Rugby World Cup 2007

The 2007 Rugby World Cup was in France from the 7th September to the 20th October. There were a total of forty-eight matches played over the forty-four days of the tournament. Some of the matches were also played in Wales and Scotland. Twenty teams qualified to play in the World Cup and Portugal was the only team that played for the first time ever.

The tournament started with four groups of five teams. Group A had South Africa, England, Tonga, Samoa and The United States. Group B had Australia, Fiji, Wales, Japan and Canada. In Group C there were New Zealand, Scotland, Italy, Romania and Portugal. And finally in Group D there were Argentina, France, Ireland, Georgia and Namibia. Only the top two teams from each group qualified to play in the quarter-final knockout stage. There were one or two surprises in the group matches which resulted in Wales and Ireland failing to qualify for the next round, instead Fiji and Argentina progressed into the quarter finals.

On October the 6th Australia played England in the first quarter final. The match was in Marseille and surprisingly England won a very close match, 12 points to 10. I say surprisingly because Australia were one of the favourites to win the World Cup and England were playing very badly. The second quarter final was a fantastic match between the mighty All Blacks, New Zealand, and the host nation France. Amazingly New Zealand lost the match 20 points to 18 and the whole of France celebrated with parties all through the night!

South Africa then won a close match with Fiji 37-20 and the last quarter final saw Argentina, the surprise qualifiers beat a determined Scottish team by 19 points to 13. Wow! Two of the top teams in the world failed to reach the semi-finals.

The first semi was between old rivals England and France. The England team were steadily improving and had a lot of confidence after their match with Australia, so too were the French team, though, and they had the advantage of playing at Le Stade de France. However, another great performance from England meant they won the match 14-9 and ended France's dream of winning the trophy for the first time. But who would England play in the final? Well, nobody was surprised when South Africa easily beat Argentina 37-13 to book their place in the final.

These two teams were in the same Group, remember, and so this was the second time they met in this tournament. The first match was an emphatic victory for South Africa. England failed to score a single point and eventually lost the match 36-0. A humiliating defeat! So, this was their chance to get revenge. It was a close match and in front of 80,000 spectators South Africa just managed to hold on to a narrow 15-6 lead to win the trophy for the second time in their history. Well done The Springboks!