Rugby or Mammon - time to choose

By CHRIS LAIDLAW

After the shambolic outcome, the instinct to let blood as a result of this IRB decision will be hard to resist.

While it may feel satisfying, it risks letting the real culprits off scot free. Those culprits are the sponsors, those altruistic, rugby-loving businesses which, because they now pay the piper, have come to call an increasingly covetous tune.

Were it not for increasingly oppressive sponsor demands, New Zealand and Australia would be amicably preparing for the World Cup, and the NZRFU and IRB would have stayed on relatively civil terms.

Make no mistake. It was the hospitality needs of the major sponsors and their guests that sank New Zealand's World Cup bid.

And it was desperate attempts by the NZRFU and the IRB to find a way of meeting these that led directly to the breakdown in confidence.

Consider the chronology. In December the NZRFU, under extreme pressure, agreed to provide a truly astonishing array of benefits to the IRB's sponsors.

There was understandable discomfort with this, because there was every prospect of a substantial loss if it was obliged to honour all the obligations in terms of seats, boxes and other hospitality that Rugby World Cup Ltd was obliged to yield to the tournament's major sponsors.

By March, it was clear that Vernon Pugh's soothing claims that it would be all right on the night - in other words sign up and hope - were not enough.

New Zealand rugby was on a loser and the NZRFU felt obliged to say so. It is arguable that it should have got to grips with this much sooner, and a review should examine this seemingly slow start from the blocks.

Murray McCaw maintains that this wasn't as easy as it sounds because the IRB goalposts were constantly shifting. That proposition needs clarification if the NZRFU is to escape blame.

But to wallow in recrimination about who said what to whom, and why, is to miss the real point.

Is rugby, nationally or globally going to let itself be led by the nose by the voracious, self-promotional needs of its sponsors, or is it prepared to reclaim the game before it is too late?

There is a harsh lesson in all this for the game as a whole. If it is ignored, rugby will go the way of the Olympics - a sporting festival fashioned around the needs of corporate hospitality, not sport, a tawdry trading post where the highest bidder gets the goods.

Does anyone want rugby to take the final slide down that slope?

The IRB statement

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