Good Day

For Mario Ledesma who could revel in the knowledge that either the team he works for or the team he represented for 15 years is headed for the World Cup final.

The man who retired from Test rugby as Argentina’s most capped forward after the last World Cup has been given huge credit for the improvement in Australia’s work in the tight since taking over as their specialist scrummage coach and Michael Cheika, the Wallabies head coach, expects him to remember which side his bread is buttered.

“It’s obviously a big week for him, very emotional, but he’ll stay focused on getting our scrum to improve and it needs to improve because there is obviously a very strong (Argentine) scrum,” said Cheika.

For their part the Pumas are under no illusions that they face more of a challenge than would previously have been the case against Australia in that department, so much so that there was a hint of mind games being played yesterday as Julian Montoya, the 21-year-old hooker who has come into their squad since Ledesma departed, suggested that they are hoping he overdoes the hard work.

“We still haven’t studied it in-depth, but we know them and that their scrum will be extremely tough because they’ve come a long way there,” he said. “Australia wasn’t really a scrummaging team and now they’re very good at it. It will be very close, and for us it’s great if they scrummage a lot because it’ll tire them. I don’t know Ledesma, but I know he’s been very instrumental in improving their scrum.”

Bad Day

To make the sort of weak joke Brett Gosper, World Rugby’s chief executive proferred when asked to explain why Craig Joubert had raced off the pitch as soon as he blew the final whistle at the end of Scotland’s World Cup quarter-final meeting with Australia.

"Maybe he was keen to get to the bathroom, who knows?" said Gosper.

In more serious vein Gosper suggested that the fury emanating from the stands might have made Joubert decide to get off the pitch rather than conform to rugby convention by shaking hands with both sets of players before departing the scene.

"I'm sure as a referee he sensed a bit of hostility," he said.

"When you have a hostile 82,000 people, for whatever reason, who knows how that affects behaviour.”

There have been reports that rather than merely suffering from a lack of bottle the South African was reacting to one that was thrown at and narrowly missed him.

At the risk of being accused of even worse taste given the potential seriousness of that accusation, however, is it possible that the idiot in question who hurled that missile had merely recognised the same problem Gosper identified and was offering relief by way of an old bottle that once held bitter ale?

Those confused by that reference might want to Google the lyrics of Max Boyce’s unofficial Welsh rugby anthem ‘Hymns and Arias’.