Rugby Union: Destiny guides Australia to ultimate glory

THE FINAL WORD: French smothered by outstanding defensive performance as Wallabies show the character and passion of true world champions. Australia 35 France 1212-6 France 12 Pens Lamaison 4 Attendance: 72,5

JOHN EALES and his compatriots, "fair, young and free" in the words of the Australian national anthem and committed republicans almost to a man, finished on the wrong side of their country's major public argument at the weekend. They could not have cared less. They won the private war that meant immeasurably more to them and not even the most one-sided referendum could have made a more decisive statement of union affairs than that issued by the Wallabies to a quiet, almost respectful Millennium Stadium audience. Constitutional battles can be fought any old time. World Cups are of the moment.

There was an aura about the men in green and gold on Saturday, a profound sense of purpose and destiny matched only by a bottomless well of confidence, that would have accounted for a stronger, more rounded side than the French. When the big players stood up to be counted, they were far too many for the Tricolores to handle: Matthew Burke, Ben Tune, Tim Horan, George Gregan, Richard Harry, David Wilson, Toutai Kefu and Eales himself. And when it was over, when the captain had received the Webb Ellis Trophy from the Queen and aimed a cheeky half-smile at "Betty II", as the monarch is known back home in the bush, the Wallabies linked arms in a tight huddle and bellowed "Advance Australia Fair" at the tops of their voices. "It was a good rendition," laughed Eales afterwards. And a pointed one, perhaps.

When rugby's number-crunchers, the coaches and analysts and phase-specific specialists, sit down with their spread sheets and embark on their evaluations of the tournament, they might save themselves some time by concentrating their thoughts on a single, overwhelmingly instructive statistic. Australia conceded only one try in six matches, and that to an American wing from Denver by the name of Juan Grobler in the course of a 59-point victory. Like all the world champions before them - the 1987 All Blacks, the 1995 Springboks and their own predecessors of eight years ago - the Wallabies lifted the silverware because they possessed the most parsimonious, bloody- minded, tight-fisted, mean-spirited and unfailingly grudging defence in the competition. Ireland and Wales suffered shut-outs, as did the Springboks and the French. As Phil Kearns, the former Wallaby hooker and captain, graphically put it, they were all "kept nude".

For John Muggleton, the former rugby league coach responsible for Australia's defensive strategy, Saturday's successful exercise in zero tolerance moved him close to tears. "I'm ecstatic," he said. "Defence is a selfish part of our game; players don't like missing tackles because they know they will have to answer to their team-mates if it happens. It's personal with these guys. I think we've seen old attacking ideas being defeated by new defensive ones in this tournament. It used to be far too easy for union players to run into gaps. The way we defend, our opponents have to do a little more work."

Even though they were playing the biggest match of their lives and their attacking instincts were sharpened by the prize on offer, the French could find no answer to the basic question confronting them: how to score. Muggleton described them as "the most threatening offensive side in the world", but only once did they seriously threaten the Wallaby line. Had Christophe Lamaison's beautifully flighted cross-kick fallen cleanly into the arms of Olivier Magne rather than bounced forward off the Montferrand flanker's shoulder, Abdel Benazzi would have been awarded a 16th-minute try and the Tricolores might conceivably have summoned the furies that had so famously accounted for New Zealand the previous weekend. Denied that early encouragement, they remained frustratingly mortal.

They gave everything of themselves, and received next to nothing in return. Franck Tournaire and Fabien Pelous made a good deal of the running in the opening quarter; Harry, the gifted loose-head prop from New South Wales, had to dig very deep merely to hold a emotionally-charged Tournaire, while Eales must have recognised something of himself in Pelous as the Toulouse lock trespassed on areas of the field generally considered to be lock-free zones. Away from the pack, Richard Dourthe tackled with a self-sacrificial intensity that suggested he might soon receive a visit from the men in white coats. The fires of hell raged in these three all afternoon, but they did not come close to consuming the Wallabies.

Partly, this was down to the unsympathetic and spectacularly self-important performanceof the South African referee, Andre Watson, who emerged as a pedant of genuine international class. If the Wallabies were to be placed in any jeopardy at all, the game needed to be given its head. When it became obvious that Watson had not only composed the world's first whistle sonata but was also intent on playing it, any hope of a flowing, rhythmic final disappeared into an unusually clear Cardiff sky. Southern hemisphere officials had suffered a rough time of it over the preceding five weeks and the events of the weekend did nothing to salvage their collective reputation. If this is the way they do things in Super 12, they can keep it.

The Millennium Stadium's surface did not help, either; the final might as well have been played on Carmarthen Sands, so heavy was the pitch. Last but by no means least, there was some needlessly cynical time-wasting from the Wallabies as the clock kicked down. It had been an encounter of immense physicality and the vast majority of participants were in need of a fortnight in bed rather than eight long minutes of injury time, but the Australian lovies over-dramatised their end-of-tournament exhaustion to such an extent that they might have been coached by Kenneth Branagh rather than Rod Macqueen.

But the game was dead long before the Wallabies pretended to die with it. Their performance in the second quarter, when Burke slotted two testing penalties to open up a 12-6 interval advantage, had a defining control and precision about it; try as they might, the French could not make meaningful progress or establish a secure platform in enemy territory. Burke then took the champions-elect to 21-12 before Horan, one of the '91 vintage, underlined his status as the player of the tournament with the game-breaking contribution on 64 minutes. Shrugging off the not inconsiderable attentions of Benazzi, he opened the door for Burke and Gregan to get in behind the French, and when he appeared again to put Owen Finegan into space near the right touch-line, the predatory Tune finished brilliantly at the corner flag.

The French had reeled in a 14-point deficit against the All Blacks six days previously, but their chances of denting the Wallabies' 16-point lead were non-existent. In the fifth minute of an interminable injury- time denouement, Finegan confused himself as well as the opposition by rumbling 20-odd metres for a second try, an initial expression of panic slowly giving way to one of supreme pleasure as his mind caught up with what his body was about to achieve. "I went for the gap off the line-out and the gap kept opening," smiled the replacement loosie afterwards.

If the gap between the artists of the south and the artisans of the north is not to widen further, there needs to be a sea-change in competitive attitude in these parts. "The Wallabies played as though they were accustomed to rugby at this elevated level, while we played like little kids," admitted Raphael Ibanez, the defeated captain. "For them, it was serious. To us, it was: `Hey, we're in the final. Fantastic.' " As these intelligent and resourceful Australians will confirm, the time to feel "fantastic" is after the match, not before it.

AUSTRALIA: M Burke (New South Wales); B Tune (Queensland), D Herbert (Queensland), T Horan (Queensland), J Roff (ACT); S Larkham (ACT), G Gregan (ACT); R Harry (New South Wales), M Foley (Queensland), A Blades (New South Wales), D Giffin (ACT), J Eales (Queensland, capt), M Cockbain (Queensland), D Wilson (Queensland), T Kefu (Queensland). Replacements: J Little (New South Wales) for Herbert, 46; O Finegan (ACT) for Cockbain, 52; D Crowley (Queensland) for Harry, 74; J Paul (ACT) for Foley, 84; C Whitaker (New South Wales) for Gregan, 87; N Grey (New South Wales) for Horan, 88.

FRANCE: X Garbajosa (Toulouse); P Bernat-Salles (Biarritz), R Dourthe (Dax), E Ntamack (Toulouse), C Dominici (Stade Francais); C Lamaison (Brive), F Galthie (Colomiers); C Soulette (Toulouse), R Ibanez (Perpignan, capt), F Tournaire (Toulouse), A Benazzi (Agen), F Pelous (Toulouse), M Lievremont (Stade Francais), O Magne (Montferrand), C Juillet (Stade Francais). Replacements: O Brouzet (Begles-Bordeaux) for Juillet, h-t; P De Villiers (Stade Francais) for Soulette, 47; A Costes (Montferrand) for Lievremont, 67; U Mola (Castres) for Garbajosa, 67; S Glas (Bourgoin) for Dourthe, 74; S Castaignede (Mont- de-Marsan) for Galthie, 76; M Dal Maso (Colomiers) for Ibanez, 79.

Referee: A Watson (South Africa)