PARIS - While the supporting cast enlivened the World Cup with a series of hard-fought midweek encounters, the tournament contenders were counting their wounded and missing as they prepared to return to action.
Indeed, in the two heavyweight clashes of the weekend, winning might not be as important as avoiding further casualties.
South Africa and England, which will meet Friday in Saint-Denis, both started the tournament with injury problems. After one match, both have lost one player to injury and another to suspension.
Australia, which faces Wales in Cardiff on Saturday, has lost one back, Mark Gerrard, who ruptured a knee ligament in the opening game. Even one such injury per match represents a rate of attrition that would cripple any team over the length of the World Cup. But Australia may also be without Adam Ashley-Cooper on Saturday after the winger damaged a toe against Japan.
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All four will make the last eight if they beat the less established but potentially dangerous teams in their groups. That is why they need to avoid too many more injuries. For Wales ... and Australia that means Fiji. For England ... it is the two other Polynesian teams, Tonga and, particularly, Samoa. For the Springboks ... that is only Tonga.
If they all advance, this quartet of seeds will face each other in the last eight, so all they are doing this weekend is sorting out who plays whom.
The Welsh would probably prefer to win the group and play their quarterfinal in Cardiff. The Wallabies would doubtless like to avoid the Springboks while the English would probably prefer to avoid the Australians. The Springboks are probably indifferent. What makes the equation more complicated for Australia is that if it wins the group it would be seeded to meet New Zealand in the semifinals.
These are ancient adversaries ...
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England's injuries, meanwhile, seem only to highlight its lack of depth at key positions. Both its specialist flyhalves, Jonny Wilkinson and now Olly Barkley, one of the few successes in the opening game, have suffered training injuries.
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The weekend schedule does allow other contenders to rest players.
New Zealand, the great black whale, has changed almost its whole team for its encounter with the World Cup plankton, Portugal. France has opted to do the same, even though, after its opening defeat, it desperately needs an emphatic victory over Namibia on Sunday night.
The robust Namibians gave Ireland a torrid time in the opening game. That game was followed by the now traditional stories that Brian O'Driscoll ... had suffered yet another injury. This has been going on so long that there are those who believe that O'Driscoll's first injury came when he pulled a muscle rowing St. Patrick's coracle over from Wales.
The Irish can expect another tough test against the Georgians, whom Marcelo Loffreda, the Argentine coach, repeatedly praised for their hardness after the Pumas beat them on Tuesday.
Georgia and Namibia are both hulking teams and both exploit that fact. They play with the ostentatious disregard for their own well-being that is one of the minnow's few weapons against far better teams. For the leading nations, the collective desire to win can be clouded by individual fears of missing the later rounds injured.
Yet the smaller teams also have an eye on strategic objectives of their own. The Georgians have made it plain that their chief objective this time is to finally win a World Cup game. They are quite open about which one it is: the meeting with Namibia on Sept. 26. That rather begs the question of whether it is wise for Namibians and Georgians to be prepared to leave their limbs strewn all over the field as they lose to France and Ireland.
For all the teams in action this weekend, the injury tally could be as significant as the score.
