One of the things that this recently completed Rugby World Cup should have done is put an end to some of the justifications that are perennially forwarded for percentage tactics and neglect of the skill sets and strategies that the 2 finalists boasted and employed in their passage to the Twickenham Stadium decider.

For a start, what happened to that wet weather everyone was talking about and which was supposed to a justification for grinding tactics? It rained in the semifinal between South Africa and New Zealand, where the Kiwis proved once again that they are just as good at the things that the Springboks are supposed to do well as they are.

The tournament was of course not played in the English winter. In fact, you could argue that this year it wasn’t played even in autumn, particularly early on, when cities and towns like Brighton, Birmingham and Newcastle had more of a feel of late summer than a feel of early autumn.

That, coupled with the fact that so many of the Pool games were played on fast paced surfaces built for soccer, tipped the scales towards the quick paced Southern Hemisphere style game. When Wales coach Warren Gatland was asked why the Southern Hemisphere nations shut their northern rivals out of the semifinal Round, he mentioned something about conditions south of the equator facilitating the development of more of a running rugby skill set.

Gatland must have suffered a bit of a memory lapse when he said that, for he seemed to forget that the team everyone seems most enthused by, the All Blacks, live on islands that are as wet as Britain is during the southern winter. Gatland should know that because he’s a New Zealander himself.

So in the case of New Zealand, their focus on big explosive backs – let’s not say they neglect kicking, because they most emphatically don’t neglect kicking – might be the product of cultural leaning, rather than it having anything to do with the weather conditions.

New Zealand players are reared and weaned into the game on surfaces that are every bit as muddy and heavy underfoot as those in Britain. And funnily enough, the odd man out among the southern nations that like to play 15-man rugby, South Africa, probably boasts the best conditions for running rugby of all of them.

The Springboks played at this Rugby World Cup like the backs were just there to make up numbers on defence and chase kicks, and yet what wouldn’t the All Blacks give to be able to play their brand of rugby on firm Highveld pitches all the time, rather than just once a year when they visit South Africa for a Rugby Championship test?

The point about New Zealand is that they are not 1-trick ponies, and they have the humiliating experience of losing 3 consecutive Tests to Peter de Villiers’ Springboks back in 2009 to thank for that. It was the corrections that the Kiwis made in that watershed year that set them on the path to being the great team they are now.

But the point is that the conditions meant that there wasn’t much need for any team to grind at this Rugby World Cup, and teams such as Argentina and Scotland added strings to their bows and showed us dimensions to their game that we hadn’t seen before from them. Ultimately though the conditions did favour the Southern Hemisphere style of rugby, and that’s why the 4 southern teams made it through whereas the northern teams fell short.

There weren’t too many northern fans moaning about that though, and the packed stadiums and the enthusiasm which the entertaining rugby was followed said a lot about what people want from the sport. And it all adds up to quite a compelling argument in favour of the introduction of a global season that will make rugby a summer sport in this part of the world.

We have only now just reached November, which is when in a normal non-Rugby World Cup year the southern nations embark on their tours to the UK. They do encounter quite different conditions on those tours than they did at this Rugby World Cup, and the rugby has often been forced to be different to what we saw over the past 6 weeks. If they were here in the heart of the British winter, in January and February, the adjustment would have be even greater.

What would it do for the game over here, for the brand of rugby that it is possible for the northern teams to play, if there was a global season that began at the beginning of March and ended at the end of October? My money says that in no time at all there’d be less differentiation between the styles employed in the different hemispheres.

COACHING:

Of course, what made this Rugby World Cup different to the others wasn’t just down to the conditions and the style of rugby employed. It was also down to the massive improvements made by smaller nations, most of whom have become far more competitive due to the introduction of foreign coaching influence in their coaching groups.

Almost every team, be it a minnow or a more established nation, that had a Kiwi at the helm appeared to do well, and South Africa will be missing a trick if some New Zealand influence isn’t introduced into the coaching group.

As former England player and current commentator and writer Stuart Barnes put it in one of his pieces in The Sunday Times after the final, “this World Cup was defined by brains”. Barnes wrote about the huge gulf between the best and the rest when it came to coaching, and suggested it wasn’t only talent that separated the teams.

“The All Blacks might not even have lifted the trophy had the New Zealand management being the Springboks dug-out, and vice-versa (in the semifinal),” wrote Barnes, thus probably summing up what many South Africans have often thought.

There are indeed too many occasions for comfort for most Springbok fans when it appears the South Africans are out-thought as much as they may be out-played, with Eddie Jones and even Gatland, even though he ultimately lost the game, being perceived to have got one over the Springbok coaches on the day when it comes to the brain game.

Jones ended the tournament recognised by most as the canniest coach for the way he scripted the Japan win over South Africa, surely the biggest upset at any Rugby World Cup, but there were also 2 “home grown coaches” who deserve immense credit for what they have done to progress their teams in a very short space of time.

Australia’s Michael Chieka won the official award at the World Rugby dinner on Sunday night, and since last November, when his team was losing more than it was winning, he has transformed his side into one that is definitely on the rise. He has already succeeded in 12 months to do something that Heyneke Meyer wasn’t able to do in 4 years with the Springboks, namely win a trophy (the most recent Rugby Championship).

But when you consider the base that he came off when he took over his team, Argentina coach Daniel Hourcade surely deserves even more kudos than Cheika does. Provided the Pumas don’t neglect the areas they have always been strong in as they go about it, the strides they have made in developing their back play suggest they could be real contenders at the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.

MINNOW IMPROVEMENTS:

The Rugby World Cup try scoring statistics tell you everything you need to know about the onfield reasons why fans and media regard this as the most entertaining and watchable Rugby World Cup ever. In the past, the pool phases have tended to be blighted by massive blow-outs by smaller teams who have shipped 100 points or more in some of their matches. That never happened at this Rugby World Cup, with the highest points tally scored by any team being shared by South Africa and Argentina, who posted 64 against USA and Namibia respectively. The USA side was significantly understrength when they played the Springboks, and Namibia had completed their race by the time they played against Argentina after losing narrowly to Georgia in the big game of the tournament earlier in the week.

So here are those stats that tell the story – this year saw the lowest number of pool stage tries since the inception of the current tournament format (2003), but the highest number of tries scored during the knock-out phase. That is an indication of the pool games becoming more competitive, while there was less of the debilitating impact of pressure in the knock-outs than their usually is. The final saw more tries (5) than has been scored in the 6 finals combined since 1991, and the 40 tries scored across the play-off phase topped a previous best of just 30.

FANS:

The biggest pity at this tournament was the non-performance of the hosts. Had England survived into the play-off phase, rugby would have had a bigger splash across newspapers and broadcast platforms into October than it did. Instead the round ball game came back into focus, and while the rugby certainly was never neglected, it might just have been better and the atmosphere a little more intense had England still been in the competition. A publican I am mates with spoke about how much anticipated custom he lost when England bowed out, and according to him there just wasn’t the energy and atmosphere after they were knocked out than there was in the early weeks.

Having said that, however, if you travelled to Cardiff to watch Ireland play France, or if you were at Twickenham when Wales played Australia in their pool decider, you wouldn’t have given a 2nd thought to England being absent. It felt like some of those teams were the host nation, particularly Ireland, who were also well supported in New Zealand in 2011. The Argentina support for the Pumas in their 3rd place play-off game against the Springboks was voluble.

The fact that London is so cosmopolitan, and the UK so accessible, contributed to a Rugby World Cup that saw more than 2.5-million people go to the stadiums, and more than 1.5-million visit the fan zones. World Rugby would have made a massive whack out of that, and that can only be good for the further development of rugby in some of the smaller (in rugby terms) nations.

STADIUMS:

Some of England’s best named soccer stadiums really helped contribute to the party atmosphere, with the closeness to the playing pitch at St James Park in Newcastle being unprecedented at any rugby venue of my recall, and the other soccer stadiums visited – Elland Road in Leeds and Villa Park in Birmingham – were also both conducive to entertaining rugby because of their quick surfaces and also the promotions of great big match atmosphere.

THE LAST HURRAH:

The tournament was the last hurrah for so many legendary players, and for those that hail from New Zealand in particular, it was a fitting farewell. Dan Carter capped an amazing career with a Man Of The Match performance in the final, his last game in the black jersey, and his long time teammate Richie McCaw also again confirmed, if it was necessary, his greatness among captains and flankers. There were also some great players from other teams that said farewell in fitting style, not the least of those being South Africa’s Victor Matfield, but for some it was an anti-climactic goodbye, with Ireland’s Paul O’Connell saying goodbye by being helped injured from the field at Millennium Stadium during his team’s excellent win over France, while Springbok captain Jean de Villiers effectively made his decision to retire a couple of hours after leading his team to victory over Samoa in Brighton. The man who replaced him as team leader in the big knock-out games, Fourie du Preez, was injured in the semifinal.

But it was also the stage for newcomers and stars of the future, many of whom fans around the world will be itching to see confirm their status when the greatest rugby show on earth rolls once more into view in Japan in September 2019.

SuperSport