The Ferrie Files: Giants slain, Hall of Fame, Georgian gains

The opening matches for the game’s traditional super-powers provided evidence of the game’s growth at this, the eighth staging of the Rugby World Cup which makes it comparable to the 1966 football version when minnows were still considered minnows, yet North Korea knocked Italy out in the pool stages.

In that context the shocking nature of the Springboks’ defeat at the hands of Korea’s neighbours Japan has opened up the possibility of the 1995 and 2007 champions failing to reach the knockout stages, whereas the test a full-strength All Blacks side underwent at the hands of Argentina last night could be considered the perfect opener.

At previous World Cups, the Kiwis are considered to have suffered from having it too easy in their pool matches, but this time they were behind with close to an hour of the match gone as they battled to overcome the Pumas’ physicality. Perhaps the most remarkable statistic of all was that Aaron Smith’s score at that stage which ultimately proved the match-winner was the first try of the tournament for a team that had previously never failed to pick up a bonus point in a pool match since they were introduced at World Cups.

Continuing the comparison with football’s World Cup their performance was reminiscent of great German teams in that they did what they had to in working their way into the competition while leaving the pyrotechnics to others on the opening weekend.

By contrast it was vital for the Home Unions to generate confidence from the outset. Hosts England and European champions Ireland duly did so but while the Welsh out-scored both their Six Nations rivals they paid a heavy price for their opening-day defeat of Uruguay with worrying injuries to Liam Williams, Cory Allen, who had scored a first-half hat-trick of tries, Paul James and Dan Lydiate.

GOOD WEEKEND

Two of the three men who featured in The Herald’s 50 Greatest Scottish Rugby Players series which was published earlier this month, Andy Irvine and the late Gordon “Broon frae Troon” Brown, were among 25 people who were announced as having been brought into World Rugby’s ‘Hall of Fame’.

The inclusion of the only other Scot was also a feather in the cap of The Herald since it was the late Bill McLaren, the ‘voice of rugby’ who was our Herald columnist throughout most of his magnificent career behind the microphone.

The others honoured were Phil Bennett, Gerald Davies, Mervyn Davies, Carwyn James, Barry John, Gwynn Nicolls and John Lewis Williams (Wales), Naas Botha, Danie Gerber, Hennie Muller, Morne du Plessis and Joost van der Westhuizen (all South Africa), Marcel Communeau and Jean-Pierre Rives (France), Tim Horan and Tom Richards (both Australia), Tom Kiernan, Basil Maclear and Fergus Slattery (both Ireland), Edgar Mobbs, Ronald Poulton-Palmer and Wavell Wakefield (all England).

BAD WEEKEND

Following Italy’s defeat by France, their head coach Jacques Brunel revealed that centre Andrea Masi has ruptured his Achilles tendon and will miss the rest of the World Cup.

“Masi broke the tendon and is the third centre we’ve lost in two weeks. It’s the latest in a series of events that leave us with a bitter taste in the mouth,” Brunel said.

Italy were missing captain Sergio Parisse due to a knee injury but Brunel felt the reasons for their defeat lay elsewhere. “The loss of Parisse is of course an important factor, but I don’t think it’s the main reason for the defeat,” Brunel said. “France deserved to win, but the scoreline doesn’t reflect the game we played. We didn’t understand the refereeing [at] the scrum.”

TALKING POINT

Following the weekend that demonstrated the readiness of rugby’s developing nations to challenge the traditional powers, the Scot who has galvanised Eastern European rugby in the past six years believes Georgian rugby has proved its competitive readiness to challenge for a place in the Six Nations Championship.

Richie Dixon, the former Scotland and Glasgow Warriors head coach, has been employed by World Rugby on a consultancy basis charged with establishing high-performance programmes in both Georgia and Romania for the past six years and the progress they have made was evident as Georgian shocked Tonga on Saturday.

To place that in its proper perspective, it is less than three years since the Pacific Islanders ended Andy Robinson’s career as Scotland coach with their victory in Aberdeen and Mamuka Gorgodze, Georgia’s inspirational captain, was in no doubt about the significance of his team’s victory.

“This was the best victory in our history, because we are a very small team. Maybe we have players that play in good teams, but we’ve never had a win like this,” said the man who, before the tournament, had pointed out that his team is entirely homegrown, unlike most others at this World Cup.

Dixon, who has received Georgia’s highest civilian honour, the President’s Order of Excellence, for the work he did with their team, including taking over as head coach on an emergency basis ahead of the last World Cup where they kept Scotland try-less in their encounter in Invercargill, is with them for the first two rounds of pool matches at this tournament and is also deeply proud of their efforts. He paid tribute to their Kiwi head coach Milton Haig and his assistant Michael Bradley, the former Edinburgh head coach.

“I certainly feel their game is starting to stand scrutiny and only other factors will stand in the way of allowing them to challenge for a place in the Six Nations,” he said, referring to renewed calls from those keen to see the sport grow, for promotion and relegation to be introduced to European rugby’s top annual competition.

Dixon believes Romania, whom he will join for the third and fourth rounds of pool matches, will also prove competitive during this tournament thanks to the work done by World Rugby since the last global gathering, while our discussion took place as Georgia’s performance was being upstaged by Japan’s astonishing defeat of South Africa’s Springboks.

“After the last World Cup where we performed as well as we did, it was clear that the main thing that was missing for countries at Georgia’s level was the chance to play more quality games often,” he explained.

“The international calendar for Tier One nations was already established, but World Rugby has done an excellent job in getting the Tier Two nations to meet one another and Japan, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, the USA and Canada have all come through Tbilisi in the last few years.

“It’s like our youngsters in Scotland when you compare them with the likes of the English youth set-up in that they have to get the competitive maturity and it is hard to do that without the right games.”

A largely French-based squad, supplemented by several players who are home-based and are being honed at the high performance centres Dixon has helped set-up in Tiblisi and Katisi, including 18-year-old scrum-half Vasil Lobzhanidze who became the youngest player to taken part in a World Cup, has consequently been able to set itself new targets.

“It would be a major achievement if they can claim third place in the pool and earn automatic selection for the 2019 World Cup and the meeting with Tonga was like their cup final in that regard,” said Dixon. “They will back themselves to beat the Namibians and now they might even fancy their chances of making it hard for Argentina.”

AND ANOTHER THING

Commentators focused on the disruption to matches of over-reliance upon television match officials (TMOs) following Friday’s World Cup opener at Twickenham but there was a much more disturbing element.

Given the nature of ITV’s cheer-leading coverage it was shocking that ex-Glasgow Warrior Niko Matawalu’s potential match-turning try was disallowed not because referee Jaco Peyper chose to consult the TMO, but because a TV director chose to show a replay of the touchdown immediately before the conversion was taken and the whistler spotted on the big screen that the ball had been dropped.

The scope for abuse is obvious and unacceptable in terms of the sport’s credibility.

WHAT’S ON TODAY?

Scotland will set out their stall and find out what they are up against in their opening match, which has taken on a very different significance following the stunning victory achieved by their Japanese opponents over the Springboks, when the teams are named for their meeting with Japan in Gloucester on Wednesday. Australia – widely fancied to become the first nation to win the World Cup for a third time – and Romania will also name their teams for their competition bows against Fiji and France respectively.