James Lawton of The Independent concludes that the French played one half brilliantly against England and then did the same in the final.
"If the World Cup of rugby is about seizing one night, if it was available to a man like Thierry Dusautoir claiming it as a personal possession, it would this morning be draped in the Tricolore and heading for the Champs élysées.
"But it isn't, not morally anyway, and so the trophy goes to New Zealand, the world's No 1 rugby nation, for only the second time in the 24-year-history of the World Cup.
"You may say this is harsh on the French, variously the most sublimely brilliant and deeply schizophrenic entity in any front-line sport, and in a way it is. But as the All Black line held, quite desperately in the end, as fireworks began to erupt from the craggy shoreline of North Island to Stewart Island in the south, it was hard not to believe that a rough kind of justice had been imposed."
RSS feed
