Time to stop humiliating sides at the World Cup

World Cups produce non-playing “villains” as well as rogues of the on-field variety.

- CHRIS HEWETT

Frenchmen and Scots alike would happily throw Craig Joubert of South Africa in the stocks for his – how best to put this?– idiosyncratic refereeing in 2011 and 2015, while the Italians would leave a horse’s head in the bed of the fixture planner who cost them so dearly in 2003, if only they could find him.

Yet some of the accused are less guilty than others. Take the case of Romeo Gontineac, who coached Romania at the global gathering in New Zealand a decade ago and waved a white handkerchief by asking ten second-teamers to do pool-stage battle with England.

The reaction among the game’s privileged class was predictably purple-faced. A second-string? Against the former champions? Who the hell does this bloke think he is?

Gontineac knew precisely who he was. He was a coach in a fix. The England match, which he knew his players could not possibly win, was in Dunedin on a Saturday. Romania’s fixture against a well-rested Georgia, in which they might just prevail with the grace of God and a full-strength side, was slated for Palmerston North the following Wednesday.

Caught between the devil and the deep blue sea, Gontineac held his nose and jumped. There was no happy landing, sadly. Romania lost by a landslide to England – hardly surprising, with the hooker Marius Tincu, the prop Paulica Ion and the back-rower Mahei Macovei being held back – and then came up short against their Eastern European rivals before flying home feeling they’d been royally rogered by the rugby elite.