As long as the boardroom power remains with the United Kingdom and South Africa, we’re screwed.
Why would South Africa want more daring, attractive rugby at world level? They’ve won a record four World Cup finals by scoring just two tries, and not scoring a try at all in three of them.
New Zealand and Australia are the two countries that by inclination, and need, want a more dynamic game than the stop-start, complicated, mind-numbing, arm wrestle it too often is now.
How bad has top-level rugby become? The nadir was the semifinal between England and South Africa, won 16-15 by the Springboks. England almost sneaked in with a kick-and-chase game that saw not one pass to their midfielder Manu Tulagi from his first five Owen Farrell.
Even Sir Wayne Smith, as enthusiastic a rugby fanatic as ever drew breath, has revealed he stops watching some games. If Smith is turned off, how many less-devoted followers are disillusioned?
In August, the latest commissioned report on New Zealand rugby noted “many challenges” in how the game is administered. I’d suggest for rugby to prosper here, how it’s played is also a major issue.
In Britain, they seem happy with what league fans have derided for years as kick-and-clap rugby. If you can fill Twickenham with the dreary rubbish dished up by teams led by Farrell, there’s hardly a burning need to revolutionise the game.
New Zealand players looking dejected after losing the final to South Africa. Photo / Photosport
South Africa have joined the northern crowd both physically, with five teams in European competitions, and tactically, to the obscene point of having seven forwards on an eight-man reserve bench.
Right now there are many suggested changes for good, from Smith’s ideas to get rid of the rolling maul (“legalised obstruction”) and to lower the legal tackle height, which should bring with it the excitement of off-loads, to Sir Steve Hansen’s plea to cut out the dead, controlling hand of Television Match Officials (TMOs).
These are not random, bar-room ramblings but genuine concerns from men whose hugely-successful international records show they have massive rugby intelligence.
But getting changes to rugby’s myriad of rules is a complex task.
When it comes to quick switches of direction, World Rugby is about as nimble as a giant oil tanker aground in the Suez Canal.
The two most massive transformations since rugby began were deciding to stage a World Cup, and turning professional. Neither was greeted with joy by Northern Hemisphere officials.
Before the International Rugby Board (IRB, now World Rugby) narrowly agreed in 1985 to hold a World Cup tournament in 1987, there was bitter opposition to the idea from Scotland and Ireland. It was a gruelling two-year slog for Australian and New Zealand administrators, before they won a 10-6 vote in Paris.
In 1995 the switch to professionalism was more dramatic. Without even seeking approval from the IRB, South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia announced they’d signed a massive television deal, and from now on it was pay-for-play in their rugby.
The IRB had to swallow a massive dead rat, eventually grimly noting that rugby had become, not professional, but “open”.
Of course there’s self-interest in New Zealand wanting more dynamic, attacking rugby. We have the benefit, as Sir Graham Henry once pointed out, of playing much of our domestic rugby on firm grounds in temperatures that, unlike the British winter, don’t hover around freezing point. Running rugby suits our conditions and our players’ DNA.
Shannon Frizell is yellow-carded by Wayne Barnes. Photo / Photosport
Australia too, where rugby is in danger of being lapped in the public’s attention by Aussie Rules and league, can’t afford to offer tedious, grinding matches.
Patently it hasn’t been a love match between Australian and New Zealand officials in recent years, but for the success of their own game, Australia needs to be standing shoulder to shoulder with New Zealand on law changes.
It then shouldn’t take too much of a charm offensive from the Anzac countries to get Argentina and France on our side, in the drive for a more adventurous game.
Argentina because Agustin Pichot, the firebrand who tried to oust World Rugby chair Sir Bill Beaumont in 2020, is back on the World Rugby council, and has always presented as welcoming change. And France, because since dinosaurs roamed the earth, France have liked to run the ball.
But if the rules don’t change, Scott Robertson’s All Blacks will have to be even better than the best New Zealand side I’ve ever seen, the 2015 Cup winners, to overcome lumbering weight-lifters and dead-eye goalkickers and take the title in Australia in 2027.
