Writing in The Irish Independent, Peter Bills analyses the impact of the World Cup on the less-fancied nations.
"Someone once wrote about the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, calling it a place of cascading contradictions. Who can doubt that such a description fits perfectly professional rugby?
At the completion of another World Cup, this New Zealand version of 2011 being perhaps the most successful to date, it is an appropriate moment to study rugby and its own 'cascading contradictions.'
Sixteen years since professionalism, an event that was supposed to set the sport on the road to global advancement, this latest World Cup has seen the same old suspects prosper. The last eight comprised Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina from the southern hemisphere; Ireland, Wales, France and England from the north."
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