Little Things That Annoy Me About Modern Rugby

ONE OF the things about present-day professional sport which gets right up my nose is the way, or so it appears to me, the more money that is involved, the less willing the participants, and the guys who pay their wages, are to accept the referee's decisions.

Today, never mind it not being over until the fat lady sings; it aint over till the legal appeals process has been exhausted. This belief feeds down through the entire game. Who'd be a match official today. Not only are you subjected to the entitlement culture of highly-paid players and coaches, who seem to think – because they are being paid so much, they are not allowed to lose. There is also the scenario whereby, you – the poor, under-paid man in the middle, have no right to pull me up for breaking the laws of the game.

Mind you, rugby still has a wee bit of soul left, football sold out to Mephistopheles, the money man, lang syne. And that is why, I am becoming increasingly concerned at the way today's referees are either failing-to, or perhaps being encouraged not to, properly enforce the Laws of the Game.

We all know what happens:

• squint scrum feeds
  
  
• The hooker's half-pace to the side before throwing-into the line-out down his own line
  
  
• The way most hookers today throw-in from over the touchline
  
  
• The way the penalty mark, instead of being the mark through which a penalty must be kicked, but as the starting point of his run-up prior to kicking
  
  
• The way the scrum has become, instead of a means of restarting play after a stoppage, a means of winning a penalty
  
  
• The flying entry, often from the side, into a breakdown – what happened to the player having to remain on his feet
  
  
• The obscenity of the legalised cheating in the driving maul law

A game which does not crack down on cheating and stretching the boundaries of the Laws is a game in danger of killing itself. What is allowed to happen at the top of the game, filters down to the lower levels, until the guys who only want to play for the love of the game, begin to become disillusioned by what is happening.

Take just one of these forgiven sins, which I have listed above. I refer to the fourth, the one about stealing metres at penalties. Now, every team does it, even Scotland. But, yesterday, for that penalty from half-way which George Ford kicked to the corner, to begin the drive which ended with his game tying conversion, the offence was marked at about two metres inside the Scotland half. Ford kicked the penalty to touch from past the ten metre line. I.E. he “stole” about ten metres.

Now, it is so-long since I saw a player pinged for this, that I have all but forgotten the punishment. I think the correct punishment for not kicking a penalty through the mark is a scrum, with the opposition putting-in. Had Mr Williams, who had a reasonable debut, apart from following World Rugby protocol about favouring what is presumed to be the stronger side, pinged Ford for such an obvious breach of the Laws – we would have had the put-in, won the ball and kicked it dead. We would have won 38-31 and half of Scotland would still be pissed this morning.

Instead, many of us feel like this:

ONE OR TWO regular contributors to the below-the-line comments section of this blog are sceptical of my claim that any additional TV income which accrues to the game from the World League will be good for the grass-roots.

Allow me to elaborate. In most of the world, the UNION calls the shots. In Scotland, we might not be entirely comfortable with the decisions which the RU Board and Council make, but, at the end of the day – we have a game which is more #AS ONE than the situation south of the Solway, where there is a perennial power struggle ongoing between the wider game and the top clubs.

Any additional cash generated by this deal with CVC Capital Partners will benefit Harlequins, Saracens, Leicester, Wasps and the other Gallacher Premiership clubs – it will not benefit Vale of Lune, or Upper Wharfedale, Saffron Walden or any other other 1000 or more ordinary clubs in the English system.

It might make sense to sell a minority share in the proposed World League to CVC, I don't know, but, one thing is sure. They are not investing in Premiership Rugby out of the goodness of their heart. They are investing, because they can see a possible return on that investment.

If they are allowed to have a share in the World League, it will take some money out of the game, but, the larger share will be divided among the Unions, the SRU included, and, for all the Murrayfield Mandarins have a duty to keep our two professional teams adequately-funded and competitive, they also have a duty to ensure the survival of the club game.

And I still believe there are a sufficient number of “suits” in the posh seats at Murrayfield who truly care about the survival of the club game, and who will fight that part of the game's corner.

To sum-up if the clubs, epitomised by the big English and French clubs, along with CVC Capital Partners, win the battle for rugby's soul – the game is basically fucked. We will end-up with a padding-free NFL-type game. Sure, the long-established club game will stumble along for a while, but, in the long-run, those guys who are not good enough to get a professional contract will quit at an early age, and real rugby will wither and die.

That is why I am in favour of the World League, it is, I feel, our best chance of ever seeing rugby becoming a truly global game, with trickle-down benefits for all.