AS BEFITS a game which, legend has it , was invented on the fields of an English public school in 1823, rugby is a game of tradition. And traditions take time to change. It was not until 1995, after years of debate, that rugby became fully professional. A more recent tradition came to an end last weekend, when New Zealand's All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup with a narrow victory over an inspired France. The triumph follows 24 years of failure at the tournament by the world's consistently best team, laying their reputation as “chokers” to rest at last—at least when playing on home soil against the French

As attention turns to the next tournament, in England and Wales in 2015, other, less noble, traditions endure. Despite rugby's recent pretensions to being a “world” game (the first World Cup was only held in 1987), the sport remains a pretty closed shop at the top level. The list of teams that advanced beyond the tournament's pool stages went almost exactly according to script, featuring New Zealand, France, Australia, Wales, England, Ireland and South Africa. The only very mild surprise was Argentina pipping Scotland to get into the quarter-finals. Almost 100 countries—a pretty exotic bunch—make up the full membership of the International Rugby Board (IRB), the oval-ball-code's governing body. But only three teams beyond those nine—Canada, Fiji and Samoa—have ever made it beyond pool play in any of the contests.

That things are tight at the top is not surprising, bearing in mind the resource gap between the top countries, where rugby is a professional game, and the have-nots, where amateurism still rules the day. But despite this, rugby's secondary powers—the “minnows” (as they tediously tend to be described)—hardly lack muscle. Many of their best players are sought out football-style by clubs in the bigger countries. Sometimes they even sign up for rival national teams—witness Manu Tuilagi, a Samoan, turning out for England while his brother played for Samoa, and Toby Faletau, who hails from Tonga but played for Wales in this year's World Cup.

And the pool stage in the recent tournament saw some close-run matches. True, there were some drubbings—witness South Africa's 87-0 smashing of their Namibian neighbours on September 22nd—but the cricket scores of the past (in 2003, Australia thumped Namibia 142-0) have vanished. This time, Scotland was sorely tested by Romania and Georgia before succumbing to Argentina, and Japan gave France a good run. Samoa shook both Wales and South Africa (and beat Australia in the run-up to the tournament). Most dramatic was tiny Tonga's 19-14 defeat of France, the eventual runners-up, on October 1st, in a game in which both sides played like they meant it.

So, plenty of potential, but still no advancement. The smaller powers were not helped by the pool-stage schedule, in which the playing field was hardly level. Sides like Georgia (pictured), Samoa and Tonga found themselves playing both weekend and midweek, while the likes of New Zealand and France luxuriated in week-long breaks to maximise weekend television audiences. Small-country players were not shy about expressing their anger, most dramatically Eliota Fuimaono-Sapolu of Samoa, who went quite feral on Twitter, comparing the quick turnarounds between games to the Holocaust. That may have been just a slight overstatement. But the IRB, to its credit, moved quickly, announcing on October 10th that the 2015 World Cup schedule would include mid-week matches for all sides.

The other obstacles faced by the “minnows” may be harder to remove. Outside of World Cup years, they have been hindered by their lack of opportunities to play against the bigger sides. The clubs, on which players rely for their wages, are reluctant to risk injury to their top men by releasing them for duty. And outside of the normal club rounds players also participate in club and provincial competitions, such as the Heineken Cup in the north and the southern Super XV. Meanwhile, top-level international play has been dominated by the Six Nations northern-hemisphere competition (between England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and Italy), the Tri-Nations southern one (with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa), and the odd tour in between.

This state of affairs led to discontent as far back as 2003. But there are signs that the IRB—which is proud that the Rugby World Cup is, apparently, the world's third-largest sporting event in audience terms—is now getting to grips with the problem. It recently gave long-overdue recognition to Argentina. Although rugby remains amateur there, the country's Pumas finished third in the 2007 World Cup, and gave the All Blacks a testing time in the quarter-final this time around. From 2012 the Tri-Nations will become the Four Nations, with Argentina turning out alongside Australia, South Africa and New Zealand. Thanks to the IRB, northern clubs will release Argentine players for the duration of the competition. The IRB also seems to be getting serious about giving second-tier sides more exposure. Its future plans include a schedule of international rugby tours ahead of the 2019 World Cup in Japan, taking in visits by top-tier counties to the Pacific Islands, North America and Japan in the November and June windows of the year, when other competitions are in hiatus.

The IRB is also making good efforts to close the resource gap, with a strategic-investment programme in second-tier countries. This has funded the development of high-performance training centres in Samoa and Georgia—which named rugby its national sport in 2010 as its team strove to qualify for the World Cup. Those two sides both delivered creditable performances in the tournament.

This is progress, but the 2011 results still point to a long way to go. The effectiveness of the IRB's actions, and the sincerity of the major rugby powers which dominate the game, will be judged by how far top rugby's closed shop is allowed to open—for example, whether Samoa steps up alongside Argentina in 2015 or 2019, or whether Georgia joins the European powers to make the Six Nations the Seven.

The best sides should of course be the ones at the top. But change is vital for the long-term health of the game in the professional age. There has been an awful sameness about the international rugby landscape, which comes down to the same countries playing one another, year in and year out. The only relief tends to come every four years in the shape of the World Cup. If that were to decline into simply an expanded version of the annual northern- and southern-hemisphere competitions, with the odd pool-stage upset, all but the most dedicated fans could end up deserting. If the IRB is serious in its goal to take the game global, it needs to keep leading from the front, and to step up the pace.