Let the games begin as perhaps one of the most eagerly anticipated World Cups in the tournament’s history gets underway this weekend!

If like us you love your Test Rugby, then you’ve already negotiated with the family that for all intents and purposes this weekend, you will be around but in body only. Your mind, spirit and attention however will be firmly focused on a TV, computer or tablet screen be it in your house, your mates’ houses or at a bar. If you’re one of the lucky ones who took out a second mortgage to spend some time with your heroes live in Japan over the next seven weeks, then we salute you and wish we could join you.

Yes it’s a rugby lover’s Christmas present that sadly only comes around once every four years. Seven glorious weeks of Test Rugby with the stakes getting higher and higher each weekend. This opening weekend however sees a raft of key matches that will very much determine the likely pecking order of the finalists as they enter the knockout stages in four weeks time.

It’s shaping up to be one of the most open World Cups in as long as we can remember, and we really hope it lives up to its promise. The last World Cup was very much the South vs the Rest of the World, but this year’s edition is very much a case of North vs South and may the best team win.

As much as we’d like to, we can’t possibly cover all 48 matches. Instead we’ll focus on what we consider to be the critical Pool games in terms of potential progression to the knockout stages. Naturally once the tournament does get to the knockouts then we’re into every match lock, stock and barrel.

For this weekend we’ve picked out four matches that are likely to have an enormous bearing on what the quarter finals should look like. First up we have a look at Australia vs Fiji. Fiji could well be the banana skin that Pool D’s two heavyweights, Australia and Wales slip up on. Next up it’s a key Pool C fixture between Argentina and France. Both teams have caused no end of grief for the established favorites in tournaments gone by, and Pool C is the tournament’s only real Pool of Death as three teams, England, Argentina and France have the chance to go through. England look well placed to top the table, but France and Argentina excel at raining on other people’s parades and the Men in White will be keenly aware of this fact.

Also on Saturday is the tournament’s clash of titans, as New Zealand and South Africa do battle with each other in Pool B, in arguably the most anticipated match of the Pool stages. Both of these teams are strong favorites to lift the trophy and a terrifying prospect for Ireland, Scotland and Japan in Pool A as whoever emerges from the Pool stages will have to brace for a nightmare quarter final with either of these two Southern Hemisphere giants.

Lastly on Sunday, we’ll be taking a look at Pool A’s first but probably deciding game, between Ireland and Scotland. Japan could well pull off a miracle and emerge as the second team to go on to the quarters from Pool A, but most people’s money, ours included and with no disrespect to Japan, is on Ireland and Scotland to get to the knockout stages. Consequently Sunday’s match will most likely decide who tops the Pool and thus what kind of quarter final opponent they will have to look forward to in either South Africa or New Zealand.

A thrilling weekend in prospect and one that will definitely get the tournament off to an explosive start. Starting tomorrow, rather than our usual five pointer previews we’ll be distilling our thoughts down to three key questions per match. We’ll get back to our regular format come the quarters, but for now with everything we have to look at between now and October 19th, we’ll need to keep it simple. We’ll be pushing them out starting tomorrow, so stay tuned and here’s to a great tournament in the making!