KEY POINTS:
When global rugby chief Syd Millar was in Auckland recently, he joked that most people thought the IRB needed a seance to get in touch with the living.
It was a good line at a breakfast briefing but banter which looks increasingly grim as the rugby world surveys a tatty landscape with little direction from the sport's administrators. Major nations are in unison about the chaotic global fixture list but nothing changes.
Ask men like David Moffett, who has been on the IRB, or Andy Haden, who was connected through his business interests, and they maintain the solution to the calendar woes is to dismantle the IRB.
"We need to have people at the IRB who are prepared to make hard decisions," former New Zealand and Wales chief executive Moffett said.
Haden said: "I want to see an International Rugby Board that provides leadership or is abandoned and the direction of the game taken over by those who have more relevance to it now - they either play, run unions or teams.
"The only thing the IRB has created, without dispute, is rugby league, otherwise they have taken over events like the World Cup or sevens that were working well."
Four years ago at the last World Cup, Millar pinpointed the blighting effects of the club versus country battles on the global calendar and he is still talking about it as the All Blacks prepare to meet a pick-up French side tonight at Eden Park.
French coach Bernard Laporte has called the tour "a bit of a joke", while All Black supremo Graham Henry has lamented the lack of leadership from the game's rulers as Eden Park struggled to get a capacity crowd for a test between the two top-rated sides in the world.
"The public has prejudged this side [France] is not going to be good enough. We have not prejudged that," Henry added yesterday.
At least four years of discussion papers, remits, meetings and proposals about an integrated international calendar have drawn no progress with the IRB, who are shackled by tradition, self-interest, ego and power. The fixture mess is expanding and every major nation and executive committee member is culpable for the sporting pollution.
Lock all groups - nations, European clubs, southern franchises - in a room and get it sorted, was the gist of Henry's exasperated plea this week as he urged the IRB to show some strong leadership.
Many people spoken to by the Weekend Herald said there was more chance of William Webb Ellis making a guest appearance to kick off tonight's international.
"When I was at the IRB in 2005, I implored them to include the European clubs in discussions but the IRB flatly refused saying they dealt with national unions, not clubs," recalled Moffett. "I can't see a solution to an integrated season because everyone is so entrenched."
The Weekend Herald contacted the IRB for some response to Henry's comments but none ensued.
France, Wales, England and Ireland have all sent under-strength sides to the Southern Hemisphere in recent weeks because they were either resting players for the World Cup, the players were injured or involved in their conflicting club championships.
Former All Black great Haden lamented rugby's leadership abyss.
"What we've ended up with is a huge turnoff and we have people who follow the game with a great passion, who have to persuade themselves to go to Eden Park to watch French C."
The IRB acted as a mailbox, it did not have any teams in competitions, they pretended they had great power with their money from the World Cups but they did not have great relevance any more. The IRB needed to step aside, he said.
"That would leave the people that field teams to come up with solutions to the issues which are that there is no calendar to play internationals and a calendar for other matches. They could get to a point where there was a single season for rugby. That time zone would stop the All Black player drift.
"It is not terribly hard, it is just they are not trying," said Haden.
The Super series and Tri-Nations had developed because of the leadership vacuum at the IRB but they were bandaid tournaments. The IRB invited anarchy as they had seen this year with the English and French clubs' unhappiness and Haden, who was involved with the WRC threat in 1995, said that option still remained.
Moffett said the warnings were there and they could return.
"You know the last time the game refused to talk directly to a large group of players was 1995 and look what happened. We almost lost the game then. I think the danger is still high.
"I can't see the clubs giving in, they are too powerful and for a meaningful integrated season you have to get alongside the English and French clubs.
"It is essential. It was from day one and the IRB refused."
