KEY POINTS:
We don't need the new rules. There is nothing wrong with the old ones. But we need the game to be refereed more consistently and coached better so that we have an attractive game to put in front of people - that's the big lesson of the World
Cup to me.
There are plenty of English guys saying to me that they are glad England didn't win the World Cup. That's because they realise that the type of rugby England played is not particularly good for the game.
I am not taking anything away from England - they did superbly well to get to the final and they played to their strengths.
But the final was boring. The South Africans were never seriously threatened and they did just what they had to, to win. You can't tell me that, if the semifinals and final were to be replayed that there'd be large numbers of people queuing up to watch. They were pretty dry.
People in the Northern Hemisphere are happy with the World Cup. It was exciting to them and some are saying it's all right because, after a horrible three and a half years, England got to the final. All right? It's far from all right.
The standard of rugby at the World Cup was pretty low. I am exempting the pool phases from this - they lit up this tournament as did the smaller nations. In the past five World Cups, you knew who the semifinalists were going to be from day one. Not this one.
While I am on the subject, this World Cup has concluded, for me, the debate about whether there should be 20 or 16 teams in the 2011 version.
You'd have to go for 20 and you have to pat the IRB on the back for the money and support they are putting into smaller countries and who are also obviously benefiting from having players involved in professional rugby.
But it's the quality of rugby in the knockout stages where it all got a bit ghastly. The standard of rugby in the bigger nations has dipped.
I don't like defensive rugby. I like watching the All Blacks and the way they attack. I like watching the All Blacks defend too, especially the way they pressure the ball carrier.
But I hate watching games where teams dominate by kicking and tackling. It's winning rugby, yes, but it's dreary. In terms of the global game, it's a poor standard. That's another reason why it was a tragedy the All Blacks lost.
There was nothing wrong with the type of game they were playing. It's the right game and it too can be winning rugby. But they just bottled it in those last 20 minutes and forgot their game and tried to do something else. If Australia had had a scrum, we'd have had a second nation playing attractive stuff.
Most people will say, at this point, that's where the refs come in. Okay, there were some crucial fizzers in the All Black quarter-final. You could say that Graham Henry's career is buggered because touch judge Jonathan Kaplan didn't pick up that crucial forward pass when he was pretty much in line with it.
Referee Wayne Barnes made some vital mistakes too although, for most of that game, he didn't do too badly. But I am not talking so much about specific instances like that.
It's the way one referee, even at the very top level, refs a game compared to the referee who controls the next game.
Look at the Australia-England quarter-final. Alain Rolland (Ireland) reffed it very well, penalising the Aussies for their scrum. But other refs penalised aggressive scrums. I'd even say that if Barnes had been controlling the Australia-England game, it would have been a different result - as he was penalising those with the aggressive scrum.
Things like scrums and the breakdown need more consistency. Right now you can get away with something at the breakdown in one game but get bombed by a different ref's interpretation in the next.
There needs to be a template on rule interpretation that all refs follow.
Once we have that, the players and coaches will understand exactly what they can and can't get away with and the games will flow better as a result.
That's what I mean by saying we don't need the new rules. We just need to ref the old ones better. I actually agree with a lot of the things Paddy O'Brien has said over the World Cup - but I see this consistency as his biggest challenge.
If we have only five refs on the world circuit, then so be it. It's like the players and the coaches and the new mantra in world rugby - play your best players all the time. It's the same for the refs. Play our best refs all the time. We have to make sure they are reffing the same game and with the same rules.
We have a game to sell and grow.
