BROADCASTS.com

b'

It\\u2019s potentially the sports headline, good news, hold the front page, story of the year.

Rugby has had a good week. I like what the internationals are doing with the North/South expansion.

What people want is the best and playing the best. Boxing has understood that for years that you create the contest, build the hype and sell it.

Splitting the game between hemispheres, as we play Australia and South Africa and Argentina over and over again, is not a recipe for anticipation and excitement. How many northern tours have there been where we don\'t play the team you want not a lot is on the line anyway?

Put a stake in the ground, get a cup, call it a contest, give it a title and you\'re off.

Then you come to this weekend. In all honesty I would have liked France, and if it wasn\\u2019t France, then England. But only if England looked like they might be up to something, which sadly, they\'re not.

If they had won last week that would have been their final. We would have killed them on Sunday. South Africa, bar France, are the right team to win the cup against.

While we are re-organising the sport, we need better draws. Our victory, if there is indeed a victory, came about because we beat Ireland and that\'s about it. We get crowned the world champs because we beat Ireland? Is that enough?

We beat Italy, Namibia and Uruguay. They are not competition. So we lost to France, beat some nobodies, but won it all because we played two good teams and came out victorious.

As long-winded as the current world cup in cricket may be, at least it\\u2019s a contest where they play everyone. How can you be the best if you haven\'t proved it by beating the rest?

Anyway, I think we will win because we look more complete than we have been in a while. We look confident without being cocky, we look organised, we haven\'t panicked when pressured and we have the greatest of reasons to finish this with Beauden Barrett, Aaron Smith and, of course, Ian Foster.

If Foster wins this, how good is that as a story? Written off, bagged, bullied, treated abysmally by his employers and, yet, victorious.

He\'d be the best in the world, the Halberg would be in the bag and a massive middle finger, he is far too gracious to expose, to a period of his career he never deserved, and must have wondered at times whether being a tall poppy, in a country that hates them, was worth it.

That, if it pans out, is a redemption story to beat them all.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.