World Rugby could desperately do with an injection of PR savvy not to mention a certain generosity of spirit.
Take their awards ceremony tonight in Paris when four candidates have been nominated as coach of the year – Ian Foster (New Zealand), Andy Farrell (Ireland), Simon Raiwalui (Fiji) and Jacques Nienaber (South Africa).
All four are clearly outstanding coaches and fully deserving of their nominations, but I would ask this simple question. Could any of them have taken Portugal from Division Two of Rugby Europe and 23rd in the world to a World Cup win over Fiji and a current world ranking of 13th?
They also, and this is a subjective thing, played some of the most pleasing attacking rugby of any side on view at the World Cup
All this with virtually no facilities, little infrastructure, a complete lack of fixtures against T1 teams, a small backup team and just a handful of players remotely talented enough to contest at this level, the majority of them semi-professional. Not only did Patrice Lagisquet establish a distinctive Portugues playing style, he used his extensive contacts in the French game to scour the lower leagues for Portugues heritage players and my God he found a couple of crackers.
The four nominees are terrific rugby men, they might have pulled off the same trick, but I sincerely doubt if any of them would have exceeded Lagisquet's achievements. At the very least he should have been nominated and part of the debate.
On the subject of snubs, I can only assume that the World Rugby panel somehow missed all of Portugal's World Cup games because an even bigger oversight is the omission of their brilliant young flanker Nicolas Martins from the short list breakthrough players of the year.
Martins, playing Pro D2 rugby for Angouleme, was exceptional in all four games and is a strong contender for my team of the tournament.
One way or another it's been a desperate week for the likes of Portugal who World Rugby still consider the underbelly of the world game. The ludicrous nations league will keep all T2 nations “in their place” until 2032 at the earliest and here's a prediction.
Having scandalously allowed the Six Nations and the SANZAR nations to own the World Rugby Nations league, those ten teams, around 2029, will unilaterally vote to not allow any promotion from the second division in 2032, as is the tentative plan. They won't want to give up the revenue flow. That's how rugby rolls. You read it here first.
The self interest of the big boys, perpetuated by the most undemocratic and self-serving voting process in world sport, will always come first in rugby. They run World Rugby and everybody must march to their tune. That is the game's tragedy.
