Andy Capostagno Rugby World Cup final
This World Cup has not got the final it deserved. After the dearth of drama in the pool matches and the steamrollering of British hopes in the quarterfinals this tournament deserved a repeat of the dour, don’t-lose-at-all-costs match provided by South Africa and New Zealand at Ellis Park in 1995.
Instead we have Australia against France at the Millennium Stadium. Let joy be unconfined (she was innocent, anyway).
It is rather like watching the Comrades plod its predictable way across the screen for four hours, then falling off your chair in an adrenaline rush as the two most glamorous athletes in the world sprint the last 400m, shoulder to shoulder, to the line.
Come what may on Saturday we are guaranteed a good game. And just as France tore up the script by thrashing Brazil with dash and lan in the soccer World Cup final, so Les Bleus have a chance to make us all forget the diet of pedestrian rugby and administrative cock- ups that have characterised this version of the Rugby World Cup.
It is a final made in heaven and it may just save a few administrative jobs in the process. The Wallabies will start as favourites to repeat their triumph of 1991, but they will realise that against a team capable of the tidal wave rugby which drowned New Zealand, they better remember to bring their surfboards along.
Is it asking too much of France to repeat their semi-final heroics? After all, that’s what happened the last time they were in the final in 1987. Having beaten the Wallabies in the semi-final with Serge Blanco’s last-minute try, they were blown away by David Kirk’s All Blacks in the Eden Park final.
But in those days France were a team of amateurs against a bunch of hard-headed professionals in all but name. They were cigarette-smoking, pastisse-drinking bon viveurs in love with the idea of the game rather than the reality of it. The glorious thing is, they still are.
Only a Frenchman (in this case the captain, Raphael Ibanez) would have thought of responding to the haka with an impromptu battle hymn. Only a Frenchman would have explained it thus: “We knew we had to prepare for war; some soldiers sing before they go to war and we thought we would just sing La Marseillaise.”
In the south stand bars an hour and a half later French supporters (and a few dozen Springbok supporters, too) were still singing La Marseillaise. For those who remember the powerful moment in Casablanca when Rick’s Bar bursts into the anthem to drown out Nazi singing it was enough to bring a joyful tear. Well, I cried, anyway.
Last week France had an outside chance. A gambler’s spin of the wheel. Trouble is, they didn’t stick to the script. They were supposed to get in a few All Black faces, kick a few unlikely goals and clinch a fortunate victory with another last-minute try. Instead they played New Zealand off the park with a display of rugby which matched the best and surpassed most of what the Tri Nations has offered over the last three years. On that basis they should go into the final as favourites.
But that would be to ignore the achievement of Rod MacQueen’s Wallaby team. The All Blacks, for all their protestations of innocence, underestimated France. By contrast Australia knew they would get a hiding if they were anything less than magnificent against South Africa.
And so, in the now familiar fashion of Aussie teams up against it, they were magnificent. None more so than the tight five who did not take a backward step and allowed George Gregan the armchair ride that Nick Mallett must have known would be fatal to the chances of South Africa reaching a second successive final.
Stephen Larkham reaped the praise for his ugly duckling of a drop goal, Tim Horan for the incisiveness of his running, but as ever it was the little Zambian marvel who ran the show. Which means that we’re in for a great contest at scrum-half on Saturday, because it will be the silky skills of Gregan against the pure blue Gallic heart of Fabien Galthie.
When the Springboks toured France in 1997 Galthie was everything that was wrong with French rugby. A scrum-half with a terrible pass who apparently played there because he was too slow to play anywhere else in the back line and too small to play in the pack.
On Sunday against New Zealand he reinvented himself, throwing his tiny body into a wrap-around tackle against Jonah Lomu that was described as “like a ferret trying to bring down an elephant”.
Galthie vs Gregan will be worth this year’s M-Net subscription fee. So too will the battle of the locks where Abdel Benazzi will try to keep old father time at bay one last time and in the process mark John Eales out of the game. Benazzi was too much of a handful for both Robin Brooke and Norm Maxwell on Sunday, but in the final Eales at his Herculean best would be too much even for the Moroccan talisman.
For those who prefer the subtle things in life it will be fascinating to see what Ben Tune and Joe Roff make of Christophe Dominici and Phillippe Bernat- Salles. Antipodean muscle against French wit. How will the centre pairings match up? And the back row, and the fly-halves?
Suddenly, for no good reason, we have a northern hemisphere vs southern hemisphere final which is impossible to call because for every Australian attribute there is a contrasting French one. It is not safe to say who will win, only that it will definitely not be decided by a drop goal in the second period of extra time.
It is, however, impossible to believe that France can be as good again six days after humbling the All Blacks. But then, French rugby is not about the repetitive excellence of Australasian teams, it is about the glorious uncertainty of sport. Vive la difference.