Whatever the outcome of the 2023 men’s rugby union World Cup final on Saturday, it is likely to follow a well-worn template. The two contenders — South Africa and New Zealand — have between them won the last four such tournaments.
Nor is the grand finale of the seven-week contest likely to offer scenes of purer joy than those following Portugal’s win over Fiji in the final group stage match at Toulouse. That game was not of itself hugely consequential. Portugal still went home, while Fiji progressed to the quarter-final. It was certainly not about dislike of Fiji — there is no more popular team.
It was a huge occasion for Portugal — it represented their first ever World Cup finals win. But the extent of the celebrations reflected a more generalised pleasure at seeing established orders upset.
Nothing in sport brings greater delight — provided it is not your team on the receiving end — than a giant-killing. It is why the names of Yeovil Town, Hereford United and Bradford City echo through the collective memory of English football’s cup competitions, and the current Afghan cricket squad will be long remembered whatever they do as a follow-up to beating both England and Pakistan in their World Cup.
There are few sports in which it is welcomed more than rugby union. If a pleasure of the game is its inversion of the usual geopolitical hierarchies, so that Germany, Japan and the USA are likeable underdogs and New Zealand a ruthless superpower, its own hierarchies are deeply ingrained and shocks correspondingly rare.
This World Cup’s 40-match group stage brought only two genuine surprises. Fiji were involved in both, their role as fall guys against Portugal following that of upstarts in the overthrow of Australia. By comparison, in last year’s men’s football World Cup, Saudi Arabia defeated Argentina, Tunisia beat France, Cameroon won against Brazil and Morocco made it to the semi-finals at the expense of Belgium, Spain and Portugal.
This is not a coincidence. Some reasons for the comparative scarcity of shocks in rugby union are inherent in the game, not least its ferocious physicality. “Giant-killing” takes on a literal dimension against physically larger and more powerful opposition.
One of the classic football routes to victory over apparently superior opponents is a well-drilled and highly committed defence allied to goals stolen on the break. Much as rugby prizes defence, repeating that model is highly unlikely.
Tightly-organised defence may make it difficult for a dominant team to score tries, but that is not the only way to win a rugby match. A team enjoying an edge in territory and possession will almost certainly turn those advantages into points — usually by pressurising their opponent into conceding penalties, but on occasion through drop-goals.
The game’s increasing tactical complexity and sophistication also work against the underdog. This was brought home during the England-Fiji quarter-final when a group of English forwards staged a combined move. “That’s the sort of thing they’ll practise dozens of times during the week,” observed television commentator Nick Mullins.
Co-ordinated forward movements play a huge rule in the game. But planning, practising and perfecting them is dependent on resources — training facilities, skilled coaches and the money to pay for them and the salaries of the full-time professional athletes on the field. As the sports historian Charles Little has pointed out, “the greatest performance-enhancing substance ever devised is money”.
All of this plays to the advantage of the longest-established rugby nations, sometimes referred to as the “foundation eight” — England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. All have been playing international rugby for more than 100 years, although not all are historically equal — France did not become a full member of the International Rugby Board, as governing body World Rugby was formerly known, until 1978.
Long experience — ingraining culture and expertise, and building popular support — is an advantage in any sport. Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski found that the number of international matches played was a significant enough advantage to incorporate it into their formula, explained in their book Soccernomics, for projecting the fortunes of international football teams.
Across 10 World Cups, the foundation eight have occupied 68 out of 80 quarter-final places. Six in the current competition is the lowest ever, equal with 1991 — when South Africa was excluded because of apartheid — and 2007. That averages out at 8.5 participations by each of the eight. In football only Brazil, with nine, has beaten that average over the last 10 World Cups. The 13 nations that have reached the last eight across those 10 rugby union World Cups compares with 15 in football’s last three editions.
This is the world foreseen by journalist Stephen Jones in 1981 when he bet that no outsider would, in 20 years’ time, be consistently able to beat any of the foundation eight. More than 40 years on, Argentina has broken the monopoly, but nobody else. Their drubbing against New Zealand in the semi final in Paris last week was a reminder of how wide the gulf remains.
The World League structures voted through this week will, at least over their first few years, further reinforce the hierarchy. Whatever goodwill World Rugby offers, in practice it continues to serve the foundation members first (and not surprising when you look at voting structures, which fell victim to space restriction).
World Rugby proclaims improving the chances of what it calls Tier 2 nations as top of its agenda, and points to the £42mn it has provided since the last World Cup. But this amount, spread across nine unions and four years, compares to the £32mn England’s Rugby Football Union can contemplate devoting to contracting 25 elite players.
Even more than money, the rising nations want fixtures with the elite. The mind goes back to the press room at Eden Park, Auckland, in 1987 and Fiji coach George Simpkin being asked, after an epic quarter-final against France, what they need from the rugby world. “Come and play us,” said Simpkin.
He died in 2020 with his invitation unanswered by either his native New Zealand or Australia. Similar voices, such as former Samoa international Dan Leo, still resound.
World Rugby continues to offer good intentions, and many in the game are eager to grow the sport in new markets. But don’t bet on the game’s hierarchies shifting any time soon.
Huw Richards is the author of ‘A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby Union’
