Pie in the sky to humble pie

10:21am Friday 28th November 2008

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I usually like a pie over the weekend.

But my choice of filling last Saturday morning was more of the humble variety.

Having confidently predicted that Australia would stroll to their seventh straight rugby league World Cup, I watched the Kiwis pull out all the stops to record a memorable victory.

And, of course, they had the helping hand of Bulls favourites Ashley Klein and Steve Ganson, whose controversial verdicts in the Brisbane showpiece dwarfed the controversy of the “offside” try at Millennium Magic 18 months ago.

My rugby league-reporting colleague was quick to point out the error of my ways in last week’s column.

Credit where it’s due, the final was a fantastic match fitting to settle any competition.

But I still stand by my argument that the league World Cup as a whole was an over-stretched flop. It took five weeks to match up two of the three sides we all knew would be in the final.

England, it has to be said, were dire. The fact they even made it to the last four, despite losing two of their three group matches, exposed the lop-sided nature of the format.

And it’s never a great advert for any tournament when one of the semi-finals finishes 54-0. (My expert colleague tried to claim that Fiji actually put up a decent fight – otherwise it wouldn’t have even been that close!)

The sheer quality and excitement generated in the 80 minutes last week cannot be knocked. The final scoreline was a real shock to the system.

But that still doesn’t justify stretching out a competition in which three-quarters of the teams taking part have absolutely no chance.