Rugby World Cup: Tough guy crackdown robs game of essence

Enforcement game is all but dead now that nanny state has prevailed over rugby.

It's going to be a good World Cup. It is going to be a hugely sanitised World Cup as well - which some may see as synonymous with good while others will quietly mourn and wonder how rugby has managed to just about make the genuine enforcer extinct.

There are plenty of tough men at this World Cup - Kieran Read, Jerome Kaino, Thierry Dusautoir, Jacques Burger and Duane Vermeulen - to name but a few. But they are play-within-the-rules tough: rugged but clean and that has way more to do with necessity than it does personality or instincts.

What's become apparent in the opening weekend of matches is that rugby has no room any more for those tough men of old who were rugged but not so clean.

There is zero tolerance for any activity that is remotely in danger of offending a soccer mom and the game is not all the better for it.

Perhaps the opening game won't prove representative of either how this World Cup is going to be refereed or a new rugby culture.

There should only be cautious optimism about that, though. The bar was set intolerably low on opening night for what sort of activity should invite the intrusion of the TMO.

When Fijian lock Api Ratuniyarawa hit a ruck hard and then wrapped his arms around the man a second later, it was straight to the video.

When England flanker Tom Wood removed a Fijian from a rolling maul by chucking him harmlessly out the back - it was straight to the video.

This was extreme, but it's not that much of a surprise that the World Cup has ushered in nanny state rugby.

All season referees have been getting tougher on the attacking side at the breakdown - TMOs looking for a dodgy cleanout or a bit of push and shove.

When the All Blacks played in Sydney this year, they felt the Wallabies were guilty of playing them off the ball at the ruck: nothing major, a bit of deliberately getting in the way and jersey pulling.

Referee Wayne Barnes wasn't picking it up so Richie McCaw warned him that if he wasn't going to do something about it, the All Blacks would. They opted not to in the end - for the simple reason they knew it would end in yellow cards. Officials are after the low hanging fruit - the obvious to spot physicality that is harmless but looks worse than it is.

It's robbing the game of its essence. There has to be some kind of leeway for players to impose themselves in the grey areas. Rugby doesn't work so well when the officials are responsible for every aspect.

Natural justice isn't such a bad concept. Sometimes the best way to speed things up; to get the outcomes everyone wants is to get a little hands- on. There is no better disincentive to push the boundaries than the fear of physical retribution.

That's why enforcers had such value back in the day. It's one thing to lie on the ball and risk giving away a penalty; it's another to lie on the ball and risk the wrath of an opposition hard nut who will find the appropriate time and place to exact his revenge.

But it doesn't appear as if there is going to be a role for the hard nuts to play in this tournament. The enforcement game is all but dead.

The risks far outweigh the rewards and rugby is not improved by this. This tournament needs the hard men as much as it needs the ball players and line breakers. It needs a group of loose cannons to operate on the fringes and tidy up stray bodies or administer a little rough justice.