If only England hadn’t lost to France in this year’s Six Nations. Then this official “game of the team” would have a bit more prestige. Nevertheless, it offers simple pleasures and is non-scary for the non-rugby fan; Rugby Lite now has its representative on the PS2.

Your first impressions will be of a fairly barren menu system. Contrast with the whoosh and brashness of EA’s titles (the only main rivals in the Rugby genre) and it really is quite basic here. The same holds true for the game experience as a whole: where EA Rugby goes all the way out to offer a simulation, World Championship Rugby keeps things trimmed. The risk it runs (and the problem it runs into) is of stripping too much out, and leaving you possibly dissatisfied.

Rugby Union, also known as egg-chasing, requires 15 burly men to run in the direction of another 15 hulks. When they meet they spend a good quantity of time with their hard heads crammed into their team-mates’ shorts. After 70 minutes of running, tackling and possibly bleeding this is not an enticing prospect.

Luckily for us – the weedy, athletically challenged or merely f**htened - there is a PS2 controller between our sofa-supported frames and any hint of a jock-strap. So how close can World Championship Rugby take us to the grunting, the banging, and the heaving that are the mark of the Real Thing?

The answer is: not even close. Let’s see how far it gets, however. There are multiple camera views to choose from, but we found the far sideline angle to be the best at showing the wide spread of players. The rugby ball spends a lot of time being whipped sideways, at right-angles to the direction of attack, so you need to keep a large area of the pitch in view at the same time.

Passing is the key to success, and L1 and R1 are brought to bear to give you the “pass left” and “pass right” options. It would be churlish to point out that these controls are taken wholesale from EA Rugby 2001, as is the jink/sidestep maneuver of tapping both in turn quickly. This is not really a complaint, as the system works well.

Kicking is also easy, with one button for a weighted kick and one for a grubber kick. The latter is one which sends the ball scuttling and wobbling down-field – its unpredictable bounce is why defences hate it. There’s no up-and-under kick as such, but a standard kick can be gauged so that one of your lot can be directed under it. A handy landing mark shows where the ball is expected to touch down.

Once you’ve scored a try your penalty kicker can try and add a few points by kicking at goal unimpeded. Conversions and penalty kicks are easy to gauge, too, and much easier than those in EA rugby. The wind indicator helps, and once you’ve sussed out how the arrow behaves you’ll be very surprised to miss. Too easy? Maybe.

The to and fro of a match is passable, from open play to scrums, rucks and mauls. There are obvious flaws, however. First and most glaring: AI tackling, which is erratic. Somebody flew right past my scrum-half even as he stood lining up a drop-kick. Even when it comes, there's often an unbelievable delay before a tackle. Feel free to take that kick; the opposition will be arriving shortly.

Conversely, trying to tackle while defending can be frustrating. You’ll often find yourself chasing the ball as it gets snap-passed down the line. There’ll be frequent jabbing of the “switch possession” button to try and line up a player. As for your team-mates, tackling an open runner is beyond most of them.

When somebody does get stopped it’s often with a comical “tag, you’re it” halt, which is abrupt and lacking in momentum. The attacker will turn and gather comrades to form a maul, and you must counter.

If, on the other hand, you manage to land a real beaut of a tackle, you may find the ball has left your target’s hands. Never fear, however – the referee will gladly ignore the late tackle, conceding advantage to the attack. This leniency is extended to some shockingly blatant forward passes, which are always illegal.

These apparent forward throws could be a trick of the light, as it were. The ball animation shows a ludicrously fast oblong wobbling through the air. The ball and the receiver seem to snap together in space in order to complete the pass. Although this graphical quirk can account for some of the dodgy passes, there are many which are beyond a doubt.

Then we spotted the “Penalties” toggle in the settings menu. This promises a fairer match, but instead rewards you with an arbitrary handful of off-the-ball tackle decisions. These are committed by your AI team-mates and therefore can’t be avoided. So much for a more realistic experience.

Back to the simple stuff: line-outs. The hooker throws the ball from the side-line, the catcher tries to grab it, and the opposition try to steal it. The England team has had a recent and very public nightmare with their line-outs in real life. Here, on the other hand, it’s a breeze. Pick the number of men in the lineout, pick the jumper, and trap a bouncing indicator to land your throw over the catcher.

You’ll be gifted several line-outs by the frankly insane AI opposition. Basically, if the defending side kicks the ball over the line without it touching the ground, it’s your lineout. When this happens ten yards from the opposition’s try-line, it’s a mighty fine present. The AI will occasionally kick the ball out in this way in order to force the final whistle. This is fine, but for each apparently well-judged kick there'll be half-a-dozen free line-outs coming your way. Hey, it's a balance of sorts.

You’ll need any break you can get against the harder teams. World Championship Rugby reflects, and suffers from, the real-world split between top-class teams and not-a-chance-in-h** teams. Since the game is aimed squarely at England fans, you’ll be strongly encouraged to pick England as your team. It would be folly to take someone like Samoa, say through a World Cup contest.

Beating the All-Stars (a team made up of the cream of the world’s rugby players) is a sub-game that highlights this problem. It entails leading 20 teams against the same group of super-heroes. The difficulty really ramps up after you've used up the Englands, New Zealands and Frances of this world, and it may very well try your patience.

Given the maturity of the PS2 platform, it doesn’t look impressive. The palette is satisfying, mostly, but at times the lighting seems broken. Twickenham under floodlights is a clear example: the turf seems not to receive any light, and the stands are dismally greyed out.

The overall impression we get from World Championship Rugby is one of a basic, though basically playable sports sim. The ‘sim’ in this case stand for simplistic. Despite its workman-like visuals and clumsy AI, it gets the job done. If you don’t expect wonders, you won’t be disappointed.