My World Cup runneth over

Today, I am bringing you part two of my souvenir Guide to the World Cup, listing some of the teams that were not mentioned yesterday.

Taiwan: the Taiwan team has no hope of winning and has only entered in order to annoy mainland China. Their manager, the genial Lai Kwo Too, learnt all his rugby at Oxford, where he was studying theology. "To me, rugby is a very gentle, almost oriental game," he says. "We play rugby in Merchant-Ivory style, with little body contact and much nodding and narrowing of the eyes, in the classic gentlemanly English way."

This being so, Taiwan may be in for a bit of a shock.

Ireland: the Irish will need a bit of luck if they are to win many games. Actually, the Irish have always depended on their proverbial luck - "the luck of the Irish", and so on - but this time they are leaving nothing to chance: they have brought the Blarney Stone with them.

"I kid you not," says the Irish folk singer Paddy Drumaine, who is travelling with the squad, or at least in its rough vicinity. "We actually have the real genuine article with us, the Blarney Stone itself. The thing we left behind in Ireland for the tourists to kiss is an authentic, full-size replica. The Blarney Stone will be smuggled on to the pitch in each game and lugged from scrum to scrum as a good luck charm. I kid you not."

What makes Drumaine think it will work?

"Experience. Didn't we go and pray to the Blarney Stonethat Ireland shouldn't win the Eurovision Song Contest again? And didn't some of us put a side bet on Norway winning? Don't knock the Blarney Stone! It actually works! But it's bloody heavy, especially in the second half."

Bosnia-Herzegovina: nobody has dared to approach the Bosnian training camp, which echoes to gunfire day and night. A United Nations fact-finding mission did get within a couple of hundred yards of the camp but was driven back by heavy up-and-unders.

Wales: normally, in the Four Nations contest, Wales's main ambition is to beat England. Every other year a great pilgrimage of rugby supporters sets out from South Wales to journey to Twickenham and hope to see the downfall of the old enemy (in fact, there is a small trickle of Welsh pilgrims to Twickenham even in years when they are playing in Cardiff - old habits die hard). But in the World Cup, when the rugby scene takes on a more global sweep, what is Wales's ambition then?

"To beat England," says the Welsh squad psychiatrist, Barry Evans. "To hammer England. To knock the living daylights out of England. To send England home with their tails between their legs. To start the Welsh rugby renaissance at the expense of England

Yes, yes, we get the point. And failing that?

"Failing that, to see someone else beat England. See someone else hammer England. See someone else knock the living daylights ..."

The Faroe Islands: this Danish ex-colony has landed some surprises in the football world in the past, and there is no reason to write them off as a rugby power, either. Oddly enough, although they are not used to the warm, baked pitches of the South African climate, it is not the terrain which will put them off so much as the light.

"Back home in the Faroes we play most of our rugby in the dark," says the manager, Ole Stift. "The rugby season coincides with the Faroe winter, when there is barely enough daylight to see the posts by, so for us playing in bright sunshine needs acclimatisation. At the moment we are all training in dark glasses, which as you can imagine has its own risks, especially in the scrum. We are also learning to do without the luminous rugby ball and the bright Day-glo shirt numbers we are so used to

The Vatican: no sooner had we got used to the incongruous idea of the Italians playing rugby than we had to take in the idea of the small, independent Vatican state doing likewise. These 15 black-clad, elderly, high-ranking cardinals and legates should, in theory, present no problem against a highly trained young XV, but the Vatican have already notched up some valuable wins on their recent tour of South America. This was because, according to observers, any Catholic opposition tends to crumble against 15 such senior churchmen. As one sports journalist told me, "The idea of head-butting or stamping on a man who has been kissed by the Pope is highly distasteful to the average Catholic forward. If they meet Ireland, it could be interesting."

One advantage enjoyed by the Vatican team is that all on-pitch conversation and instructions are couched in Latin, which few other players understand, or indeed recognise.

More World Cup rugby nations coming soon!