Rugby World Cup Final oddities

ianjamesparsley

Oct 30

As I wrote before the tournament, rugby is by no means my go-to sport but I do have a soft spot for its World Cup, probably because I am almost exactly old enough to remember the very first (but not much before it).

The Final of this tournament, despite the pretensions of the Northern Hemisphere teams, ended up pitting the two greatest rugby union nations against each other - South Africa's Springboks and New Zealand's All Blacks.

As we know, if was the Springboks who prevailed by the narrowest of margins for the third consecutive knock-out game. This heralded a few curiosities (specifically with regards to the World Cup in men's rugby union, for avoidance of doubt):

South Africa has never lost a World Cup Final, and New Zealand has never lost one other than to South Africa;
South Africa has beaten New Zealand twice in World Cup Finals, by a combined one point in normal time and four points including extra time;
In both 1995 and 2023, South Africa beat New Zealand without scoring a single point in the second half (England also won a Final without scoring in the second half in 2003 - yet no losing team has ever failed to score in the second half);
It was the second Final in succession and third in all in which the half-time score was 12-6;
New Zealand's try on Saturday was the first South Africa had ever conceded in a World Cup Final;
In fact, South Africa has won three of its four World Cup Finals without scoring a try;
South Africa's last knock-out defeat was to New Zealand in the 2015 semi-final - by a whopping two points (20-18);
In the 2015 Final, New Zealand beat Australia 34-17 - Australia's 17 points were in fact the fifth highest in World Cup Final (i.e. only four teams in the ten Finals have scored more points in normal time than Australia did in a heavy defeat);
No team has won a World Cup Final from behind at half-time;
New Zealand lost its first ever pool game at this tournament, to France - those are the only two countries to have appeared in all ten quarter-finals;
For the second time running, South Africa won the world Cup despite losing a pool game - in fact, this was the second time Ireland beat a team in the pool phases only to see that team win the quarter-final while Ireland itself didn't (it also happened in 2011);
South Africa has won half of the World Cups in which it has participated (and in two of the other four it has lost the semi-final to the eventual winner extremely narrowly - in extra-time in 1999 as well as in 2015 as noted above);
it of course remains the case that, since South Africa entered the competition, any team knocking New Zealand out before the Final has itself been knocked out in the next round; and
South Africa has never been knocked out of a World Cup other than by a fellow Southern Hemisphere team (twice New Zealand, twice Australia).

The tournament will now change its structure to 24 teams, meaning the knock-out phase will start from the "eighth-finals" or somewhat ludicrously named "round of sixteen". This is in my view a mistake; it will only lead to some ludicrously one-sided knock-out games on top of those occurring already in the pools. This World Cup had some fine matches - many intriguing knock-out games as well as pretty much any involving Fiji; however, if the authorities are serious about expanding the reach of rugby union, they need to overcome this idea that just throwing more teams to lost 70-0 or 80-0 is the way to do it. They also need to take account of the fact that, ultimately, the last five tournaments have been won by just two teams (with only England or France really consistently competitive beyond those two in the latter stages). If we are really to see the game expanded meaningfully beyond those, both for player welfare and audience enjoyment, some complexities in the laws of the game (particularly around the length of time it takes to set a scrum) will need to be simplified and revised.