French enthusiasm reflects well on tournament

Here's an interesting thought: nearly 400 more people turned up at the Parc des Princes to watch Portugal play Italy than appeared last night to watch England play Tonga. The easy answer to that is the cost of tickets: England, the world champions, are valued higher than their Latin cousins and anyway, so many of these World Cup matches come as packages rather than single outings.

Nevertheless it reflects well on the organisation of the tournament and the enthusiasm of the French people for it. An article in L'Equipe, the sporting daily, posed the question this week that rugby was now becoming a genuine nationwide challenger to football in France, which is the sort of question newspapers tend to ask halfway through a tournament but is far easier to answer, perhaps, a year later when the legacy can be properly assessed.

As the minnows make their way home, they have themselves left a decent legacy. Such was the enthusiasm of the Japanese media to their country's final pool effort, the 12-12 draw with Canada, that the headlines demanded "Eternal power for Kirwan" - that is, an extension of the coaching contract held by John Kirwan, the former New Zealand wing who spent time with Italy before moving to the Orient. Were England to make it through to the last four, would we be calling for "Eternal power for Ashton"?

Before we answer that, we should remember that England and Marseilles - where they play Australia in next Saturday's quarter-final - do not mix well. England have played two World Cup warm-up matches at the Stade Velodrome and lost both, by a single point in 2003 and by rather more last month.

Before heading south, a trip down the road in Montaparnasse to look into the museum which remembers Jean Moulin, the hero of the French resistance during the Second World War. There is a display this week of the foreigners who contributed to the resistance, featuring some of the last letters written home by captured resistance fighters before they were shot by the Germans. It is hard not to be moved to tears by the simple sentiments of young men and women of such conviction and courage, easy to think that the notion of reading one such letter to France's rugby team before their opening World Cup match with Argentina was ill-advised - sport is not war and France, of course, lost.

Pleasant, though, to take the train to Enghiens les Bains to catch up with Argentina before their decisive clash with Ireland. There is a sense of purpose and unity in their camp though a passing word with Juan-Martin Hernandez, their talented fly half, suggests he is still trying to make his way out of his current contract with Stade Francais so that he can join his national coach, Marcelo Loffreda, at Leicester.