Whilst most of the watching world understood, to some degree at least, the significance of Siya Kolisi’s Springboks lifting the William Webb Ellis trophy, a few former international rugby players seem to be a little bitter as the days ebb by.

We know that the ‘Bomb Squad’ played a massive role in the success of the team throughout the tournament, and perhaps particularly the final, and now former English centre Jeremy Guscott is looking at ways to prevent such an impact off the bench in the future.

(Also, yes, some of the ‘Bomb Squad’ did get matching tattoos – fair enough.)

Writing a column for The Rugby Paper, Guscott (below) bemoaned how modern coaches use the bench:

My only reservation is that it would be an even better sport if the bench was reduced in number. Half a team coming on with fresh legs and sharp minds against guys who have been taken to the point of exhaustion is pushing the game out of the realms of normality…

We have got to make sure that Rugby Union remains a game in which skill and fitness are paramount – even though the fitness element has been eroded…You could still have six or eight on the bench, but only be able to use three of them…

My feeling is that we need to rebalance and enhance the attack, and you can do that by allowing players to be tired when they are participating in this game, rather than benching them…

I believe this sport can get better still, and more attractive to play and to watch, by limiting the number of substitutions – and that should be the next big step we take.

Whinging Pom alert. I can confidently say that Jeremy is wrong on this front, and using your matchday 23 wisely adds another element of skill to how coaches and players approach any showdown.

Plus, it rewards teams that have taken the time to foster extra depth, as Rassie Erasmus did in the year or so leading up the tournament.

Tsek, Jeremy.

He wasn’t the only former player kicking up a stink, with past Irish international lock Neil Francis saying the Bok win may need an asterisk next to it.

Francis, who played the last of his 36 tests back in 1996, has been talking about what he calls South Africa’s “steroid culture”, reports RugbyPass.

He uses Springbok wing Aphiwe Dyantyi’s positive test for multiple anabolic steroids and metabolites to critique our rugby culture as a whole:

“Despite Siya Kolisi’s heart-warming humility and Rassie Erasmus’ astonishing turnaround of not just a team in decline but the sport at every level in that country, questions still have to be asked,” wrote Francis.

“Let’s get back to the kernel of the issue. Dyantyi [above] is a superstar and if he was based in Europe he would surely be facing a four-year ban. He is, however, based in South Africa, where Chilliboy Ralepele managed to continue playing and finish his career at the Sharks despite being twice caught and suspended for prohibited substances.

Francis then raises the issue of South Africa’s schoolboy rugby doping problem, which is something that desperately needs to be addressed, before carrying on:

“How certain are we when we point a finger to suggest there is a steroid culture in a country that has just won the World Cup? Fairly certain…

“Is Dyantyi, a poster boy for the World Cup and winner of World Rugby’s young player of the year, the only one? Or the only one to be caught? The player in my view will go down but the system stays in place. What were we saying about latitude and dispensation?

“Do we need to put an asterisk beside the winners of the 2019 World Cup?”

I can cut Francis a little slack here, because it’s clear that work needs to be done to stamp out doping amongst younger players, but there is absolutely no way we are plonking an asterisk next to our name on that World Cup trophy.

This picture, widely circulated before the tournament kicked off, shows what good nick the team was in:

That’s hard work, fella.

The third player we’ll mention is legendary Irish flyhalf Ronan O’Gara, who is decidedly less salty than the two men mentioned above.

I mean, should any good Irishman bemoan the fact that the English were beaten in a World Cup final of any sort? No, he shouldn’t.

O’Gara did say he was somewhat surprised that Eddie Jones didn’t pull a sneaky one after English tighthead Kyle Sinckler was forced to leave the field with concussion after just three minutes.

This again from RugbyPass:

“Eddie Jones, if you’re in his head, is plotting worst-case scenario probably, Dan Cole comes in and he’s in for 77 minutes. You don’t have extra legs for him or expertise at tighthead.

“What are you to do?”

“The coach in me was saying, essentially, do you bend the rules and become cynical and make them uncontestable scrums. The game was decided by penalties up front.

“You have to find a way to win no matter what it takes. If you get in trouble, you’ve got a World Cup winners’ medal.”

Given how our dominance at scrum time gave us such a platform to dictate play, as well as capitalise on territorial pressure with three points at a time, perhaps O’Gara has a point.

I wonder, had Eddie Jones opted for this skullduggery and come out on top, if Neil Francis would have insisted on an asterisk next to the English name.

Credit to Jones, though, who puts the loss down in large part to an error on his part:

“I haven’t watched it and I probably won’t watch it,” he said. “But I know in my head where we could have probably made improvements. One area was that I probably made a mistake in terms of selection. That’s all with the benefit of hindsight, but I should probably have refreshed the team for the final.

“Apart from that, it was one of those days. Sometimes they start the game brilliantly and things come off for them. We started the game a little bit off, lacking a tiny bit of energy because we’d played four big games in a row. That’s the reality of it – we just came unstuck.”

Taking it on the chin like a professional – well played, Eddie.

Enjoy your day, fellow world champions.

[sources:rugbypaper&rugbypass&rugbypass]