By Gavin Mortimer
As punishments go, it was mild, more a spanking than an out-and-out thrashing. New Zealand's 58-14 victory over Namibia at the Olympic Stadium on Thursday night was as unexpected as a downpour in Dunedin, but it was far from a humiliation for the lowest-ranked team in the World Cup, whose side contains engineers, diamond traders, farmers and construction workers.
Namibia, who have 1,080 registered players compared to England's 167,000, have yet to win a World Cup match in 16 attempts but the small south west African country can be quietly proud of itself for restricting the world champions to nine tries, and even scoring one of their own - a fine second-half effort from Johan Deysel.
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The try got the biggest cheer of the night as the crowd cheered on the underdog, relieved no doubt that they had witnessed a proper sporting contest as opposed to a one-sided rout.
Namibia's sterling display against New Zealand (who have lost only six times in 39 World Cup matches) emphasises the narrowing gap in international rugby, a gap that as we saw on Saturday when Japan stunned South Africa is making the eighth World Cup the best yet.
New Zealand are the third side to pass the 50-point mark this tournament, joining Wales and Ireland who ran up a half century of points in defeating Uruguay (54-9) and Canada (50-7) at the weekend.
But those scores are modest compared to some of the annihilations of previous tournaments, several of which have been inflicted by the All Blacks. In the 1995 World Cup New Zealand demolished Japan 145-17 (including 21 tries), while they also hit one hundred against Portugal in 2007 and Italy in 1999.
England's biggest World Cup wins are against Uruguay (111-13 in 2003) and Tonga (101-10 in 1999), with Australia the other nation to have racked up three figures in crushing Namibia 142-0 in 2003.
What's interesting about those scorelines is that with the exception of Portugal - the 2007 World Cup their one and only appearance - all the matches were in the 1995, 1999 and 2003 tournaments.
This was the era when rugby was transforming from an amateur sport into a professional one, and for the smaller nations the transition took considerably longer. Already hindered by a smaller player pool, the likes of Japan, Italy and Tonga hadn't the same access to fitness, technology and training advances as the leading nations. The result was horribly one-sided encounters that did little for the sport's global image.
But in the last decade the smaller nations have caught up. Tonga, who were also thrashed 91-7 by New Zealand in the 1991 World Cup, beat France in the 2011 World Cup, and what with Japan's win over the Springboks, and Fiji's effort against England last week, the days of sides running up cricket scores are largely a thing of the past.
The part-timers of Uruguay could yet be on the wrong end of a hammering in this tournament, the South Americans having the misfortune to be in a group that contains Wales, Fiji, England and Australia, but elsewhere the 2015 World Cup is witnessing the most competitive ever group stage.
Professionalism is responsible, not just because the smaller nations now have the time, money and resources to work on their fitness and game plan, but because their top players are playing in the world's best leagues. The Namibian side was captained by Jacques Burger, the superb Saracens flanker, and it also contained several players with experience of France's Top 14 and the southern hemisphere's Super Rugby. The same goes for Tonga, Fiji and Samoa, while Japan's club scene is thriving, attracting some of the leading players from the southern hemisphere, including All Blacks' Sonny Bill Williams and Jerome Kaino.
As the Daily Telegraph commented this has led to "a World Cup where the underdogs have been attacking anything that moves like a pack of rapid hyenas". Namibia snapped at the heels of the All Blacks and while they didn't cause any damage they ensured that they themselves weren't savaged.
