So it’s time to finally pull together the effects of Pollard’s boot and the effects of the red card….to put a postscript on our WC ‘win’. I really hesitate to do this. The old Gary Player story, the more I practice the luckier I get. But Harrassmiss is a very lucky fella…again.
Nobody who wins three consecutive knockout games by a single point each can be accused of bad luck. But to do so with your kicker making 9 consecutive kicks….that’s uncanny. Add to that the red card which effectively put your team up by a man for half of the game and this begins to feel a little weird.
So if you eliminate the effects of the red card, 10 points according to a study of red cards and their effects on scoring ……and you eliminate the kicking differential of 5 points, missed AB kicks vs Pollard’s 100% record….the differential is staggering.
Adjusting for the card and Pollard’s superior kicking….we should have won the WC final by 15 points. We won it by 1. I was able despite my dislike for Rassie methods to applaud our WC final win in 2019, where we scored tries and emerged the clearly better team. This victory by the boot over a 14 man NZ team feels more like a loss.
Our win over France was the high point of the campaign….but the subsequent wins over a poor English team and a disadvantaged AB team feel like just plain luck. So four years of anticipation seem unresolved.
Perhaps this Olympic cycle is too long for rugby. It works in soccer because the club competitions almost dominate the WC. In rugby it really is the pinnacle. It’s great that we have done it four times, but the first three feel a lot more legitimate. Perhaps we can back it up with a first Erasmus win in a non WC year RC.