Paul Lewis: IRB must fix unholy mess

Photo / Brett Phibbs

New Zealand rugby now faces an even greater challenge than the 2011 World Cup - making sure the incredible upsurge in the popularity of the game does not dissipate.

The RWC was a remarkable time for this country and the bruised old game. Those at the helm of major sporting events often make outlandish claims - that it will unite the country; bringing people together and accelerate world peace. Okay, I made that last one up.

The astonishing thing about RWC 2011 was that it lived up to the claims. People turned up to stadiums which, in Super Rugby and ITM Cup terms, had often previously looked like empty shelves in a freezer. They turned up to watch countries in which they had no real interest.

They embraced foreign players whose names they couldn't recognise and mostly couldn't pronounce. The community of rugby; its actual heartbeat; was awakened - take a bow, Martin Snedden and the NZRU.

The fans were genuinely excited about rugby. It lit what seemed to be a long dormant fuse in the spirit of Kiwis. Even people who previously had no interest in rugby joined the crowds. You could have knocked me down with an egg noodle when a friend I have known since we were both 17 informed me that she was now playing World Cup fantasy rugby and was relishing beating all the blokes. She had never before exhibited any interest in the game, as far as I am aware.

There was the woman in Invercargill who bumped into the Romanian team searching for a laundromat to wash their kit. She looked at them. No, but you must come home with me ... where she washed and ironed their gear.

Auckland was awash with fans, car flags and almost unflagging good humour. Whoever thought of the fan trail should be knighted. On the day of the final (and on other days), it was awash with humanity enjoying itself. Who would ever have thought that the preferred mode of public transport in car-crazed Auckland would be Shanks' Pony?

The atmosphere at the games was often electric and boisterous - the polar opposite of how we conservative and occasionally po-faced Kiwis are supposed to be. Fans were vocal, opinionated, and belting out songs like Jordan Luck's Why Does Love Do This To Me and the Black Eyed Peas' I Got A Feelin' - and we did, didn't we ... we had a feeling all right.

But now reality bites. Rugby is going back to a whole raft of issues that must be faced if all this bonhomie isn't to dribble away down a small drain.

Issues? What issues? Oh, little things like the most confusing set of rules in world sport - typified by that ugly, twisting, plate of spaghetti known collectively as the breakdown.

The tackled ball, rucks, mauls - they are all an unholy mess which have to be administered by the referee yelling commands during the game. I mean, huh? Is there any other sport so complicated that the referee has to tell the players as it happens? At every ruck, maul, tackle there is an opportunity to penalise someone. I have sat next to All Black coaches who have confessed they did not know what many of the penalties were for. Pity the fans.

In the RWC final, referee Craig Joubert came under fire from the French for not finding more fault with the All Blacks in a comparatively penalty-free second half. Sound familiar? It should. We made the same noises in 2007 after the All Blacks' quarter-final exit at the hands of the French and referee Wayne Barnes. In the end, it boiled down to a referees' dictat that said the RWC should be decided by players, not the ref.

So ponder, just for a moment,what that means. The world's most complicated set of sporting rules but, at the game's showcase, the refs are basically told to ignore them and let the players sort it out. It's lunacy.

There are other burning issues for rugby - there are still second- and third-tier squads put together by major nations for test series about which no one cares; meaningless tests with rotated players. New tests are created to make money. Less, as Sean Fitzpatrick has consistently argued, is definitely more. But the IRB and NZRU and everyone else in rugby is in thrall to the broadcasters who provide the money to run the global game professionally.

The game is dominated by defence, meaning it becomes even less of a spectacle. That is not to say that the game needs to be helter-skelter, try-heavy, 60-48 extravaganzas - this World Cup has proved that matches with few or even no tries can still be exciting contests. There is little that can be done by the NZRU in the face of all these issues. It all points to the IRB who seemed far more worried about mouthguards and haka responses.

The IRB have tinkered with the game, rather in the manner of a hippo lighting a candle. Rugby is sometimes as entertaining as a cigarette end in your beer. Faced with a choice between watching most rugby and doing something more interesting, like driving nails through their feet, many fans will wonder where they left the hammer. I'm exaggerating to make a point, of course, but the fans lit up by RWC 2011 will again drift away if the structures of the game are not addressed.

The ability or even the willingness of the world's governing body to throw the whole mess out of the window and start again seems muted. Moves are being made but they are glacial. The audience is in danger, again, of going to sleep.

There is supposed to be some hope that a change from Bernard Lappaset to Bill Beaumont will free up the IRB's ability to take action - but who can put their trust in rugby politics that seem designed to preserve the status quo of the administrators? There are noises that New Zealand's own Graham Mourie is in line to be Beaumont's deputy and that the Beaumont-Mourie era should be good for New Zealand.

But Mourie has already been head of the IRB rules committee that oversees those same rules complained of and, sorry to be so sadly cynical, it is difficult to have faith in a body that is fining the French for their wonderful response to the All Black haka.