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THE RUGBY WORLD CUP GOES LIKE A ROCKET

OUR PESSIMISM WAS MISPLACED, TO PUT IT MILDLY

Manuel|MC/Flickr

The Rugby World Cup is a knock-your-socks-off triumph. Rob Smyth thought before the start that it would be dull and unwieldy. He explains here why, to his delight, things have worked out very differently ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

Maybe size doesn't matter. Maybe big can be beautiful, too. Before the Rugby World Cup started, I suggested that it would be ruined by its format--that having 48 matches over 44 days would make it almost impossible for spectators to sustain interest.

I was spectacularly wrong. This has been one of the most memorable World Cups in any sport for a long time.

It is still tempting to conclude, however, that success has come in spite of the format rather than because of it, and that it should be attributed to a number of unusual developments. Two in particular stand out: the improbable relationship between the game's superpowers, and the seismic shift in the landscape of world rugby.

The first is, in many ways, the more interesting. Usually, at a World Cup, there is little more than a cigarette paper between the leading nations. Here you could have driven an open-top bus between them, or so it seemed. When the quarter-finals arrived nobody gave England a prayer of beating Australia, or France of beating New Zealand. The most memorable sporting contests usually involve one of two things: the triumph of an underdog, or a furious collision between two titans of the sport. The victories for England and France had both, which made for the most memorable cup double-header since at least April 8th 1990 when 13 goals were scored in two astonishing FA Cup semi-finals.

Regardless of what happens in the next 10 days, you suspect those two matches will be the most memorable of the tournament. Yet overall the Rugby World Cup of 2007 will be remembered as the time when the map of world rugby changed indelibly. "The game is never going to be the same again and those running it have to accept that," said the Australian coach John Connolly. Look at the success of Argentina in particular, but also Fiji and Tonga and even rugby minnows such as Georgia and Canada. All have added unexpected fizz to a tournament that has been as ceaselessly refreshing as a jammed F5 button.

Nonetheless, the layout of the tournament is still not ideal. The highest marks are only available to the child who gets the right answer and shows the right working. At 44 days it is too long, and at five matches the groups are too long. Having four pools or four, rather than five, would shave a week (possibly more, if the format of the 1995 World Cup, when each side played their three group games in nine days, were to be repeated) and 16 games from the tournament. There were perhaps eight genuinely pivotal group games out of 40; more than we expected, but still a poor ratio of one in five. Eight out of 24, which would have been the case if each group had lost a minnow, would be distinctly preferable.

So, too would be an entirely transparent points system. The bonus-point system isn't rocket science, but to many casual fans its nuances are not instinctively understood; some watched the Argentina/Ireland game not knowing exactly what Ireland needed to do to qualify for the quarter-finals. Like a protracted website registration process, even the smallest inconvenience can be enough to make the casual fan go elsewhere.

Any that have done so have, of course, missed out on a sporting feast. But that still doesn't mean the recipe cannot be improved.