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As with the Players and Staff, I acknowledge the scenario but couldn't stomach the act of it being carried out.
Wallabies reject armchair ride
From Paul Kent in Montpellier, France
September 14, 2007
AUSTRALIA has ruled out taking the back-door route to the Rugby World Cup final.
A great roar of whispers has surrounded the Wallabies camp this week as it emerged in neat, clear print how easily Australia could claim a rails run to the Rugby World Cup final by deliberately losing its match against Wales.
But deliberately losing a match?
Phil Waugh has called the ploy "un-Australian". Matt Giteau said, "To be the best you want to beat the best."
"History shows," Wallabies coach John Connolly said , "that no team has ever lost a game and gone on to win the World Cup."
Despite the obvious distaste for it, the machinations of the draw have raised a tasty question for the philosophers of sweat: Can there be any justification in deliberately trading off a pool game to increase your chances of winning the tournament?
While the suggestion of throwing a game appears insulting to the professional athlete, at least on first glance, under the cloak of gamesmanship it assumes a whole different context.
Formula One drivers will often rein in during a race, sacrificing the checkered flag in order to finish and earn points to win the championship.
Cricket teams will play for a draw to protect a series result. Tennis players, more distastefully, often tank a game to keep serve for the next set; golfers lay up on difficult lies instead of shooting for the pin.
Where is the rule, in sport, on always having to shoot for the hole? Is short-term loss a viable justification for long-term gain? Regardless, the Australians have refused to consider the option.
"I can't ever see any Australian side doing that," Waugh said. "It hasn't been thought about or spoken about or mentioned among the team."
Argentina's upset of France on the first day is what has allowed for the quirk in the draw.
It has made it possible that the tournament's four best teams - discounting Argentina's ridiculous improvement to fourth on world rankings after the upset - will all end up on the same side of the finals draw.
All that needs to happen for possibility to become reality is for England to beat South Africa and Argentina to beat Ireland on September 30.
That scenario would see New Zealand, South Africa and Six Nations champion France - along with Australia - on one side of the quarter-finals with only one team a possibility of advancing to the final.
The opposite side of the draw would contain the featherweight contenders: Argentina, Scotland, England and Wales. One of them would be guaranteed a place in the final.
Either way, a win means Australia will almost certainly run into the All Blacks in the semi-final, the tournament's toughest game.
In many ways, the lopsided draw disadvantages the Wallabies. Yet a loss would see the Aussies swap sides of the draw with Wales.
As each scenario presented itself this week, the Wallaby coaching staff openly acknowledged the possibilities, but just as quickly dismissed them.
The players were most vehement, the greatest testimony yet to their unquestioned integrity. They are competitors first, and place that above all else.
"You look at how other sides are going but you don't look into the tournament," said Giteau. "You want to come out of every game winning and playing good footy.
"If you want to be the best in the world you have got to beat any and every side. I don't think you can be thinking there are certain teams you don't want to play."
Connolly's words of warning, about no team ever having lost and then going on to win the Cup, are also significant.
Hooker Stephen Moore could not even concede a Wallaby team would contemplate it.
"There's no way that there is anyone in this team who would be interested or buy into the theory of throwing the game," he said.
"Our game plan has been to win our pool and worry about who we play after that."
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