Gulf between rich and poor

SYDNEY – If picking the winner of this year’s rugby World Cup seems a little tricky, try guessing the losers.

It is an absolute cinch. Unlike the soccer and cricket World Cups, rugby’s outsiders have no real chance of beating the sport’s heavyweights.Only a small handful of the 20 competing teams have any realistic hope of winning the tournament and for some sides, their only ambition is to beat one of the other minor nations and avoid being humiliated by the bigger boys.”This isn’t like the cricket World Cup where we saw Ireland and Bangladesh making it into the knockout stages,” former Australian test winger David Campese recently told the Evening Standard.”In rugby, the winner will come from the same five or six countries.End of story.”There is no doubt the smaller teams are packed with talented players who have the ability and determination to compete at the highest level but the physical nature of rugby and the widening gap between professionals and amateurs has left them at the mercy of their richer opponents.HUGE SCORES It is not unusual for the weaker teams to concede more than 100 points as the sport’s traditional powers start flexing their muscles in preparation for the more serious knockout matches.New Zealand piled on 145 points against Japan at the 1995 World Cup and racked up another century against Italy in 1999.The English put more than 100 past Tonga in 1999 then Uruguay in 2003 while Australia thumped Namibia 142-0 in 2003 despite fielding a second-string team.The 2003 World Cup was hailed as a great success after producing record profits and an unforgettable final between England and Australia, but it was bittersweet time for the sport’s struggling nations.The opening rounds were marred by a series of horribly lopsided results as the poorer countries, including the proud Pacific Island nations of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, were unable to field their best players because of problems with their rich European paymasters.Even the draw was unfairly stacked against the minor nations, prompting the Tongan coach Jim Love to say his team, which had to play four pool matches in just 14 days, felt as though they had been treated like “second-class citizens”.The International Rugby Board (IRB) has responded to the criticism by increasing funding to developing nations and helping organise tournaments against tougher opponents but no one is expecting any of them to mount a serious challenge in France.Mercifully, 2007 could be one of the last times many of the smaller teams will be present at the tournament with the IRB already proposing to cut the number of teams from 20 to 16 at the 2011 World Cup.Campese, who was the outstanding player of the 1991 World Cup when the game was still wholly amateur, said the gap had become so wide there was no longer any justification in pitting part-timers against fully-fledged professionals.”The IRB haven’t thought about where the World Cup is heading and I do not see how it is going to help the sport in Namibia, Georgia and Portugal to have these teams hammered in every game,” Campese said.”How are you helping spread the game of rugby by showing those teams being badly beaten on a regular basis?” – Nampa-ReutersUnlike the soccer and cricket World Cups, rugby’s outsiders have no real chance of beating the sport’s heavyweights.Only a small handful of the 20 competing teams have any realistic hope of winning the tournament and for some sides, their only ambition is to beat one of the other minor nations and avoid being humiliated by the bigger boys.”This isn’t like the cricket World Cup where we saw Ireland and Bangladesh making it into the knockout stages,” former Australian test winger David Campese recently told the Evening Standard.”In rugby, the winner will come from the same five or six countries.End of story.”There is no doubt the smaller teams are packed with talented players who have the ability and determination to compete at the highest level but the physical nature of rugby and the widening gap between professionals and amateurs has left them at the mercy of their richer opponents.HUGE SCORES It is not unusual for the weaker teams to concede more than 100 points as the sport’s traditional powers start flexing their muscles in preparation for the more serious knockout matches.New Zealand piled on 145 points against Japan at the 1995 World Cup and racked up another century against Italy in 1999.The English put more than 100 past Tonga in 1999 then Uruguay in 2003 while Australia thumped Namibia 142-0 in 2003 despite fielding a second-string team.The 2003 World Cup was hailed as a great success after producing record profits and an unforgettable final between England and Australia, but it was bittersweet time for the sport’s struggling nations.The opening rounds were marred by a series of horribly lopsided results as the poorer countries, including the proud Pacific Island nations of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, were unable to field their best players because of problems with their rich European paymasters.Even the draw was unfairly stacked against the minor nations, prompting the Tongan coach Jim Love to say his team, which had to play four pool matches in just 14 days, felt as though they had been treated like “second-class citizens”.The International Rugby Board (IRB) has responded to the criticism by increasing funding to developing nations and helping organise tournaments against tougher opponents but no one is expecting any of them to mount a serious challenge in France.Mercifully, 2007 could be one of the last times many of the smaller teams will be present at the tournament with the IRB already proposing to cut the number of teams from 20 to 16 at the 2011 World Cup.Campese, who was the outstanding player of the 1991 World Cup when the game was still wholly amateur, said the gap had become so wide there was no longer any justification in pitting part-timers against fully-fledged professionals.”The IRB haven’t thought about where the World Cup is heading and I do not see how it is going to help the sport in Namibia, Georgia and Portugal to have these teams hammered in every game,” Campese said.”How are you helping spread the game of rugby by showing those teams being badly beaten on a regular basis?” – Nampa-Reuters