RUGBY MATTERS
A weekly look at the game’s other talking points
WHERE to start with that perverse nonsense in Dublin last week where Italy effectively had two players sent off in the 20th minute for a challenge that was at worst a borderline red card?
Invoking an obscure new law that attempts to stop that one-in-ten-thousand occurrence of teams getting away with proven front row chicanery to force uncontested scrums, the Georgian ref insisted he had no option and thus a Six Nations game with 51,000 fans paying well over £8m to attend was at a stroke reduced to a farce.
Some clever clogs at World Rugby came up with this knee-jerk over-reaction because just occasionally another clever clogs has tried to manipulate the system – although those proven occasions are about as frequent as sightings of Halley’s Comet. This wasn’t one of them.
Why on earth would you grotesquely distort and mangle an entire game to cater for that one extremely random possibility of cheating?
It’s red tape gone made. The Rugby Union law book is already approximately 80 pages longer than it should be, a legal document drafted mainly by lawyers and not rugby players.
The commentators didn’t know what was going on, nor did Italy’s statesmanlike skipper Michele Lamaro. And nor did Ireland although they became instant experts once they got the gist of what the ref was saying.
It went against all natural justice. If you really wanted to dig in it’s probably against the Geneva convention or something!
Yet rugby is still happy to allow 19-stone forwards to dive off their feet and cause physical mayhem, Ireland being the world leader of that particular offence. Rerun the Italy game and do your own count.
And rugby, even the touchy feely rugby of 2022 which allegedly is concerned about player welfare, is still happy for 13 men to tackle their brains out for 60 minutes against 15, in fact 12 men for the final ten minutes. What happened to player welfare? It makes no sense but rugby has lost the ability to think clearly and see the bigger picture.
Then there is rugby’s decades-old propensity to use Italy as the whipping boys. I have reported on them for well over 30 years and nothing ever changes. I used to think it was a subconscious thing by officialdom, but I am afraid I’m not sure any more. It’s endemic.
What happens is that every ref is hyper vigilant on Italy, looking for penalties at every possible opportunity and, because rugby is so hideously complicated, they can ping Italy almost at will. And at this juncture I will concede that Italy are not the most disciplined side on the planet and they are guilty, to an extent, of aiding and abetting this process. But what then happens is that these refs are so busy pinging David that they completely forget to referee Goliath who get away with bloody murder, especially on the really big calls.
Refs might throw Italy the occasional irrelevant bone, a few penalties deep in their own half or when the contest is over but, when it comes to crucial decisions, they have never been allowed the same leeway and benefit of the doubt others automatically enjoy.
If that had been an Irishman making that challenge in the 20th minute, my life savings says it would have been waived through, indeed a much more culpable, aggressive and obvious red card challenge by Ryan Baird was permitted late in the second half and was completely ignored by the ref and more importantly the TMO.
Just not looking for it, the narrative is to ref Italy first and foremost. That’s why they missed those off-the-feet clear-outs at rucks while at least two Ireland tries contained forward passes. Not absolute howlers but I guarantee you had they been Italy tries, the TMO and ref would have had a look at the replay.
In a contentious week you can also link this to Premiership Rugby’s utterly predictable decision to find reason for not allowing either Doncaster or Ealing – should one of them win the Championship – promotion. Having ruthlessly used Covid as an excuse to bar relegation they were never going to allow anybody up and the spurious nonsesne of stadia capacity is a red herring.
What would Bath’s capacity be without their temporary stands? What was their capacity with the old, leaser, temporary stand. Why have five Prem clubs yet to achieve a gate above 10,001 this season and that is even accepting the gate figures given out which are often at odds with what you actually see and possibly includes non-attending season ticket holders.
Where would the season average figure at some clubs be without their regular guest appearances at football grounds? And surely it’s better anyway to have an atmospheric crammed smaller stadium than an echoing half-empty concrete bowl.
But the main depressing point is that yet again rugby is doing a breathtakingly good impression of the playground bully.
Italy don’t really matter, they are here on sufferance anyway so they need to know their place.
As for the the Championship clubs, they can bog off. We don’t want them and we are closing in on our dream scenarios of no promotion and relegation – despite the fact that many of us rose from the Championship and that the duplicitous RFU allegedly caters for the entire game, from the top of the pyramid to the base.
Georgia, Spain, Portugal – they can all sod off as well. It’s our ball, our game, our sport. We don’t give a monkey that they can be relegated from REC1 if they have a bad season but are barred from the Six Nations. It’s all about us, we are the only ones that matter.
World Rugby? The big boys get three votes each, everybody else one. North Korea is a model of democracy in comparison. Crush the little people until they know their place!
What a bullying, unfair, and disreputable sport rugby can be when it bares its ugly face.
“Nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character give him power,” warned Abraham Lincoln many moons ago. ‘Rugby man’ alas demonstrates the most unpleasant side of his character in his use and abuse of power and it continues to hold a great sport back.
