Good Day
For getting some perspective on the excess of this extended sporting party, as a thought was spared for wider concerns on what was World Food Day.
The World Cup’s “Tackle Hunger” campaign has been running in the build-up to and throughout the tournament and has been promoted in stadiums, online, through traditional media and is association with the host broadcaster.
Given the exorbitant prices they have been charged, however, it is all the more heartening to discover the contribution already made by supporters who have, apparently, generated sufficient funds for more than a million meals by opting in to making donations when buying their RWC 2015 tickets online.
The UK Government has offered to match all donations made in the UK during the tournament and the importance of recognising that sport cannot be boxed off and seen as either oblivious to or detachable from bigger issues was underlined in a message issued by World Rugby yesterday.
“On World Food Day, the United Nations World Food Programme will be launching a year-long campaign titled "One Future, #ZeroHunger” to rally global support for increased investments to end hunger by 2030, one of the targets of the new UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” it read.
“Given the enhanced role for sport as part of the solution to help achieve the SDGs, World Rugby is proud to support WFP in its efforts to achieve zero hunger and is grateful for the generosity and support of the rugby family and RWC 2015 stakeholders to help achieve theTackle Hunger objectives.”
Bad Day
For France coach Philippe Satin-Andre with reports on the home front of rebellion within the camp.
If the claims are to be believed then the players have lost faith in the man in charge.
In many ways it is all rather familiar, given that it was pretty much the same at the last World Cup as Marc Lievremont’s regime came under heavy criticism only for his team to get to the final of the tournament where they lost to the All Blacks, on their own patch, by just a single point.
The irony is that Lievremont was regarded as a strange choice when appointed and developed a reputation as something of a maverick, whereas Saint-Andre, with a solid club coaching record behind him, was seen as something of a safe pair of hands when he took over.
Yet where Lievremont had overseen a Grand Slam season in 2010 before his team finished runners-up in the Six Nations that year, Saint-Andre’s teams have never managed to get into the top half of the Six Nations table in his four seasons in charge.
All very perplexing given their playing resources, but the problems run deeper in French rugby where players spend too little time with the national squad, something that the time has perhaps come to address.
What’s on today?
Two cracking World Cup quarter-finals as New Zealand play France, the team they arguably have most reason to fear at World Cups and Wales take on the resurgent Springboks
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