Andy Capostagno Rugby World Cup
It is no surprise that a southern hemisphere nation has won the first three Rugby World Cups. If it had been left to the northern hemisphere, the Five Nations Championship would still be the pinnacle of the game and the occasional tour by the upstarts from the Commonwealth would be tolerated, but not encouraged.
The idea of a Rugby World Cup was first mooted more than 20 years ago, but to the bureaucrats of the International Rugby Board (IRB) it smacked entirely too much of professionalism. Such a concept would undermine the amateur ethics of the game and inevitably reduce the influence upon it of former players, turned administrators.
And the IRB was right to worry, for on the day before the third World Cup final in Johannesburg in 1995, to all intents and purposes the game went professional when the rugby unions of South Africa, New Zealand and Australia signed a multimillion-dollar deal with media magnate Rupert Murdoch. In the words of Sir Winston Churchill it proved to be not “the beginning of the end, but perhaps the end of the beginning”.
Things had begun cautiously in 1984 when the Australian and New Zealand unions were given permission by the IRB to organise the first World Cup.
It took place in the two countries in May and June of 1987 and there were many among the old guard who hoped that it would be a failure.
But from the opening pool matches it became abundantly clear that the game had just taken a huge step forward. On the first day the All Blacks humiliated Italy 70-6, but the next 24 hours produced two outstanding Test matches as Australia beat England 19-6 in Sydney and Scotland drew 20-20 with France in Christchurch.
For countries such as Italy, Canada and the United States it was the first real taste of the big time and they all had their moments as the tournament gained momentum. It peaked not with the final, but with a classic semi-final between Australia and France in Sydney.
It was a match full of cut and thrust, regarded by some as the finest international played up to that point in history. The winning try by Serge Blanco set the seal on the game, as the majestic fullback half sprinted, half limped to the corner, leg swathed in bandages, one thing only on his mind.
After such a high it was perhaps inevitable that the French would fail to recapture such brilliance in the final and they were comfortably beaten by David Kirk’s All Blacks 29-9 at Eden Park in Auckland.
But the ball was rolling, and when the tournament moved to Britain and France four years later there was even an opening ceremony at Twickenham where Michael Ball sang No More Steps to Climb and Kiri Te Kanawa sang new words to a melody from Anton Dvorak’s New World Symphony, retitled World in Union.
It could have been cheesy, but it wasn’t and the All Blacks set the seal on the occasion by beating England 18-12.
The biggest upset of the World Cup tournament came when Western Samoa beat Wales 16-13 at the Arms Park in Cardiff. Led by Peter Fatialofa, a prop whose trade was piano moving, the Samoans succeeded in eliminating the winners of the third place play-off match in 1987.
Elsewhere, mighty performances from the forwards of Canada and the US, and touches of pure genius from the backs of Italy illuminated the tournament.
Samoa reached the quarter-finals at the first time of asking and the final was unquestionably between the two best sides, England and Australia.
Australia won 12-6 and did so by cutting down wave after wave of misguided England three-quarter movements. Outmuscled in the scrums and line-outs, where 19-year- old John Eales provided the only sure source of ball, the Wallabies refused to buckle: they scored the only try of the match and went on to dominate the world game for three years.
But it was four years between tournaments and, in the meantime South Africa had been re-admitted to the international fold.
The Springboks had been less than impressive at first, but began to turn the corner in a series defeat in New Zealand and won all their Tests in Britain under the coaching of Kitch Christie at the end of 1994.
Right up until the last minute there were threats of a stay-away from nations who doubted the security of the newly dubbed Rainbow Nation. But in the end the steely resolve of the South African Rugby Football Union, and particularly its president, Louis Luyt, won the day.
The tournament was staged, it was an outstanding success, and the fairy tale came true: South Africa won in the final.
Along the way Jonah Lomu replaced the bogeyman in the minds of South African children, James Dalton was sent off, Mike Catt was run over, Andr Joubert checked into a decompression chamber, and poor unfortunate Max Brito of the Ivory Coast was paralysed.
Rugby World Cup ’95 ran the gamut from triumph to tragedy and established the tournament as the game’s true gauge.
Today rugby union is a professional sport, the Five Nations is no more and for at least one more month the Springboks are the champions of the world.