Rugby World Cup 2007 will be remembered as the most successful in the Tournament’s 20-year history. Attracting record attendances, broadcast coverage and generating a festival atmosphere, the Tournament also proved to be incredibly competitive.
The IRB’s Game Analysis Department, headed by former Referee Corris Thomas, has compiled an in depth study of RWC 2007, which compares the approach of each of the 20 participating Unions across all 48 Tournament matches and also explains how Jake White’s South Africa team lifted the Webb Ellis Cup.
The report, which is split into four areas, also:
- Takes a brief look at the constituent Game elements of RWC 2007 and compares them to RWC 2003.
- Comprises a detailed statistical analysis of all Tournament matches.
- Contains one page summaries on each of the 20 participating teams.
- Compares the shape of the Game from 1995 through to 2007.
In addition, the report touches on the competitiveness of the so called smaller Unions in Fiji, Georgia, Namibia, Samoa, Tonga, USA and Tournament debutants Portugal and explains the major advances in performance that have been made since RWC 2003.
The analysis also investigates whether teams approach the knock-out format of RWC differently to that of major championships and looks closely at the performances of each of the quarter-finalists.
