Reading an exchange between two home-based Facebook chums furiously agreeing with one another about the future of European rugby, while conversing with another who is based in Japan and extremely excited about what is happening there, helped crystallise some thoughts on the sport’s need to capitalise on this commercially and competitively best ever World Cup.

It looks as if those we have always considered minnows are actually tadpoles and are beginning to find their feet in the swirling battle first to survive and then to thrive in what is a brutal world. Some have, however, inevitably fallen by the wayside for a variety of reasons.

We remember, for example Portugal celebrating keeping the score against the All Blacks below 100 points at the 2007 World Cup but, for all that they are on a very similar level to Scotland on the sevens circuit, there has been little mention of them as a 15-a-side force since.

There was, too, the Cote d’Ivoire and poor Max Brito, whose plight, now living on benefits in his home in Bordeaux, paralysed as a result of the injury suffered during the 1995 tournament, has been brought to light of late.

With fair-minded men like John Jeffrey, a Justice of the Peace, now heavily involved in the sport’s over-arching governing body World Rugby, we can but hope that if what has come of Brito is as has been described of late, that there will be intervention to improve his lot. Better late than never.

However in the sporting context, for all that Jacques Burger’s Namibia have battled gamely at this tournament and produced a few memorable moments for themselves, there has been no real sign that the nations surrounding South Africa on the Dark Continent, are in an environment that will help them develop.

Again Kenya have shown some promise on the sevens circuit, consistently competing in that second tier of teams along with Portugal and Scotland, but other than helping rugby gain Olympic status, which is undeniably useful in funding terms in many countries, there remains little evidence that it is a stepping stone to 15-a-side play, so different are the technical requirements.

However what will make a difference is a seizing of the moment when the profile of the sport has been elevated in countries or regions which is why we must examine Europe in the context of what is happening in Japan.

World Rugby may claim it is all down to good planning, but any way you look at it there has been an element of luck for them in the way Eddie Jones readied his team to produce the biggest shock in the sport’s history on this tournament’s opening weekend, then prove that was no fluke as 25 million tuned in to Japanese television coverage to watch them bring down another team that has been in the world’s top eight in the not too distant past.

However the opportunity to maximise the benefit for the sport had been put in place with - ironically given those previous comments about the lack of growth in Africa - Japanese and Argentinian teams having been invited to join in South African Super Rugby conferences which will allow those of their players not yet well enough known to be targeted by European clubs, to gain the competitive experience required to widen the international talent pool.

It would be easy to be cynical and suspect they have been prioritised as opposed to, for example, the South Sea islanders - whose failure to make the progress we would all have liked to see is addressed elsewhere in these pages today – for commercial considerations.

The potential of tapping into the Japanese marketplace is obvious and while Argentina’s economy may not offer similar easy pickings rugby is very much a sport for the wealthy in a country of extremes.

However, 20 years on from Japan’s 145 point thrashing at the hands of the All Blacks and Argentina’s failure to win a match in the pool from which Western Samoa qualified for the quarter-finals, both have now proved their right to be given the opportunities now being provided, just as Georgia and Romania, with their tournament record breaking comeback against Canada the other night, have done.

We can but wonder where Romanian rugby might have been had they, as Italy were a decade later, been given the chance to join the Six Nations when obviously competitive enough to do so around the time of the first World Cup. However they are ready again and as those aforementioned Facebookers bickered chirpily away about whether Georgia should be invited into a Seven Nations Championship or promotion and relegation should be introduced the onus is again on the game’s power-brokers - JJ the JP and his fellow blazers - to do the right thing.

Just as Max Brito and others injured playing rugby, should never be abandoned by the sport, neither should commercial considerations be paramount in deciding who has access to the top table.

If that means passionate Scots like JJ – known as ‘the White Shark’ back in the days when Scotland were predators rather than prey - and I must suffer watching our team scrabble for survival, so be it, but it may also create the environment that will force Scottish rugby to evolve more efficiently than it has so far in the professional era.