimmed by Motor Neurone Disease and there has been speculation as to how much his selfless style of play has contributed to his acquisition of that brutal condition.

It is an important element of this World Cup that new standards of care are set during the next few weeks because of the attention being paid to the implications of head injuries in recent years as highlighted in last night’s BBC Panorama programme: “Rugby and the Brain: Tackling the Truth” which featured John Beattie, the former Scotland forward turned media man.

Rory Lamont, the former Scotland full-back, has also championed this issue in recent years and the successful multi-million dollar class action raised by former American footballers against their governing body, the NFL, carries serious implications for rugby.

The information regarding the long-term implications of concussion have been known for a long time and only last week Jonathan Thomas, the Welsh international back-row, revealed that he had been told that rugby had contributed to the epilepsy that has forced him to retire from the sport at the age of 32.

The financial implications of what has happened in the past are obvious, since the same medical information must have been available to rugby’s authorities as to American Football’s, the conclusion drawn in US courts being that the full risks were hidden from participants.

How that plays out in our courts remains to be seen but in the short-term, as demonstrated by the outrage registered when, in spite of all the attention being paid to the subject, George North, the Welsh winger, stayed on the pitch during a Six Nations match after suffering head knocks, there has to be a change in culture.

There must, of course, be some sort of allowance made for the fact that a percentage of former rugby players will, like any other section of society, suffer from conditions such as Motor Neurone Disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s or epilepsy, but like their American Football counterparts, the rugby authorities have not done enough so far to minimise the risk.

There is now talk of rule changes being introduced, although how a sport that is all about physical confrontation can significantly reduce the risk of concussions being inflicted by these hugely powerful athletes is hard to envisage.

The big decisions will surely relate to advance checks of players’ fitness to enter the arena and how they are dealt with after being carried or staggering from it groggily.

Without anything approaching the resources that the NFL has to deal with the consequences rugby cannot, financially as well as morally, afford to continue to get this wrong.

AND ANOTHER THING …

Lynn Howells, the former Edinburgh coach who is now in charge of Romania, believes Japan’s defeat of South Africa has made life tougher for his men because their first opponents France will take them more seriously.

“It was a great result for the Tier 2 nations and for the game of rugby,” he said.

“I think it’s definitely scared the bigger teams to not take us or any of the smaller nations too easy.”.

Like eastern European neighbours Romania’s initial target is to finish third in their pool earning qualification for the next World Cup.

“It has always been at the back of our minds in this campaign. It would be good if we could put ourselves in that position ready for four years’ time,” said Howells.

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Captain’s warm-ups for Scotland and Japan in Gloucester, Australia and Fiji in Cardiff and France and Romania at London’s Olympic Stadium.