Rollo Manning has been a rugby tragic all his life since being named after a Wallaby winger and educated at a private boarding school in Sydney, Australia. Manning has been working in publicity and public relations for 40 years, and during that time has commented on the "game they play in heaven" through radio, magazines and newspaper coverage.
As a correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Commission, he has broadcast in magazine style programs and live coverage of games. He is currently a regular contributor to www.scrum.com and radio shows in his hometown of Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia.
Manning has been contributing to eSports for six years and relishes the opportunity to express his views on the first of the two rugbies. He is currently completing work on a study of the inter play between rugby league and rugby union over the past 100 years, when league was formed as the professional arm of an otherwise purely amateur game.
Since 1995, both have become professional and the drift of players is going back from league to union. Where will it end? That is the question Manning is now asking himself.
The rugby juggernaut rolls on through Britain, France and Italy, as the annual exodus from the Southern Hemisphere provides fans with a smorgasbord of test matches each weekend in November. Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, Argentina and a team from the Pacific Islands are touring as well as Canada.
Pointers to likely form for the World Cup in France in September 2007 are showing through and at this stage New Zealand has to be favorites. The convincing way they defeated France shows that the All Blacks are in another class to the rest of the field.
France occupies second place on the World IRB Rankings and yet had no answer to the near perfect performance of the men from the shaky isles. Given that ABs coach Graham Henry seems to be able to call upon a second team that would give the number one side a fright - the depth of talent in the All Blacks squad is frightening to other teams.
The Wallabies are in the doldrums and don't seem to be able to find the flowing style of attacking play that was the feature of Aussie teams of the past. The Wallabies are not able to really trouble any team and they were a last gasp winner against the lowly placed Italy (who don't even rate in the top 10 of World rankings), while the loss to Ireland was a clear sign of a team with a lot of work to do before September 2007.
The match against Ireland showed even more how much the Wallabies have to improve when they were outplayed by the team that must be threatening for the Six Nations trophy come next February and the number three spot on the IRB Rankings.
Ireland played "dry weather" rugby and in the first half gave the Wallabies a lesson in running rugby. The handling was superb and the phases just came together. The passage of 21 phases should have lead to a try but was one of those passages remembered for a long time in a match that has been billed as the best ever by an Irish team -- certainly the first half was all of that.
The Wallabies worst enemy was themselves as they gave away penalties at a rate of four to one.
However, the Wallabies can be a surprise package, and even in the lead up to the 2003 World Cup many had written them off under coach Eddie Jones only to see them do enough in the Pools and quarters to beat the more highly fancied All Blacks in the semi final. The final against England could have gone either way till the mud runners from the “old dart” won by a field goal in extra time. The "written off" Wallabies went within a whisker of Cup glory. Could it be the same again? It hardly looks like it.
As for England, they seem to have no show of picking up lost ground. If anything the "Poms" are fortunate to be in a pool for RWC2007 with South Africa (who are not doing well), Samoa, USA and probably Tonga. This is not a strong pool and the draw may be England's salvation for a quarter final spot.
The real interest at this early stage is whether the All Blacks have peaked too soon. New Zealand supporters have been through it before. and in 1999 the country was so devastated by its loss to the French in the semi-final that grief counselors had to be called in to help the aggrieved rugby fans -- which is just about the entire population of four million people. The unofficial Rugby World Cup website summarises the game thus:
"The most memorable match of the tournament was not the final but the semi-final between New Zealand & France. The French went into the match quietly and as the underdogs. New Zealand never really got started. The world watched & waited for the Big All Black machine to get into gear and easily mow the French down. It never happened. The French won 43-31. New Zealand simply didn't have an answer to the French tactics."
Will it happen again?
This scribe does not think so, as the current form of the All Blacks is awesome and their back up players are of the same standard as the top side.
With two weeks of matches to go, the team most under threat for its spot of No 3 on the RWC ladder is Australia, and it must be threatened by the Springboks and Ireland for that exalted position.