Big cats likely to dine on minnows

IT MUST be a sobering prospect for the makeweights, travelling to a World Cup with a bunch of players registering close to zero on the Name Recognition Scale – the seismological equivalents of faint tremors – and burdened by the fear that any meeting with half-decent opponents playing reasonably well might reduce their campaign to rubble. But that’s enough about Wales.

- CHRIS HEWETT

We need to talk about the likes of Uruguay and Chile, fellow outsiders who, unlike Warren Gatland’s team, have no historical reference points to help them survive the rigours of bigtime tournament rugby and therefore cannot even begin to believe, however delusionally, that the next few weeks will be anything but excruciating. What can we possibly expect from them? Or, to put it another way, what in God’s name will they being doing over there in France, apart from losing?

One national newspaper journalist has suggested that the current England team are so bad, they could conceivably lose to Chile when the two countries meet on pool-stage business in Lille towards the end of next month. Which is inconceivable, of course. England would have to be significantly more useless than they were in Dublin last weekend – there’s a test of imagination for you – to allow the South Americans within 50 points of them.

Los Condores, as the Chileans present themselves, are making a first World Cup appearance, having qualified at the eighth attempt. They possess a couple of players who earn a crust in the French second-tier and a skipper, Martin Sigren, below, who turns out in the back row for Doncaster, but their most familiar figure, by approximately a million miles, is a long-retired prop. Step forward head coach Pablo Lemoine, who ended his career with 48 international caps. For Uruguay.