“It was a pass.”
Tries are great, obviously. They’re the aim of the game and the moments that really get everyone off their seat. But sometime you just have to pay proper homage to the creative types that delivered the score.
Here, in no particular order, are our seven favourite passes (including offloads) from the Rugby World Cup.
Bryan Habana to Willie le Roux
South Africa’s run to the semi-final (to within a score of the champions) was based on the rock solid principle of using quick hands as the main tool behind the powerful pack.
Habana’s overhead loop while under pressure from two Samoans was arguably the quickest of all.
Matt Giteau to Adam Ashley Cooper
Second five-eighths aren’t for everyone, but when you have a playmaker as good as Matt Giteau demanding to pull strings, it’s incredibly effective.
Duane Vermeulen to Fourie du Preez
Any other year, we’d probably call this the best offload of the World Cup. With the ‘Boks trailing to Wales in the quarter-final it took serious balls to attempt a behind the back pass to a moving target, but Vermeulen and his scrum-half executed the move perfectly.
Sonny Bill Williams to Malakai Fekitoa
Is this the future for the All Black midfield? Beauden Barrett, to SBW. A run-of-the-mill sensational offload while drawing in two mean tacklers and Fekitoa pounces.
With Jacques Burger crashing in, most of us would be inclined to tuck in to the fetal position, Sonny Bill opens up.
Quade Cooper to Kurtley Beale
It says it all about Australia’s wealth of resources to grease their attacking breakdown that Michael Cheika felt able to leave one of the game’s most outrageously talented 10s out of his first choice 23.
This is an example of Cooper at his best, stepping through would-be tacklers and flinging a long flat laser-guided pass while at almost full tilt.
Beale took the pass on the run and fed Matt Toomua, the man who kept Cooper off the Wallaby bench, to finish the score.
Simon Zebo to Keith Earls
Before everything began to go pear-shaped, these two Munster wings were making Ireland look like a thrilling attacking team.
Against Romania, Zebo took on playmaking responsibilities from fullback and the result was emphatically brilliant.
Earls had the acceleration to finish the chance once the ball nestled in his bread basket.
Dan Carter to Julian Savea
The king stay the king.
