On Rugby: So the World Cup is a foregone conclusion? Save for introducing a handicap system - them playing with 13 players - there's no point in the rest turning up. The All Blacks are just too damned good. They're killing the game. This is all bad for rugby.

Nonsense, of course; utter nonsense. Such laments are more likely to be heard from within France, the bedraggled hosts, now in a state of collective shock after New Zealand's 47-3 thrashing in Lyon on Saturday night, or poor England, the reigning World champions now in the throes of seven successive defeats.

Eye-catching though Saturday's results were, they were not especially shocking. Approaching kick-off at Twickenham on Saturday, with Andy Robinson's new boss Rob Andrew stationed two rows behind him, his team recovering from a post-All Blacks' buffeting, a 2.0 pm kick-off with many of the hamper set still to take their seats before the "expected" home win, you felt more than a degree of sympathy for Andy Robinson.

Who, in those circumstances, are the last team on the planet earth you'd want to face? Those dastardly Pumas. No one ever looks good against those nuggety arch-spoilers. Not even the All Blacks looked good against them in Buenos Aires in June. It's hard to know which was the better bet on Saturday, Argentina as 12-point underdogs, or the All Blacks at merely six points favourites.

England and France each got what they deserved on Saturday, and each are reaping what they have sewn for years with non-centrally contracted players and bloated domestic scheduling. The net result was both Bernard Laporte and Robinson were missing a host of frontline players through injury while those that were there, particularly the French, looked weary.

Dick Best recently revealed that of the 400 professional players in the English Premiership only 157 are English qualified. Some of those not currently hors de combat are eulogised yet, in truth, would struggle to make some Irish provincial or Welsh regional sides.

Despite occasional infusions of younger talent, Laporte and co keep going back to the older guard, and sadly on Saturday some of them were made to look older than ever, notably Pieter de Villiers, Sylvain Marconnet, Raphael Ibanez and Fabien Pelous.

Meantime, the All Blacks are rewriting the game. In a reworking of the old football adage, they demonstrate that defence can be the best form of attack. In one spell with the ball, France went back repeatedly through four phases with the ball before Damien Traille, as was his wont, hoofed it aimlessly downfield from a point 30 metres back from where they started.

The safest place to put the ball is off the pitch, but while counter-attacks were the platform for much of their attacking territory, they also constructed tries off their own set-pieces or through a phase or two, obliterating the French scrum to boot.

Combine this with football skills from one to XV, witness Ali Williams' gather of Dmimitri Szarzewski's knock-on inside his own 22 and visionary one-handed underarm offload in the tackle for Conrad Smith to gallop 80 metres downfield for their fourth of seven tries. "Quelle dextérité!" the French commentators on TV5 were moved to remark, not for the first time.

Like no team in the history of the game, they regard any position on the pitch as a possibility for scoring a try, and everyone in the team seems attuned to what's on.

How can this be bad for the game, or any sport? No less than Roger Federer in tennis, Tiger Woods in golf, Michael Schumacher in Formula 1 (watch how he will be missed), Brazil in 1970 etc, greatness in sport raises standards and the stakes - not least for their competitors. Booed onto the pitch in Lyon on Saturday, the All Blacks were applauded off. It's worth noting too, that 170,000 tickets for the World Cup were sold in eight hours last week.

At least the All Blacks have again given everyone plenty of advance notice.

In 1999, they beat France 54-7 in Wellington in June, but lost the World Cup semi-final to France in Twickenham later that year by 43-31. In 2003 they put 50 on Australia in Sydney but lost to the Wallabies there later in the year in the semi-finals.

Nor might such pessimism about the impending World Cup be so pronounced elsewhere, and certainly not in Argentina. Ireland and Wales are also entitled to see windows of opportunity in the next year, especially in the Six Nations, and even go to the World Cup as contenders. The ever-thinking, ever-scheming Australians came within a whisker of a third World Cup last time around, and as their pedigree shows, are always entitled to approach a World Cup with optimism.

And no one knows better that these Almighty Blacks are beatable than the Springboks, who are the only team to beat them in the last two years _ and have done it twice. In experimental mode on this tour, at full-strength in the World Cup they would be unrecognisable from the team at Lansdowne Road.

Yes the All Blacks will be the hottest favourites a World Cup has ever known, intensifying the foot race to first place in Pool D between France, Ireland and Argentina so as to avoid Graham Henry's men in the last eight.

And yes they might well run away with the William Webb Ellis Trophy (to host it four years later!). But if they do, playing the brand of rugby they're playing, good luck to them. Were it a league, there would only be one winner. Nevertheless, it will be a World Cup, decided in the knock-out stages. Which is why the best sides don't always win World Cups; the All Blacks being the prime case in point.