Talking Points

A spotlight on the hot topics at Rugby World Cup 2011. Five times in a row on Saturday night, Jonny Wilkinson confounded expectation. He set the ball on its tee for a penalty, assumed his trademark crouch and swung the left boot that has helped to amass a record 257 Rugby World Cup points. And five times in succession, the ball refused to sail between the posts. Such errancy was enough to make England fans consider that their RWC-winning hero may really be mortal after all. But if his usually reliable radar was scrambled in that bloodily competitive Pool B clash with Argentina, he was not alone. Opposing kickers Martín Rodríguez and Felipe Contepomi were even more wasteful, missing six out of nine of their kicks at goal, as a total of 33 points were squandered from the tee during the match. High winds or slippery turf could not be blamed as the Otago Stadium in Dunedin has a closed roof. Spreading malaise What's more, the malaise seems to have spread to all corners of New Zealand over the course of the weekend. Ireland's Jonathan Sexton missed four out of five of his penalty attempts against USA in New Plymouth. James Hook crucially missed two penalties in Wales' 17-16 defeat by South Africa in Wellington. And Scotland's Chris Paterson, who had a 100 per cent kicking record at RWC 2007, converted only five out of nine against Romania in Invercargill. He failed to get one kick off the ground after the ball fell off the tee in the act of striking. In short, in the first eight matches of RWC 2011, only 63 of 103 kicks at goal found their target. Such a strike rate is significantly below what one might reasonably expect. The conversion rate of tries in World Cups has not fallen below 70 per cent since 1991. Yet here we have seen kickers from the Six Nations teams succeeding with only 56 per cent of attempts on goal. Tri Nations kicking superiority Intriguingly, kickers from the Tri Nations teams are faring much better, with a 76 per cent success rate. So what is going on? The Gilbert Virtuo ball being used at RWC 2011 has been in circulation for a year, including during the Six Nations, so unfamiliarity is not an excuse. The elements have been no worse than one might expect on a reasonable winter's day in the northern hemisphere. And the tension has not yet reached the level that will make a grown man's knees wobble. Perhaps we should let Wilkinson explain in his own words. It wasn't the ball, it wasn't the indoor stadium and it wasn't the lighting. The blame was his, and his alone. "I didn’t even know how many I missed,” he said after the game. “It was just one of those days." England fans can only hope that normal service is resumed soon.