The third act of the 2023 Rugby World Cup finals will be introduced with the match between Italy and Uruguay. Although no one can say about these teams that they are real contenders for the title, and even entering the playoffs would be a great success for both teams (not even taking into account the opponents of this year’s group tournament), but you can’t call this battle uninteresting.
Nice “Allianz Rivera” will have two national teams that have something to prove and show to themselves, their fans and opponents.
The start of the Italian national team, the first game, was predictably easy, because the opponents were not the strongest team – Namibia. Although this team has quite a high-profile title as they are the African champions, they have not managed to win any of the matches in the context of the PK. It also failed against Italy. 52:8 Italy was the result on the scoreboard at the end of the match.
Can we draw any conclusions about Italy’s strength from this game? A little bit. The team played an even and solid game, which is not the most characteristic feature of Italian rugby. The rest of? It is difficult to assess the real capabilities of both teams when two teams of such different classes are playing.
Uruguay will certainly be a much more serious opponent. They had to experience a loss in the first match, because the opponents were much more powerful – the organizers of the tournament and one of the main contenders for the title, France.
Despite this, the Uruguayans not only fought hard, but also scored the first touchdown and until the last five minutes of the game, the French could not be completely sure of their victory. Uruguay tripped their opponents (didn’t allow them to score a bonus point), but didn’t completely knock them down.
What to expect from Wednesday night’s game? Interesting and very competitive rugby. There will probably be more mistakes in this fight than you would like, but it is both a present moment and a good indicator of class.
It is also not that the national teams will play a match of no interest to anyone – most likely, this will be a fight for the third place in the group, which, although it does not give the opportunity to continue the tournament in the elimination matches, but it allows you to spend the next four years with a calm heart, because the three strongest teams of each subgroup receive an invitation to the next World Cup final tournament and that, I must say, is a pretty good motivator.
2023 Rugby World Cup
A group
#TeamSUNZP1.France220083.New Zealand210152.Italy110054.Uruguay101005.Namibia20020
B group
#TeamSUNZP1.Ireland2200102.GARD220093.Scotland100104.Tonga100105.Romania20020
C group
#TeamSUNZP1.Wales2200102.Fiji210143.Australia210154.Georgia100105.Portugal10010
D group
#TeamSUNZP1.England220092.Samoa110053.Japan210154.Argentina100105.Chile10010
2023-09-19 21:13:00
#Uruguay #Italy #fight #qualify #World #Cup
