In a career that spanned over a decade, Mike Tindall earned a place in the historic English team which won the World Cup in 2003.
Twelve years on, Tindall talks to JOE about the growing influence of technology in the sport as well as the impressive performance of Japan against South Africa.
How does a tier one team like South Africa concede 34 points and lose to a tier two team like Japan?
I think South Africa will be hurting from that. You can’t just say that South Africa played poorly. Obviously it wasn’t good enough from South Africa, but you have to give all the credit to Japan with the way they approached the game, the way they took the game to South Africa.
Speaking to Eddie Jones [the Japanese coach], he’d know that Japan have to have at least 60% of the ball if they’re going to have a chance of beating the bigger teams, and they did that. Their ball retention was outstanding, they put pressure constantly on South Africa and deserved the win.
They deserved it just for the decision to go for the scrum and have the confidence and the belief that they could score. South Africa have got to move on now and show a bit of fight.
People are talking a lot about the TMOs at this World Cup. Do you think that it’s getting to the point where we’re valuing getting everything right over the actual enjoyment of the game?
I think the TMOs are getting involved too much. I don’t understand why they couldn’t just review things and go to the ref with a decision. The TMO used to be there to make decisions but now it just looks like he’s there to show footage to the referee for him to make decisions.
You have things like off-the-ball decisions – why can’t he just go back, watch them and decide if they’re penalties? He can interrupt the game if they are or leave them off if they’re nothing relevant.
I think with the try-scoring ones, it’s just the time that they’re taking now – it’s every single camera angle under the sun. The TMO should still be there for tries but if the referees or one of the three match officials miss something and don’t ask the TMO about it, I think the TMO should stay out of the game.
Not sure the TMO is helping footballs chance of embracing video referrals…
— Michael Ridout (@MichaelRidout85) September 19, 2015
Do you feel any different about who will win the World Cup than before the tournament began?
I still think New Zealand will win it. They should be favourites and should be there to win the World Cup. They’ll have been a little disappointed with how they played against Argentina, but that’s full credit to Argentina rather than a bad mark against New Zealand.
Argentina are very difficult to break down. I think it was probably the perfect opening game for New Zealand – they had to graft. Sonny Bill Williams coming on made a big difference in terms of keeping that ball alive game for them. But I still think New Zealand are going to be the team to beat.
Mike Tindall is a rugby brand ambassador for leading online sports betting operator Betway. Betway offer more than 30,000 markets, available live and in-play across a huge range of sports.
