Keys to victory: The dark horses
Posted by Hamish McBrearty on August 12th, 2007
In the final instalment of the Keys to Victory Hamish McBrearty takes a look at some of the tournament’s dark horses and how they could derail some of the more fancied team’s campaigns.
It is an unfortunate fact of international rugby that there are two tiers of international teams and top tier teams often dish out hidings to second tier teams. But every Rugby World Cup has thrown up surprise results and performances from second tier teams, or less fancied top tier teams, which make all those World Cup predictions meaningless.
1. England. The draw has been extremely unkind to the English, landing them in the same pool as South Africa, who they match up against very poorly, and then their likely quarter final opponent is Australia. During their short 2006 tour to the Northern Hemisphere South Africa beat England at Twickenham for the first time in a long time and they did it by muscling up in the forwards. To beat the Springboks, England must find a way to win without having the dominant pack, but if they do a quarter final match up with Wales beckons - a match-up England will be far more confident about.
2. Wales. The Red Dragons struggled somewhat in the Six Nations, needing a win over England on the final day of the tournament to avoid the wooden spoon and failing to score a try in the first two games. In the World Cup, Wales have a good draw although they do have Australia in their pool, finishing runner up is a very realistic goal. From there it becomes much harder as they will likely play the Springboks in the quarter finals, but on their day the Welsh are capable of winning this game. If they are able to get an early lead and keep the scoreboard ticking over with penalty goals, they could shock the rugby world and dump out one of the favourites.
3. Argentina. Stuck with the “group of death” along with France and Ireland, things look grim for Los Pumas but they will have bolstered their confidence after a home series win over the Irish. If there is one team in this tournament who are capable of producing more passion that the home French, it is Argentina. A win over either of the so-called top tier teams will give them a real chance at a quarter final berth, and if things go their way, it is a very real possibility.
4. Samoa. The Samoans showed during the Pacific Nations Cup that they are no easy beats, pushing both Australia A and the Junior All Blacks with their physical style. Unfortunately their fitness let them down in both games, but with better conditioning their confrontational forwards and powerful backs could knock the English off their game. The game against England will be targeted by Samoa and if they put the English off their game, they are capable of causing the shock upset of this World Cup.
The expansion of the World Cup to 20 teams means there will be some very high scores in the pool stage of the tournament, but some of the lesser fancied teams are capable of causing upsets and the favourite will underestimate them at their peril.
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The Keys to victory: The dark horses by Hamish McBrearty, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
