The Rugby World Cup generated an array of booby prizes.
Given the way the Rugby World Cup dominated the sporting landscape in 2011, this column’s team, coach and player of the year are entirely predictable: the All Blacks, 
Graham Henry and Richie McCaw, respectively.
The World Cup also generated an array of booby prizes. Some winners, such as Samoa’s incendiary tweeter Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu and England’s runaway bridegroom Mike Tindall, made their mark during the event; others gave new meaning to the phrase “all over bar the shouting”.
The Yeah, Whatever Award goes to Wales defence coach Shaun Edwards. Once safely back in the UK, Edwards insisted that if they’d made the final, the Welsh would have beaten the All Blacks. All he offered in support of this claim was that Wales have a big backline. In case he hasn’t noticed, the All Blacks also have a reasonably big backline, significantly bigger than the Wallabies who beat Wales in the bronze medal game, and again in a one-off match in Cardiff a fortnight ago.
You’d think Edwards would be more circumspect given Wales’s 24 successive losses to the All Blacks, but yet again the Welsh rugby community’s yearning for success has caused them to become intoxicated by the mere whiff of it. They should bear in mind what ensued in Iraq after George W Bush, mistaking the end of the beginning for the beginning of the end, declared mission accomplished there.
The Sepp Blatter See No Evil Award goes to the International Rugby Board (IRB). Fifa president Blatter claims there’s no racism in soccer despite almost weekly evidence to the contrary; rather than act on compelling video evidence that McCaw was eye-gouged during the closing minutes of the final, the IRB took cover behind a technicality, electing not to pursue the matter because the damning footage came to light after the 48-hour citing window had closed.
This abject failure of leadership had immediate consequences. Marc Lièvremont, who stepped down as French coach after the tournament, felt emboldened to enter the fray, labelling the footage “tendentious” and attempting to smear McCaw by claiming he kneed flyhalf Morgan Parra in the head, forcing him to leave the field.
What happened was that Parra, who already had a boarding pass to La-La Land after trying to tackle Ma‘a Nonu, was on the ground on the All Blacks’ side of the breakdown; unfortunately for him, he lifted his head just as McCaw arrived to join the ruck and got clattered. I’d go as far as to say that players at the top level take it for granted that if they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time, as Parra was, they’ll have a dent or two to show for it.
Perhaps unsurprisingly Lièvremont made no mention of the scrap of circumstantial evidence that might support his claim there was intent on McCaw’s part: the fact Parra eye-gouged All Black prop Tony Woodcock in Marseille in 2009. Parra also got away with it.
A footnote to this tawdry affair: in a pre-season game in 2002 McCaw’s alleged assailant, Aurélien Rougerie, suffered a throat injury (which later required surgery) courtesy of English player Phil Greening. The referee took no action over the incident. Rougerie sued and was awarded damages of €40,500. The French court ruled Greening had fouled Rougerie “both technically and against the spirit of the game”.
The John Key Tea for Two Award goes to the (English) Rugby Football Union (RFU) for turning the fiasco that was England’s World Cup campaign into a rolling PR disaster. But while the rest of the rugby world revels in schadenfreude, it should beware the possibility that a formidable phoenix may rise from these ashes.
One thing the RFU is good at is making money, and this embarrassing saga may well galvanise it into recruiting the best coaches money can buy. Topping its wish-list is the dream team of former Springbok and Italy coach Nick Mallett and our very own Wayne Smith, who should have learnt a thing or two during his 12 years with the All Blacks.