"The Australian World Cup should start with a bang, not a whimper"

With France 2023 done and dusted, we cast our eyes four years hence to the next men's Rugby World Cup- and Stephen Jones is demanding changes

- STEPHEN JONES

SO THAT was France 2023. What did you think, either travelling around the country or following it on the television?

Personally, I thought it was sometimes terrific, sometimes definitely not. Some of the rugby on show and the contests within them were supercharged and from the quarter-finals onwards everyone threw caution to the winds. The ceaseless boredom of box-kicks was thankfully replaced by running rugby and it seemed to leave everyone feeling elated.

At half-time in the brilliant France-South Africa game, I turned to the next seat, occupied by young Alex Bywater of the Mail (I was talking him through the game) and we both agreed that it had been one of the most brilliant halves we’d ever seen.

The tournament was also uneven, sometimes a little annoying. The barrage of 9pm kick-offs we waited for were preposterous and caused more scenes of drunkenness than rugby has ever seen before. I was also staggered by the small number of screens outside the stadiums so followers could watch other games played that day, and staggered by how few screens there were in the town centres – in 2007 in France, thousands congregated in the towns and cities as if on a pilgrimage.

And on the field, the refereeing started well and then it fell off a cliff. Too many of the key games were shaped by decisions which looked wrong at the time and then looked even worse on replay. There is so much space for improvement ahead of the 2027 event.