The 2015 Rugby Union World Cup.

With several thousand signatures on the petition I'm sure there's a Paloma Faith/"I Vow to Thee my Country" pun in here someone. Unfortunately at this point on a Sunday evening I'm not prepared to go looking for it; http://www.nme.com/news/paloma-faith/88573

Anyway. As previously mentioned until the end of October the 2015 Rugby Union World Cup is being hosted in England, with a small nod to Cardiff's Millennium stadium. I am not adverse to a bit of rugby. However I don't really have the understanding of nor passion for the game to provide the same level of coverage of last years football world cup AKA; "The World Cup."

For example as we're currently in the group stages most of things I've written since last Friday (18/9/15) have probably clashed with at least one rugby match. However because they weren't being played at a time when I happened to be drunk on the sofa anyway I didn't really bother with them.

That said Saturday (26/9/15) night's Group A tie between England and Wales suddenly got very personal for me for reasons that have already been covered. Therefore I thought it would be better all around if I actually watched the game rather then talking over it.

To my mind the critical moment of the match occurred in the 22nd minute with score tied a 6-6. Wales' Lydiate tackles England's Wood sending him flying.

Although it might be hard for an outsider to notice in rugby when you tackle you are supposed to at least make an attempt to grab your opponent rather then simply smash into them. Also you are not supposed to tip your opponent over the horizontal line. This is to prevent what are known as "Spear Tackles" that snap necks and sometimes literally kill opponents.

As Lydiate tackled Wood sort of dived out of the way giving the impression that Lydiate had made no attempt to grab him and tipped him over the horizontal. Therefore the referee blew his whistle suspecting a dangerous tackle and referred the incident to the "Television Match Official (TMO)" who reviewed the video playback.

When one player is accused of intentionally trying to seriously injure or kill another player obviously tensions rise and there's a lot of pushing and shoving. Generally in rugby unless you're blatantly and repeatedly punching an opponent in the face directly in front of the referee this is an accepted part of the game provided you have your blow up and then walk away.

However in this incident there was England's wing-back Mike Brown. At a mere 6ft (1.8m) and 168lbs (89kg) Brown is considered - in rugby terms - a midget. However this didn't stop him running more or less half the length of the pitch to grab hold of several, much larger, Welsh players in an effort to start a fight. None of the Welsh players rose to the provocation and I believe that at one point one of the England forwards actually picked Brown up, put him in his pocket and carried him away.

Individually none of Brown's altercations warranted action by the referee but collectively I think they should have seen him shown a yellow card and sent to the sin bin for 10 minutes to calm down. However the referee did not even speak to Brown and curiously re-started the game by awarding England a scrum despite Lydiate having done nothing wrong and the stop in play being entirely the referee's fault.

On 27 minutes Brown passes to May giving England their only try of the evening and putting England 16-6 in the lead. Towards the end of the first half Brown knocks-on the ball close to the England endzone which should have given Wales the chance to scrum and then score a try bringing the gap down to 16-13. However the referee ignores it.

In the second half - amid a lot of injuries - Wales narrowed the score with a series of penalties. In the 71st minute Wales scored their only try levelling the score at 25-25. On 75 minutes Biggar scores a penalty kick from inside his own half to give Wales a 25-28 lead. The next five minutes of the game were all about whether Wales could absorb England's attacks to maintain their lead.

They did and it was amazing.

Wales are now second in Group A behind Australia while England are third meaning they're likely going home early from their own world cup. Mind you Wales are picking up that many injuries I'm a bit worried I might be starting against Fiji.

Obviously Mike Brown the English rugby player shares his name with Mike Brown the American petty thug whose attempts to rob a convinence store and then attack a police officer sparked the Ferguson, Missouri riots and, now more then a year, of this "Hands Up, Don't Shoot!" nonsense. As one Twitter user put it yesterday; "The Mike Brown hashtag is full of angry Welsh and angry Americans. But for very different reasons."

However if you were trying to start a race war last night's the rugby world cup would certainly provide you with lots of ammunition.

For example the sport was invented on the playing fields of England's "Rugby" private school. As a result England rugby fans are the type of extremely white, extremely rich and extremely entitled individuals that only Britain's famous class system can really produce. However they have chosen as their anthem "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" which was written by black Americans who were fleeing slavery as part of the underground railroad in the late 19th century.

America's national sport is of course American Football whose blue ribbon tournament "The Super Bowl" dealt heavily with the issue of race this year.

Although it might cause offence to say so American Football is a much slower, dumbed down and less violent version of Rugby Union. For example if I told American Football fans that Dan Cole is England's tight head most of them would know exactly what I mean.

However there are differences between the sports. For example American Football allows forward passing whereas in Rugby Union if you want to move forward to score you have to physically break through or go around the opposition defensive line.

In American Football if a player is hit then despite all the padding play will stop. The team taking the hit will remove all their offensive players and replace them with defensive specialists. The team making the hit will also make a line change to replace their defensive specialist with offensive specialists.

In Rugby Union if a player is hit he will continue getting hit until the ball is freed from the maul and knocked into touch. In Rugby Union it is expected that the 15 players who start the game will play throughout the 80 minute game.

I think the main difference though is that while American Football is a big money game up until the late 1990's Rugby Union was - by law - an amateur sport. So while American Footballers - who tend to be black - spend their time off the field fighting dogs, beating children and raping strippers Rugby Union players - who tend to be white - have to hold down jobs. In the past the England team has included doctors, trial lawyers (Barristers) and not one but two fighter pilots.

This race issue is particularly important to the South African national team - the Springboks. Along with cricket Rugby Union is very much the sport of South Africa's white minority. In fact during the apartheid years South Africa were banned from all international sport. Nelson Mandela's handing the world cup trophy to South Africa's first racially integrated team in 1995 was supposed to be such a symbol of the new, Rainbow Nation South Africa that Hollywood made a film about it called "Invictus."

However despite the end of apartheid the South African rugby team is still short on black players. You could argue that this is a symptom of how despite the end of apartheid black South Africans lack the economic opportunity to participate. However you could also argue that blacks are genetically incapable of the self-discipline needed to become a successful rugby player.

Alternatively we could talk about Simon Zebo's downright saucy pass that set up Ireland's first try in their 44-10 defeat of Romania.

19:00 on 27/9/15 (UK date).