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'Absolutely gutted': England rugby fans react to France game cancellation – video

Cancellation has cost me a weekend in Japan and the World Cup its surprise factor

This article is more than 4 years old
Global tournaments should not be dumping fixtures because of inclement weather – the game and its supporters deserve better

Let’s be kind to Jefferson Poirot and say his comments were lost in translation. But it was the France prop’s quote that his team were in the quarter-finals and that was all he cared about that really made me see red as I stared at the wad of 38,000 yen that was to be my spending money in Japan this weekend.

Could Poirot not have used a little of that famous grey matter and thought of the thousands of French and English supporters who have been pouring into Tokyo and Yokohama in the past couple of days? England v France would have been one of the key matches of the World Cup, whatever Poirot and Eddie Jones’s views on the match. It was not a dead rubber. Far from it.

Yes, England were expected to beat Poirot’s flaky French team but nothing was certain. France may have roused themselves from their torpor, as they often do at World Cups, and beaten England. England may then have gone on to meet Wales in the quarter-finals and avoided the All Blacks in the semis.

Poirot and England’s head coach can afford to be pragmatic about not playing a rugby match and obviously sheltering from Typhoon Hagibis is paramount. But from the perspective of a supporter, which I was to be this weekend, just abandoning games in a global tournament should not really be an option. I was to meet my son, who has been working in Tokyo for the last few days and who saw England beat Argentina last weekend, on a trip we had both been looking forward to for weeks. A wallet full of yen aside, my Air France return flight cost more than £1,000.

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What I and supporters who actually made it to Japan can’t accept is why the England-France game, and the match between Italy and New Zealand, were abandoned without a little bit of thought to rearranging the fixtures. Italy’s game was to have been a swansong for their warrior captain Sergio Parisse. Instead his international career has come to a halt at a mere 142 caps. Could not the organisers have waited and perhaps played these fixtures in somewhere like Osaka, where hurricanes hardly happen, in the words of Henry Higgins. Perhaps they could have been played back-to-back on Monday. Perhaps the organisers could have laid on free transport to those fans still in the country. Or, in my case, I could have at least watched the England game in a Tokyo bar and enjoyed the virtual experience of the World Cup.

Eddie Jones says ‘typhoon gods’ smiling on England after game cancelled – video

The fans I have spoken to are bemused at why organisers who knew that the World Cup was being played in the typhoon season did not make contingency plans for under-threat games. Nobody in Tokyo has been underestimating the threat of Typhoon Hagibis, but blithely calling off games and leaving fans all dressed up with nowhere to go is just unfair. The Rugby World Cup is a global tournament. Would Wimbledon just abandon matches because of the weather?

I remember the 1991 World Cup in England and that was amateurish but in a good way. But this affair has been amateurish, too. Nobody protested about Japan’s opportunity to be the stage for the first Rugby World Cup in Asia and apparently they have been wonderful hosts.

Tokyo is not Doha. The local enthusiasm for the game is palpable, the spark that was Japan’s heart-stopping win over the Springboks in Brighton four years ago igniting the interest, and the Brave Blossoms are actually capable of winning this tournament. But it should never have been staged at this time of year.

Calling off games will forever lead to ifs and buts, whatever the likes of Monsieur Poirot think. Perhaps England would have left out Owen Farrell, a tackle-bag in human form in their last two matches, and Piers Francis would have sprung from the bench to help beat France with a late try. Francis could have secured a place in Jones’s squad that beat the All Blacks. As it is the Northampton player may not get another chance in a World Cup and only be remembered for his citing for that tackle against USA.

It is not only my 38,000 yen that has been devalued. The Rugby World Cup has been devalued too.

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