Note also that the movement among Sydney’s rugby fans to remove the blight of Greg Growden from our lives is spontaneously gathering pace. As noted in the update, every rugby fan can sign the internet’s Bone Growden Petition here.

and is pressing my work schedule.

Have to say it would be an unmentionable let down if those commitments disallow the posts, at least. One wonders how a team could be introduced, for that particular historical moment, and run on with purpose, and set up the try…and the coverage goes blank.

Whatever you’re doing, cs, while you no doubt play out with your typefingers something of an unforeseen richness on the national pathway… spare a couple of impressions and hit a few keys for us here along the way, if you will.

Those beers from a few – obviously intelligent and good looking people – will go cold, if you don’t.

I’m with you R. Maybe it’s like all World Cups, and we forget too easily; but it feels real odd, and is pressing my work schedule. Questions are being asked all over the place, tumbling over each other in a collosal French meal. Host nation loses opener; rest of the globe gets fascinated. What a stunt!

The South Africa-Samoan match touched the edge of scary at the start. The dirty guys met the brave guys. How were those charges into the line? Every Samoan a super Coopster! Then the Boks pulled their hair, and got away with it. Bastards. The disallowed try was tragedy. It’s hard to escape the feeling that, if the ref had given that one, anything was on the cards. The drama is as intense as it’s shockingly emphemeral – unless you’re one of the players, of course, who’ll never forget.

Could be just whim, but I can’t shake the feeling this World Cup is going to be a wild ride, and that it’s due to the French hosting. You’d have to be there to check it out fully, and even then it could be misleading. It’s the unexpected, unpredictable thing. Imagine the Cup played in, say, Wales, or England, where the established atmosphere or vibe is deeply ingrained in established, set piece rugby, rooted-in crowds, solid songsheets… all traditional rugby solids. In France, that whimsy, that flare, that unpredictability, that devil may care (and he may care for us: the French, ie), that Gaelic fight, that originator of the three-day growth and how’s-my-haircut-being-just-as-important-as-my-flying tackle, that whole environment feels like it’s going to throw up something(s) very different.

Mind games (within the team) will be more than a big part of this one: keeping the team on task, blocking out the distractions and harnessing the good energies. (Great to hear the boys are happy with their camp).

And on Samoa – you have to love them. I doubt the full contingent would be able to buy their own boots; some would be playing in cuz’s. Never are they a pushover, at least until they’re battle or strategy weary. Champions the lot of them.

Let me amend my comment to: any of the superpowers who can stop Matfield Line-Out Inc will destroy the Boks.

Any decent team will destroy an opposition if it can dominate the line-outs against the throw

Ooops, there goes France! Probably the most damning thing is that they stole two of the first six lineouts but still didn’t kick the ball out (note to France: the ball being out is a pre-requisite to winning lineouts).

If any team can stop Matfield in the line-out on their own throw, I suspect that the Boks will be open game

Ordinarily, this is not quite so. Matfield’s greatest quality is the four other jumpers in the line. No team, except France and sometimes NZ, fields five jumpers (although with Hoiles at eight we field four + Smith at the back, which is much of a muchness).

That is why South Africa are so strong in the line-outs. You might be as good as their number one, and you might be as good as their number two (eg Bakkies) but who is as good as their three, four and five jumpers?

Also they are genuinely good at it – they seem able to throw very quickly and change the call very quickly without for as much missing the throw.

I was also distinctly unimpressed by the Boks, with the exception of Victor Matfield, despite the big score-line. Confirming my impression watching, one commentator said that it was not until well into the second-half that the Samoans won only the second line-out on their own throw. Any decent team will destroy an opposition if it can dominate the line-outs against the throw, as the Boks did last night. All you need do is simply keep kicking it up, as the Boks did, win the line-outs, and then crush the opposition through sheer tackle exhaustion. When opposition fatigue sets in, a big Boks score becomes automatic by feeding it to Habana, who will run riot when all the tacklers are out on their legs.

If any team can stop Matfield in the line-out on their own throw, I suspect that the Boks will be open game. If the Wallabies or the All Blacks can actually take ball off the Boks in the line-out, I suspect South Africa will be destroyed.

All very simple in theory, but stopping Matfield will be a damnably hard thing for any team to do.

Go Vicks!

England won’t make it. Ireland won’t make it. Italy, against the odds, will make it. Australia will thrash Wales something like 50-0. South Africa will beat Argentina in the semi, and Australia will beat NZ in the other.

Ok, that last is as much wishing as predicting :)

The French were terrible, and Laporte bears the principal part of the blame. It is hard to imagine that Chabal couldn’t have crashed through for a try when the French spent five minutes camped on the line. But he wasn’t there to do it. Also, presumably he picked Skrela hoping for a rout. But in fact, France played much better with Michalak – a pity he didn’t come on until it was already over, and even then only because Skrela was injured.

Also, the French lineout was dominant, and they were being consistently driven backwards in the tackle. Logic and primary-school intelligence dictates that in that case, you kick the stupid thing as far down the pitch and out as you can, and then when you get it back, repeat plan A. They didn’t display any intention of doing something so sensibly ten-man as that all day. Happily for them that Ireland don’t seem to have turned out their best. If Ireland get their act together and France continue like that, France are dead ducks. Unless they select Michalak and Chabal in the starting team.

Also, Italy scored three times against NZ (so the last was disallowed – who cares, I’ll bet Graham Henry doesn’t). I think we can beat NZ, on the strength of that alone. At least they did the old Haka. If they do the new Haka, and not the Ka Mate, against Australia, I hope Gregan sticks his finger up at them. The new Haka is so unexciting you start to think you’ve gone to the filming of Beau Travail Pt II by mistake (although I liked the film rather more than the new Haka!).

May the fine art of halfback play shine gloriously this Cup, and lay out a path for the youngsters which otherwise, as Mick alludes to, has been lost to Australian rugby for too long now.

Though halfback play is always symbolic of where a team or indeed the code is at, perhaps one shouldn’t harp on it. Still, a tantalising thought some may share would be to consider the stratospheric levels Bernie Larkham would have risen to had he played outside Mr Edwards.

That said, and in line with cs’ primary posts, Larkham taking on roles ushered him due to poorer service finds him dangerously vulnerable, and for a couple of bobs worth here, if Australia were to prepare properly, should have in place a complete alternative backline based on the assumption Larkham will get injured. We know the Wallabies have alternative preparations, my bobs is that this time around it should be much more than that, where there is a parallel backline fully formed and ready to fly. Eddie didn’t understand anything of this: he knew nothing of combination, merely piecemeal alternative. If Larkham is injured – which if you think from other teams’ perspective that is high on the list of must haves – we’ll know if Australian rugby has advanced by the swooping in of a liquid magic oily smooth alternative backline.

Berrick Barnes is too young and too green to take that alternative place of command right now. That Connelly is playing him tonight shows he is either very confident of an alternative Larkham-less backline if needed as the tournament progresses, or very confident team spirit is high enough to slot Barnes in with his youth covered elsewise. This speaks of either a less ideal preparation, or a very good one having gone on behind word view.

Like cs said, tactical kicking was where it was at last night. The French had no answer for the barrage of bombs that was sent their way. It was really a clever tactic, when you are faced with an opposition with excellent defence that makes it a 50/50 contest at the breakdown, why not go for a 50/50 shot with the high kick and gain 20 meters? Brilliant.

Pichot is a force of nature. It annoys the hell out of me that when people are gushing about the brilliance of Gregan and other halfbacks they regularly forget about Pichot. (It also bugs me that the forget about the Fijian/Queenslander Rauluni brothers, both of which have been known to turn more than a few matches on their own)

And yep, Frog interest in their own World Cup will now be on a knife edge.

Your point is good, though, where the Wallabies have to see this in an entirely new light, and remain on their game (per tournament agenda and campaign development) and not turn it into a tryfest every man for himself thing.

The Japanese in previous Cups from memory have played with incredible valour and the Pacific Cup can’t be relied upon as form guide. Yet they do get some big scores against them if recollection serves. They’ll be kamikaze tonight, so Australia must go in hard to silence that early.

Wales at home is going to be a very different story – they’re trap-setting one imagines, and they’ll be regarding their contest against the Wallabies as though a Cup Final, knowing that an all in win will lift and carry them – our role as said is to develop through the tournament so that match is set for fire as two very different agendas meet.

Speaking of Wales, how good was it to see the sparkling intelligent face of that Great Master, in the Opening Ceremony, Gareth Edwards once again. Maturing, written into with half back experience world’s apart, a beacon of light undimmed for halfbacks for years to come. His acknowledged presence there will carry the Welshmen through to our game, and they live on the spirit of their greats.

Apart from that it was a bloody awful ceremony.

The worry now is if the French pack up, lock up, turn out the lights and take the gate keys with them. “Ees over,” and we have better things to do, fuck off, that sort of thing.

The Pumas played in a style that basically by-passed the set-pieces, using vibrant counter-attack to go around the French structure. Much of the credit for this seems to belong to the Argies’ 33-year old number 9, Agustin Pichot, reminding us again of the importance of experience in the cup atmosphere. France also looked better to me when they bought on the more experienced Fr

I’m looking forward to seeing how Latham fares against Japan. Playing him in this match is a very good call.

Anyone know a good pub in Bristol for watching the Rugby tonight? I could go to the “Walkabout” but it seems tragically stereotypical.

Oh, and I’ll be writing World Cup stories at Sidelined and maybe at LP in the coming weeks.

And the dream team to the win the tournament is, of course, France. With a 100,000 people in the Stade de France in St Denis, if they are in the final, they will have a chance. Of course, in the short term the French will have to get past the Irish and the Argentinians in their pool matches. As Zinedine Zidane said to the French coach, Bernard Laporte they “are about to live a powerful but difficult moment”, which Laporte commented, “went straight to the heart of our players”. May the best and most courageous team win.