Oh well!
With reference to my last post concerning the Rugby World Cup… the good news was that the Scotland/Japan pool match to decide the quarter finalists did indeed go ahead.
Any good news was, however, overwhelmed by the terrible news – the tragic loss of life suffered in Japan as a result of typhoon Hagibis. No amount of other news can in any way compensate for or help with that.
This perspective should not, however, take away anything from the fact that Japan out-played, out-ran and out-thought the Scots and rightly won the match, topped the group and thus won through to the country’s first ever quarter-final place in the world cup.
The tragic losses should also put into perspective the emotional impact on the Scots of being the first of the home nations (in regard to the UK of course) to be dumped out of this year’s cup. Four years ago Scotland were the last of them to be knocked out (controversially) in the quarters by the Australians, so this represents a significant step back.
It is not even that they played badly. They did not. But they were as unable to live with the Japanese as they had been the Irish just a few short weeks back. Given the talent now available to the team they really should be making more progress than they clearly are.
Time – once again – for some serious navel gazing.
PS – I have not yet made any reference to other nations competing in the tournament. There will be time for that as the knockout stages progress. I would like to put in a word for Canada though. In the first three rounds of their pool stages they predictably lost to Italy, to the All Blacks and to the South Africans (tough pool, that one!). They were hoping for some payback in their final pool game against fellow minnows – Namibia. Sadly that was one of the three games to be abandoned because of the typhoon.
Tant pis!
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