1
Survival of the fittest: Will the fresh legs of New Zealand, England and France prevail over battle-hardened World Cup opponents?
By Online Editors
A mouth-watering Rugby World Cup quarter-final schedule should provide answers to one of the sport's enduring questions.
Do teams get peak performance from a bye week or from regular games?
The unwelcome intrusion of typhoon Hagibis on the final weekend of pool play has created a glaring discrepancy in three of the quarter-finals.
Only the clash between the unbeaten hosts and South Africa in Tokyo pits two teams to have completed their allotment of four games.
Before that, Oita hosts England against Australia and France versus Wales, while three-time champions New Zealand face Ireland in Tokyo.
Continue reading below...
The English, French and All Blacks are all coming off final pool games that were cancelled by the atrocious weather.
Their respective opponents all played, setting up a debate over who drew the short straws.
There can be little conjecture over the world ranking system, with the eight top-rated teams filling out the playoff berths.
Interest will continue to centre on the Japanese fairytale although they will be the biggest outsiders in any of the four games, given their comparative lack of experience and size against the thunderous Boks.
Yet the seventh-ranked Brave Blossoms have defied expectations, thoroughly deserving of wins over Ireland and Scotland.
It leaves them among an elite clutch of unbeaten teams alongside top-three ranked powerhouses New Zealand, Wales and England.
Japan's triumph over Scotland lowered the curtain on the pool phase in a blaze of excitement and poignancy, the match in Yokohama falling 24 hours after Hagibis had assaulted the host nation.
The other contender for best game was the All Blacks' opening weekend heavyweight defeat of South Africa.
"6077789002001"]
Trending on RugbyPass
2
All Blacks assistant labels Italy game 'messy'
3
Robertson says Italy sensed All Blacks' weaknesses
4
All Blacks player ratings vs Italy
5
Latest Comments
BB can’t pass? Right…
Go to commentsEven the 20/30 cappers did too I reckon.
IDK, I think Jordan has a limited life span in this side unless he can develop more to his game. Like you go on to mention, I think theyres more important things to worry about than the effectiveness of someone's extra strings, or secondary components to their game.
Bash backs are Fosters thing, and to a large part they've made it work. Theyre now one of the best teams in the world.
They boy's trucked it up a bit against Italy in the redzone, and against France, wasn't that effective without the right players probably.
Try and take a look at it this way. Dissapointed Havili and Blackadder were in the side? Havili despite clearly shown that he can't do what the team needs at 12 was kept on for the RWC. Back goes down and he brings in Blackadder who doesn't play. Refuses to drop Christie when he should and look who starts this season. Beauden Barret not playing well enough to keep his 10 jersey but we gotta keep him in the side. Weve only got one 8, we stuff developing another I'll just play Ardie every game.
This years team wasn't burdened overly with injuries but they were in every position Razor might have wanted to try and development, severely limiting options. I'm not defending Razor as there was also plenty of other opportunity to make up for it and he was a little gunshy, but I'm also not going to overly criticise him because he chose cohesion over a black slate.
I think more and more people are on board with it being time to try alternatives, but then again, how would they have reacted to a loss against Italy? 😉
Go to comments