SCOUTING REPORT

For 40 minutes Australia, whose victory in this season’s Rugby Championship has earned them the right to be considered many people’s favourites to become the first team to win a third title, looked to be living up to expectations as they gradually seemed to be taking control of their encounter with a Fiji side that was expected to tire as what was their second match went on.

Instead the way the Pacific Islanders finished, scoring the last of the game’s four tries and denying the Wallabies the bonus point that had looked inevitable when they scored their third try just three minutes into the second half, made a compelling case for the argument that five days is just about sufficient for a team to re-group from their previous match, at least at the early stages of the tournament.

While there was never any real danger of them producing an upset after Sekope Kepu’s try was converted by Bernard Foley, who had also ensured that both David Pocock’s late first half tries counted to the maximum, to put them 25-3 in front, it was Fiji who were making all the running in the closing stages, suggesting that they could yet have a say in the outcome of Group A since injury-stricken Wales still have to face them as well as England and Australia.

That said the Wallabies’ failure to pick up a bonus point could yet prove expensive in what was always going to be the most fiercely contested of groups.

France were also made to battle for long periods of their meeting with Romania as ex-Edinburgh coach Lynn Howells’ side made their first appearance in the tournament, but having failed to pick up a bonus point against Italy they made no mistake second time around ultimately running in five tries, with Yanick Nyanga registering the first and Sofiana Guitoune claiming the next two before Yannick Nyanga got the vital fourth.

Valentin Ursache registered a late try to offer his side some reward for a gutsy effort, but Gael Fickou claimed France’s fifth as they ran out 38-11 winners.

GOOD DAY

For rugby’s claim to be the ultimate team sport in which all shapes, sizes and attitudes can be accommodated on the basis of US Eagles’ lock Hayden Smith’s take on returning to the sport after a spell in arguably the most glamorous competition in world sport, American Football’s NFL.

“It’s fantastic,” the 30-year-old said of being back in rugby after spending a year on the New York Jets roster having been signed by them as a tight end.

“One thing I certainly missed in the NFL is the culture of rugby, what it’s like to be around the guys. It’s harder to have that in the NFL with the way the setup is, new guys coming in all the time, new coaches. It’s harder to build that spirit.”

As he said so he was, typically, immediately abused by Eagles captain Chris Wyles for “going on about the NFL again.”

BAD DAY

For Argentina’s Mariano Galarza whose World Cup ended when he was banned for nine weeks for “making contact with the eye or eye area” of New Zealand’s Brodie Retallick during their fiercely contested tournament opener on Sunday.

Cited by Ireland’s Murray Whyte, the independent citing commissioner, the Pumas lock denied foul play, but after the incident was examined using all the available camera angles and “additional evidence” judicial officer Christopher Quinlan took the view that there was sufficient evidence of misconduct to uphold the citing.

The severity of the punishment reflects a determination by the sport’s authorities to clamp down on such offences in recent years as a result of an official memorandum in which it referred to “concerns with regard to the increasing number of incidents of this insidious form of foul play.”

TALKING POINT

IN a 20-team tournament one of them had to be subjected to it, but there was something terribly unjust about Japan having to play their second match yesterday before three others played their first.

More to the point, that they were taking the field only 92 hours after producing that frenzied effort against South Africa which lit up this tournament – but exposed the worst aspect of the group set-up and scheduling in Rugby World Cups.

Consider, too, what it has taken to make this team so competitive within a decade of Japan shipping a century of points to one of the poorest ever Scotland teams.

That is a large part of the reason why I was so confident that Scotland would win by at least 20 points yesterday, but in some ways it also leaves a rather unfair trace of doubt over the quality of their performance so, all in all, it is all rather unsatisfactory.

The same issues were being raised in Cardiff where there was a sense that as long as Australia were sufficiently disciplined and patient they would eventually overrun Fiji.

Ironically this sort of schedule would work much better in a sport like football that does not have the same degree of physicality in terms of collisions.

However the genuinely global nature of the beautiful game as it has evolved over the course of 20 global tournaments means there is no need to since there are relatively few of the sort of embarrassing mismatches we would see in rugby if any attempt was made to get up to that number of participants.

There is consequently no obvious solution as things currently stand because the only option would be to extend the tournament and risk killing momentum.

It has become a feature of top-flight rugby that in order to maximise spectacle and sustain drama at elite level that competitive integrity has to be sacrificed, the top European club competitions utilising a system that rewards not the best of the third-placed sides but those that find themselves in the easiest pools.

The principal issue is a paucity of players with skills and physiques sufficiently developed for the demands of the top flight game which is unlikely to be remedied any time soon, not least while the emerging international teams are denied sufficient chance to hone their competitiveness because of the dull, repetitive, tour schedules that fill the international windows.

At HeraldSport we prefer a solution to a moan, however, so here’s a suggestion that would address both elements with a reduction of the number of teams at World Cups to 16, so allowing proper space between matches in the group stages, combined with the creation of a single additional competition.

As things stand the top three teams in each group at this World Cup will automatically qualify for the next tournament, but what if we were to revert to only granting the quarter-finalists that guarantee next time, and introducing a finals element to the qualifying competition either one or two years ahead of the next one.

A 24-team World Cup qualifying competition, with eight pools of three and the top eight going to the finals would provide the Tier Two nations an additional opportunity to build towards, then compete in a quality competition with a number of the existing powers, while also providing the sport with an additional showpiece event that could market the game in those emerging nations.

Admittedly it might require some accommodation from wealthy clubs and it is already too late to introduce it ahead of Japan 2019, but in the longer term rugby has to find structures that suit the development of the sport as a whole and this suggestion offers a way of bridging the gap until the game is big enough to be able to field 32 competitive teams at a global tournament, while helping the best of them get to that stage more quickly.

AND ANOTHER THING . . .

On the subject of rugby’s evolution there have been a few cynical sneers about the notion that this could truly be considered a global competition when the biggest upset in its history saw the 13th best team in the world beat the third best.

Yet the truly remarkable thing is

that from the starting point just 28 years ago when the Rugby World Cup was introduced, such a technically challenging sport has got so many countries up to competitive pace as quickly as

it has.

By way of supporting evidence a total of seven Rugby World Cups have produced four different winning nations as compared with the football equivalent in which, after seven tournaments there had been, er, four different winning nations.

WHAT’S ON TODAY?

The defending champions return to centre stage as New Zealand take on Namibia in the Olympic Stadium with the All Black second string expected to run riot as they seek to catch the eye of head coach Steve Hansen.

At least as much attention will be focused on the England press conference that will follow the team announcement at which Stuart Lancaster is expected to announce that he is to overhaul his midfield after just one match, bringing in Owen Farrell at stand off and Sam Burgess at centre.

There will also be considerable interest in how Wales boss Warren Gatland has patched up his squad after all the injury problems they have suffered, while the teams are also due to be named for Italy v Canada and the much anticipated clash between Samoa and South Africa.