Shtove- the part I`m going to disagree with is that France should`ve beaten the Argies. On that particular night, the Argies were always going to win. Even if France kicked all their penalties. Even if Remy Martin didn`t throw that ridiculous pass which lead to the Argie try. And yes, a big part of it was precisely because of the up-and-unders. You see, on the given night, the French were just tactically naive, Heymans at fullback had a shocker, and the Argies simply exploited it mercilessly. The Argies won that particular match because they played on their opponents` weaknesses. They played the smarter rugby, and that`s why they won.
Prestwick- well we`ve also got a similar problem with rugby in SA, believe it or not. Many of the former Model C schools- i.e. State-funded to a point, but with a large proportion of their revenue being made up by school fees, excel at rugby. Basically due to the fact that there are excellent training facilities, good coaches- not ex-army seargents, but former players mostly, and of course, because the rugger buggers get their pick of the nubile girls! It`s even more pronounced in the fully-private schools. In the Eastern Cape where I grew up, for instance, the fully private schools like Grey and Kingswood had fully-imported scrum machines, and former Bok coaches. Seriously. The school I attended, Framesby High, was very much of the model C variety. We had to make our own scrum machine in shop class!
But that said, if you look at the fully government-sponsored schools, which you`ll mostly find in the townships, well the daily struggle there is to just get food on the table. So even here, we are also dealing with similar socio-economic issues which affects all of our sports, not just rugby.
My point being that the only way to overcome these obstacles, is to throw the little bit of money available to your youth development structures first. Encouragingly, it seems like you guys have come to understand this concept over the last 4 years or so. And you`ll soon be reaping the benefits thereof.