'I'll Be Cheering on Romania - I'm Odd'

Kevin Donnelly, Scotland fan

We've been in Townsville, Brisbane and Sydney and it's been a fantastic time, although more so away from the actual games.

Townsville was like another world. I was in one bar where it turned out the guy I was sitting next to was a white supremacist with a Confederate cap and one of those long, 1890s-style beards. It's also the only bar I've been in where they have a topless raffle for the meat tray.

The funny thing about Townsville was it's one of only two places in Australia that got bombed by the Japanese in the war, but when Japan played at the Dairy Farmers Stadium a lot of the locals were wearing Japanese gear, with those kamikaze bandannas.

It's hard to tell how many Scotland fans have come out for the tournament because so many are here already. But the thing that has amazed me was the number of people who had just come to support Scotland - maybe not particularly rugby fans but just Scotland fans.

Sydney has been a laugh, although I got some quite funny looks walking up Oxford Street [Sydney's gay district] wearing the kilt and the tartan Viking hat.

At the France game there wasn't that much atmosphere because the Scotland fans weren't all in one block. I was sitting next to two French guys dressed as cockerels. They were desperate to get on TV and every time France scored they were standing up with their banner and you'd get a bloody cardboard wing in your face.

Steve Griffiths, IRB refereeing manager

One of the biggest problems with a big international tournament is getting some sort of consistency between all the referees. The stakes are higher with a World Cup so any inconsistency is going to be pounced on.

I've been a referee myself for 28 years so I know how difficult it is to get right. Consistency was certainly regarded as an issue in the past, especially over perceived differences between the northern and southern hemisphere referees.

I think if you look at the statistics you can see there's been much more stability in the way they've interpreted the rulebook. Obviously the rules have to evolve as the game develops but you can improve things if you plan well in advance.

We don't want there to be any surprises. We started the process for this World Cup in 2001 and we're already looking at what needs to be ironed out for 2007. You look at some of the other codes and there are often edicts that go out right before the big tournaments. We tried to avoid that: it just confuses people and makes them doubt the referees.

Lynda Jones, Launceston city council marketing manager

Jim Bacon, the premier of Tasmania, came to up to me at an Australian rules match and said: "We've got a bit of a problem here. We're meant to be hosting a game in the Rugby World Cup and the teams that are going to be playing are Namibia and Romania."

I said, "Whoa, OK." We're a totally non-rugby state - we've never even hosted a professional rugby match before now. Half a bottle of wine later we came up with the idea of doing odds and evens: if your birthdate is an even number you go with Namibia and if it's odd you go with Romania.

We launched the campaign four months ago and there's been five people on the team promoting it since. The premier's wife's birthday is an even and his is an odd, so they made a lot out of it in the media. The local press and radio have really got behind it.

We had to do something. If these two teams came to town and there was no one there to see them and cheer them on we'd just feel like such a loser community. The anecdotal feedback is that the whole thing's so quirky, in a non-rugby state, that there's been a sort of interest all along.

The match is tomorrow and we've sold close to 17,000 tickets and got 3,000 left to go. But Launceston is notorious for walk-ups, people saying "Ah, let's go", so hopefully we'll be full to capacity.

When the poles went up in our ground at York Park we all went: "Gee, how tiny." It looks like just a toy pitch - it's about half the size of an Australian rules pitch. But then you see them play and you realise they'd be dead if they had to run any further.

The best bit is we think this is going to be a really close game, instead of the 100-0 stuff we've been seeing in some of the other matches. I'll be cheering for Romania - I'm odd.

David Bick, Australia team physiotherapist

I don't like to be too busy. If I'm busy it means the players have got lots of problems. There are always ongoing niggles that need to be addressed, but it's after four or five games, at the business end of the tournament, when things can get hairy.

Some of the players don't like seeing us because we're more aggressive than a conventional physio. Our objective is to get them moving, so we're harder on them physically.

David Giffin had a nasty shoulder problem in the opening game and we were there on the pitch a minute after it happened. Because we were playing at home the atmosphere was amazing; there was this sea of gold jerseys behind us. But I wasn't really aware of that stuff; my priority was him and him alone. Certainly I remember the video replay and the crowd gasping as I was looking at him but the only time I really noticed them was when he got applauded by the stands as he was driven off the ground.

I really enjoy what I do but the hard part is being away from my family. My boy just turned three and I missed that.

My wife's Anglo-Indian so she won't exactly be upset if England beat the Wallabies. She's a mad Chelsea fan too. We haven't really approached the subject of which team our boy's going to end up supporting yet.