Knowsley Road, I completely disagree with your assessment.
I bought my copy of World Championship Rugby for Xbox in Sydney today and it is the best Rugby/League video game yet! It completely wipes the floor with Rugby 2004 AND 2001, it improves on the great Jonah Lomu Rugby, and it is definitely better than the Rugby League video game - granted Swordfish have had more experience doing Rugby style games than Sidhe and Sidhe should get better with the next effort.
Graphics are excellent, animation sublime, the sound is good, the game is easy to control, fun and fast. The only drawback are that you cannot offload the ball in the tackle. Robinson is a sublime runner, his style captured accuractely, and Cohen is the fend master.
The passing can go awry in WCR, I've thrown several to the ground. I've only played two matches but I'll report more after playing further.
The reason it only has the correct names of players for England team and for Twickenham stadium is that they could only get the licence for those. You can change the names of the other teams in an editor to whatever you want. The Wallaby scurm half loooks like Gregan, the openside Flanker looks like George Smith, the right winger looks sort of like Wendell Sailor!
The kicking system is light years above NRL - it keeps kicking real time and keeps the game flowing.
Buy it ASAP!