France are hosts with most, rugby needs them to succeed
As it stands, prior to this year’s tournament, there’s a 33.33 per cent recurring chance of lifting the World Cup as competition hosts.
New Zealand did it at Eden Park in 1987 as co-hosts, South Africa achieved the feat at Ellis Park in 1995 and the All Blacks ensured they’d never lost a home final when they won their second in 2011.
So this year, as the rugby hotbed of France play entertainers across the Channel, it would be quite the feat to upset the odds and finish the tournament this month neck deep in glory.
Host pressure can sometimes be too much, England proved that with their pool exit in 2015.
It can be overwhelming, all-consuming, suffocating. But in equal measure it can be a liberating ecstasy trip of losing yourself in the delusion of it all.
Parisian street talk
If you talk a stroll down the Rue de Rivoli or Champs-Élysées, or other Parisian boulevards, you’ll find billboards and artworks depicting Le Petit General Antoine Dupont and fellow players Gregory Alldritt, Damian Penaud and Romain Ntamack – despite the latter’s absence from this tournament.
These, much like the athletes plastered across London’s Olympic Village in 2012, are competition celebrities – the faces behind the home bid to win and win big.
There always seems to be a sense of pressure on hosts, but if that is the case Les Bleus have refrained from showing it.
A brilliant win against the All Blacks was followed up by comfortable victories against Namibia, Uruguay and Italy.
And despite being without Ntamack for the tournament and Dupont of late due to a fractured cheekbone, France have been firing on all cylinders.
World Cup fever
But in Sunday’s opponents South Africa, France could leave the latter stages of this tournament without the love and emotion it has felt thus far.
Global sporting events such as these often hang on host success in some form or another, it’s selfish but home supporters want something to shout about.
So maybe it is unfair that the top four sides left in this tournament are in the same half of the draw, meaning two of France, Ireland, South Africa and New Zealand will not reach the final four.
But in reality you’re going to have to beat the best to be the best and that started on the opening evening of this tournament for France.
They’re playing as well as they ever have and they’re not able to select their strongest 23, they’re remaining true to their joue joue rugby which made them so famous in the back end of last century, and they’re capturing the hearts of neutrals.
If there’s any time for a northern hemisphere side to join England as World Cup victors then it is now; Ireland and France lead the way but England and Wales are in the mix too.
But it would be romantic for France to join the winning roster in front of 80,000 adoring fans at the Stade de France.
Host wins are rare and beautiful – just look at the meaning and drive behind the 1995 Springbok triumph – and it’s now on France to take that mantle and create their own glorious story.