Go the minnows

The Rugby World Cup is currently taking place here in Aotearoa (The Land of The long White/Green? Cloud) New Zealand. The one particular aspect that I was not overly enthused about was the one sided fixtures we have seen in the past. Think back to 1995 when The All Blacks popped the hopes of Japanese Cherry Blossoms 145-17. The most recent fixture between these two nations on Friday 16th 2011 also had an extremely uneven scoreline (83-7). This was always a likely result when you consider the experience and skill gap between these two teams (I will get back to this point soon). However, even though there has been some thrashings in the competition so far I have been pleasantly surprised at the lack of the score lines reminiscent of a Twenty20 Cricket fixture.

In my mind there has always been 3 tiers of teams which show up to Rugby World Cup every 4 years:

The Big Dogs: No need to list them as we all know who they are. These are the only teams the bookies give any chance of winning...and quite rightly so.

2nd Tier: These are the teams that every once in a while will get a sneaky win over the Big Dogs. Argentina, Pacific Island Teams, the rest of the Six Nations Lads etc..

Minnows: The teams that are basically there to make up there numbers and actually make the W in RWC true.

I believe that even more so now than ever before the lines between the 3 groupings above is becoming more and more blurred. Maybe not so much between the top two....yet. The bottom two though, yes. Although it may not be entirely evident so far through victories...when you look at the closeness of the matches so far and how hard some of the better ranked teams have had to fight, it makes you wonder what might happen in the future to the hierarchy of Rugby.

The most obvious reason that I can see the playing fields in international rugby are slowly becoming more levelled is....PROFESSIONALISM. Yup, The P word.

When the IRB declared the game 'open' in 1995 it was without a doubt for the good of the game on an international level. I may as well use the the Pacific Islanders as a specific example. So many Samoan, Fijian and Tongan players are now plying their trade in the many professional competitions in both hemispheres. Seilala Mapusua, born in Samoa, grew up in New Zealand where he played for the Highlanders from 2000. In 2006 he heads over to Europe to continue his professional career. In 2011 he is an absolute asset to the Samoan national side due to his skill and experience. There are a number of other players with similar stories to this in every "2nd Tier" and "Minnow" side.

The IRB now needs to build on this momentum. I commented before on the gap between the All Blacks and The Brave Blossoms (they had their cherries popped enough). The Brave lads with their very experienced coach from New Zealand had played 163 rugby tests matches going into the 2011 World Cup. The All Black's captain has played almost 100. How can we expect teams such as Japan to improve by playing hardly any rugby? While watching the United States battle it out against Canada last Thursday evening, one of Rugby's more colourful commentators had a similar thought. Murray Mexted voiced that teams such as Russia and the U.S. and all of the other minnows and second tier teams, simply need more rugby! Of course as stated before they are all pretty much playing professionally now but ask anyone who has played in an international fixture how it compares to any other sort of match and they will tell you it doesn't. Simple as that.

I think the fact that Argentina will be joining the Tri Nations from 2012 is brilliant. Not only will it do so much for Argentinian ruggers it will also make this more interesting for the other 3 countries. Look what joining the 6 nations has done for Italian Rugby (I know I wasn't the only one very impressed with Italy during that game in 2009!). Whatever the top 5 teams can do to help the lower teams improve should be done. If it means here in New Zealand we have our Maori or New Zealand A sides play more fixtures then so be it. What about a Champions cup every two years in between World Cups that the Minnows battle it out for? All just ideas...I'm sure the IRB can come up with some better ones. That's what they get paid for right?

Rugby is going to appear at the Olympics in 2016 under the form of Rugby 7's. It hasn't been seen at the Olympics since USA defeated Romania for the gold medal in 1924. The Rugby World Cup is now one of the biggest sporting events in the world so why not make sure that the matches do the name 'World Cup' justice.   Let's make rugby a truly global game.

Enjoy the rest of the Cup.