The World Cup is down to the last four. The best four here? France, feeling hard done by and seeing red over referee Jaco Peyper, and Ireland, the No 1 side in the world rankings six weeks ago, who had the misfortune to meet the All Blacks at their most driven, might beg to differ.
The best four coaches? Given that Ireland’s Joe Schmidt presided over two defeats, without doubt. Eddie Jones was able to poke fun this week at some of the media corps who had been drafting his obituary ahead of what a few had expected to be his final game in charge against Australia last weekend. He was questioned for reverting to the back division that had started with victory over the then champions Ireland in Dublin in February, apart from the fit-again Anthony Watson, while the decision to play Courtney Lawes in the second row instead of George Kruis was lost in the spume of indignation.
Jones is involved in his fourth World Cup. His opposite number on Saturday, New Zealand’s Steve Hansen, is in his fourth tournament with the holders having coached Wales in the 2003 event: after being whitewashed in the Six Nations, they shook the All Blacks before rocking the eventual winners England. They not only share an accumulated wisdom but a record that should encourage examination of their selection decisions rather than outrage.
Hansen’s only World Cup defeat with New Zealand was in 2007 against France while Jones, who is on his fourth team after Australia, South Africa and Japan, has overseen two defeats, the 2003 final to England and the reverse to Scotland four days after Japan had defeated South Africa in 2015. The pair get on and will probably be seen, as Hansen and Schmidt were before last Saturday’s quarter-final, having a chat on the halfway line while their teams are warming up (if Jones has a peek, as he tends to, to see what the opposition are getting up to, he will find it is not much with the preparations long completed).
Jones has had a quiet World Cup, in media conferences anyway, until this week when England, having been the favourites to win all their games, were cast in the roles of underdogs, a time when he likes to let loose a couple of scorpions in the opposition dressing room and play I-spy. England have neither New Zealand’s recent World Cup form nor their consistency, but against greater artillery Jones has long been a sniper.
It will be a fascinating battle of wits and such is the way that international rugby has developed, with coaches no longer operating on four-year cycles, that it is almost as if an association of head coaches has been formed: they meet each other regularly at conferences organised by World Rugby, and in a pressurised environment they have a common understanding of what it takes to succeed. The very best, like the four this week, have mastered the art of selection.
The other semi-final sees Wales, whose head coach Warren Gatland is the longest serving among tier-one nations, little more than a week away from the end of his 12-year tenure, take on South Africa, who looked anything but World Cup contenders when Rassie Erasmus took over at the start of last year.
The turnaround under Erasmus, the only head coach not to front up early this week as he remains his union’s director of rugby and has been working here on areas such as sevens and the women’s game, has been remarkable both for its swiftness and its reach, going from losing in Italy to winning in New Zealand, but despite the cold-blooded way they ended Japan’s World Cup last weekend, with the chilling detachment of an assassin, the victory was not universally well received in South Africa. The scrum-half Faf de Klerk, who was named man of the match, was condemned for kicking too much, even though his tactic left the free-flowing Japan with nowhere to run. Does no one there remember how Wales lost to Fiji in 2007? Better to be a roundhead than lose your head.
South Africa have rediscovered their ruthlessness under Erasmus and are looking like the Springboks again while Wales under Gatland have enjoyed their most successful period since the 1970s. Between 1991 and 2007, they only made the knockout stage in two of the five World Cups in that period – one of them when they were hosts and not saddled with the inconvenience of another major nation in their pool.
This is their second semi-final in the three tournaments Gatland has overseen, and they were a few minutes from making the last four in 2015 before South Africa fashioned a try from a scrum. They are a team in the true sense of the word, one that has been shaped by unstinting effort and the pain of defeat over the years. There is now a mental hardness in a side that used to be more pliable than newly laid putty.
Wales and South Africa will be a clash of two immovable forces, an aerial battle of will as well as body, while England and New Zealand should be more nuanced. Jones’s decision to pick Lawes was vindicated as they, by some distance, won the physical battle against Australia whose second-row Izaak Rodda was far too easily dispossessed, but Kruis offers lineout expertise: the set-piece cost England victory against the All Blacks last November when they lost three of their throws in the second half when Scott Barrett, a second-row, replaced a wing forward, where he will start on Saturday.
England should protect the gainline more effectively than Ireland and have more penetration in possession, but where Jones will earn his money this week is anticipating the tactical tweak Hansen will make as he looks to make his opponents gaze in a direction the threat will not be coming from. England may be underdogs but Jones will be planning for, and expecting, victory, out to win rather than not lose; and Hansen knows it.
• This is an extract from our weekly rugby union email, the Breakdown. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.