match fixing at the rugby world cup

I cannot believe that the Japanese rugby team defeated the South Africans.
I mean, I don't believe it.
It didn't happen.
I am suggesting the match was fixed.
No disrespect to the Japanese ability to defy the odds.
They are an epically valorous nation.
But the match was fixed.
The winners need never have known how or why.
My analysis is that we are dealing with one of two possible methods of  match fixing in the Japanese South African game.
The first is the most offensive to my refined preraphaelite sensibilities.
A group of South African players would have been bribed and a group of match officials would have been bribed by mobsters seeking to land a gambling coup.
Not all the players or officials.
Just a select group.
There need have been no involvement whatsoever from the Japanese team.
The winner doesn't have to be in on the con as my source in the gambling world told me after the Cricket World Cup some years ago when Ireland "beat" Pakistan and when I was doubting that the Irish team could have been corrupted to fix a game.
My source insisted that the Irish could be corrupted but as it happens he believed they hadn't been.
In a fixed match, the winners can be playing their hearts out honestly, he explained.
The winners need never know that a cadre among the opposition has been bought.
The winners think they're scoring through sheer skill and no one need ever tell them it ain't necessarily so.
So to this year's rugby.
The first and most opprobrious match fixing scenario is that gangsters bribed some South Africans and some match officials to favour a Japanese win.
There would have been significant sums of money handed over.
And there would have been a clear understanding from those involved that talking about it, or messing up the fix some other way, could get them killed.
"The fat man will be mad as a snake," as Bruce Grobelaar the famous match fixing goalie once said after failing to ensure the right result in a fixed soccer match having epically tried to let in three goals but still  having failed to inflict a defeat. on his own team who kept scoring at the other end.
The best bit was when Grobelaar tried to let in a fourth goal agaiinst his own team but saved it by mistake.
Hilarious no.
Ah say it ain't so Grob, say it ain't so.
But I digress.
Presumably the same principle of fear applies for hundred million dollar match fixing screw ups in rugby games.
There is intimidation as well as cash blandishments.
When things go wrong, the fat men gang bangers get mad.
Those in on the deal know what that means.
It means death.
I remember twenty years ago a Colombian player called Escobar returning to South America after a poor Soccer World Cup performance including a rather paradoxically magnificent goal against his own team.
The gangsters shot him at the airport.
I've no idea whether he let them down or whether he was involved with them directly at all.
But they were there to meet him at the airport.
And they registered their interest in modern sporting events by murdering a human being.
By the way, I remember his name because Aunty Mary, ever the sentimentalist, named one of her cats after him.
Okay.
Back to the present Rugby World Cup.
There is a second scenario for the Japanese South Africa match having been fixed.
It is a good deal less opprobrious than what I've outlined above.
And almost entirely devoid of evil.
The second scenario is actually the one my instincts tell me might have happened.
In this scenario, South Africa decided to lose deliberately, not to land a gambling coup, not to short change their fans, not to inspire the Japanese with delusions of grandeur, but solely in order to confuse their likely opponents later in the competition.
The real targets of the ruse would be New Zealand and Australia who seeing the Japanese in excelsis, would come to the fatally wrong conclusion that this is not a good South African team.
High stakes poker.
South Africa still have to win their next two games to qualify.
Which scenario do you believe?
I'm telling you it was either this or the fat man.
The Japanese did not win that game.
Here is the news.
If I had cash on me at the moment or a farm, and if I had not renounced gambling forever, I'd be betting the farm and my cash on South Africa to win the Rugby World Cup.
And whatever was left would go on Trump to win the American presidency.