The disregarded bit-part players of Ireland and Scotland are saving this world cup. Alright, there weren't that many Irish or Scots accents among the players in action on wednesday night, but when they perform like that, who cares?
i wouldn't have given Ireland a prayer against Samoa, but they matched them physically and produced the pentrative rugby when it was needed.
It's hard to pick out individuals in such a committed all-roound team display, but two who have impressed me are Scott Grix and Garreth Haggerty.
When Grix was appointed captain, i wondered about his cerdentials, but he has looked a natural in a leadership role, whilst his own game has blossomed.
Haggerty has been a revelation this year at 'Quins, so much fitter and more effective than he was with Widnes or Salford. He was outstanding at Parramatta and - words I never thought I would write here - if he fancied an NRL contract he could get one.
As for the Scots' wonderful effort against Fiji, if there was one man who typified it that would be Ian Henderson. He might be blind to the charms of Castleford, but he knows where trouble is on the rugby field and he gets stuck into it.
It was a great night for rugby league and for two of the game's good guys - Andy Kelly and Steve McCormack - if you didn't feel happy for them you had a heart of stone.
Which leaves us with England against the Kiwis in a bit of a phony war on Saturday. No confirmed team yet, but the word is that all the fringe players will get a run.
So they should and what's more, anyone who has a really top game - a Purdham or a Jones-Buchanah perhaps - will be awfully hard to keep out of the semi-final team.
The 'other' groups of so-called lesser teams have shown that Rugby League development is thriving outside of the big three.
Whilst we should celebrate Ireland and Scotland's performances in particular, we should take heart in the fact that those groups were in the end, fairly equally weighted.
France and Samoa may have been condemned for under performing, but we should all celebrate how close the end results were in these groups with each team ending on two points. Each team proved that on their day they could beat any of the others. We have seen in this World Cup what the French writer of the 1930s Simone Weil described in Homer (no doubt after having watched the Red Devils touring side in Perpignan in 1934) , "heroes are never truly heroes and the weak are never truly weak". Epic stuff indeed.
Posted by: Richard Byrne | 14 November 2008 at 01:59 AM