It may come as a shock to rugby fans who would give their eye-teeth to be in Australia right now, but there are plenty of people — well-paid people — who are there right now, staying in five-star hotels, who would rather be anywhere else.
Most are working for one of the big agencies — Reuters, AFP, AP — and they have been pressed into service because the World Cup is big news that cannot be covered by the usual one man and his dog usually set aside for the minor sport of rugby union.
Out of the woodwork come the soccer reporters, golf writers and others who know one end of a laptop from another, but don’t know rugby from a big, black dog. And every four years the newspapers and websites are filled with (usually nameless) news stories and match reports written in startlingly different style to the norm.
Only at the World Cup could a reporter enthuse thus: ‘Argentina, who monopolised 60% of possession and spent a total of nine minutes in their opponent’s quarter, locked up a scoring bonus point in the 35th minuteâ€.
Rugby fans (and reporters) know the irrelevance of such statistics and that only Australians refer to the area goal-side of the 22m line as ‘the quarterâ€.
It is partly because of the galloping ennui assailing these honest but out-of-their-depth hacks that the first week of the World Cup has been written off as a bunch of mismatches. If you were there, having paid your own money for the trip, you’d find something to be enthusiastic about.
And yet these displaced hacks deserve sympathy and understanding, and people in glass houses should not throw stones, for I have just dug out something that I wrote at the end of week one at the 1999 tournament.
‘A huge collective sigh of relief from the journalists at this World Cup heralded the two games played on Friday. Four days of inactivity have taken their toll, particularly for the South African scribes who have been reduced to writing accounts of paint ball and curling contests among the relaxing Springboks.
‘Even the announcement of three players of colour in the team to play Spain was greeted with polite yawns, since everyone knew what was coming days before. There is no way that even the most gifted writer could build up the match against Spain as anything other than an embarrassingly one-sided walk in the park. The main worry will be that a Spanish player completely out of his depth could emulate Max Brito at the last World Cup.
‘Not surprisingly there have already been calls to reduce the teams from 20 to 16 at the next tournament in 2003, with the minnows calling instead for a Plate competition for the teams knocked out in the first round. There may be some merit in the idea, which has worked successfully in sevens for yearsâ€.
See what I mean? The problem is not the rugby being played, it’s the lack of thought put into the tournament by the administrators. No one wants to watch Georgia being put to the sword by England, but put them up against, say, Tonga in a Plate competition and you’ve got something worth watching and, for the players, something worth playing.
The idea was originally mooted in 1995 and England’s bid to host the 2007 tournament took it a step further. The International Rugby Board sat on its hands and will be the last one to step up to the plate and admit culpability when the next Max Brito incident occurs.
Because of this useless shilly-shallying in the halls of power, we are once again looking back on the first week of the Rugby World Cup wondering what might have been. Wait for the ticket scandals to come into focus and it really will be déjà vu.