Time For World Rugby To Smarten-Up Their Act

WHEN IT comes to the question: Whether the Lions? I am among the ranks of the agnostics. I know longer believe Lions Tours should be treated with the reverence of yore.

Indeed, in the context of the direction of travel of World Rugby, I think the days when the Lions should be considered the pinnacle are gone. I feel we should look anew at the whole Lions' concept. However, I shall return to this thorny subject in future posts.

Today, I intend to focus on something which has been disturbing me of late – the level of social media comment on the current tour. Between some stupid rants from supporters of both sides, and some quite unashamed attempts at click-bait from some rugby websites, sinking to levels of stupidity even beyond “Fleet Street” when England's football team gets to the knock-out stages of the Euros or the World Cup. It has all put me off my tea.

Much of the daft stuff has revolved around refereeing decisions, and the response to these. Some of the dafter rugby website operators have been tying themselves in knots finding screen shots to demonstrate the particular point they are trying to make about officiating decisions.

It all leaves a bitter taste. As I have repeatedly said; back in the Dark Ages of rugby, nearly every club had their tame Homer of a referee, who was guaranteed to give them every 50-50 decision, and most of the ones which were up to 20-80 against the home club.

But, these days are past and as I have again said, I have only ever seen one panel Scottish referee who had me convinced, he was “bent.” The referees generally make fewer errors than the players, but, they are being badly let-down by the Laws of the game.

This season we have seen some tinkering with the Laws – the introduction of the 50-22 kicking law, the goal-line drop-out and so forth. Let's see how these pan out over the campaign, however, I really feel, the time is ripe for a wholesale examination of the Laws of the Game and for several big changes to be made.

Before then, and while this much-needed overhaul is taking place, World Rugby should be INSISTING the current Laws are obeyed and enforced.

• No more squint feeds at scrums or lines-out

• No more line-out feeds from inside the park

• No more stealing yards when kicking a penalty to touch

• Sort out the scrums – even if it means bringing-in specialist scrum officials at the top end

• Sort out the breakdown, it's a mess

There are one or two other items we should see taken care of for the greater good of the game:

• Maybe look at bringing in something like Rugby League's six-pass law, to discourage the pick and go game

• Try to find a way to have more ball-in-play time, even if it means going from a game lasting 80 minutes to a game lasts 60 minutes with the ball in play – stopping the clock when it goes out of play for lines-out, or for kicks at goal, or for repeatedly re-setting scrums

• Sort out the soccer-style divers and actors in the game

• Try to calm down rugby's social media spats

Rugby is still the world's greatest team game, it still have some marvellous values which we must protect. However, it cannot be denied, particularly at the professional end of the game, some of the baser practices which were never stamped-out in football are starting to creep into rugby. We must protect our game by sorting things out and getting back to the mindset of the amateur era.

REMEMBER the new posting rules people - comments are always welcome, however.