Failed World Cup needs an overhaul

The bottom line with any World Cup in any sport is whether it scaled new heights, left enduringly new and positive impressions, provided a benchmark to see it through the next four year cycle and ultimately used the opportunity to promote the game to a wider audience. In this regard RWC '99, sad to say, was a lamentable failure.

Many of the reasons have been well documented. Most of all there was the negligible marketing of the tournament, outside of Wales anyway. Then there was the ridiculous famine-or-feast scheduling of matches which resulted in 21 of the competition's 37 days being idle, while as many as four games were compressed into one day.

There was also the over-priced, and family-unfriendly ticketing policies, and the scandalously awful Cardiff pitch. For all of this, the International Board, RWC '99 directors and the respective Unions each has to accept some of the blame.

However, most of all there was the product itself. Percentage rugby has largely prevailed at the expense of spontaneity, speed and subtlety.

The France-Argentina quarter-final was like a throwback in time and the French, with the intentional and unintentional help of the All Blacks, illuminated the tournament in one unforgettable afternoon. Yet, curiously, the preceding, tryless semi-final between Australia and South Africa - though an epic of its type - was much more the defining game of the tournament.

At least now RWC '99 might strengthen the IB's resolve to bring about changes in the laws. Professionalism, fitness levels, creatine, the growth of the modern player and the law changes have combined to ensure that rugby union has developed deep-rooted problems.

The most obvious of these, put simplistically, is the current supremacy of defence over attack. Suggestions as to the possible solutions abound, such as obliging the defending team to retreat 10 metres at ruck time. At this rate, we may as well scrap the line-out, apply a six-tackle turnover rule and make it 13-a-side.

Rugby Union needs to revive its identity, not become even more like League, and a 10-metre rule would mean even less passing, and more straight running up the middle just for the sake of taking the tackle and making guaranteed yardage.

Other suggestions, such as devaluing the penalty or the drop goal, fall into the same League-inspired category. Furthermore, they would encourage defending teams to commit even more professional fouls in reducing the risk of conceding seven-pointers, primarily by killing ruck ball or pushing up offside. Yellow cards are not a sufficient deterrent, but sin-binning would be.

The International Board are said to be acutely aware of the need to free up the game, and will consider many proposals at their annual conference in Sydney early next month. Change will come, and it should be mandatory for leading international coaches to attend, unlike in Vancouver last year when only the Irish and French coaching teams turned up of the leading nations.

They could start by considering amendments to the tackle itself, and impose limits as to how high the tackler can make contact, thereby giving the ball carrier a better chance to unload. Aside from being seriously dangerous, some of the high big hits going in now just stop the game's flow.

It would seem pretty clear that the lawmakers need to revive the competitive element at scrums, line-outs and rucks as well, especially the latter. That might encourage teams to contest rucks more rather than reducing the numbers to rucks so as to fan out in a defensive line.

It's funny to think back and recall how little difficulty New Zealand rugby teams used to have in presenting quick ruck ball before the law-changes ensured an unequal contest in favour of the side in possession.

Another radical suggestion of rich promise, as suggested by UCD's Kiwi coach Lee Smith, one of the IB's technical staff, would oblige coaches to not only revive the lost art of counter-attacking, but also encourage it. Smith suggests that "any ball caught on the full would allow the catching team to have a scrum back from where the ball was kicked."

Imagine Percy Montgomery and the percentage full-backs suddenly having to weigh up their options accordingly? Tedious bouts of aerial ping pong would be curtailed at a stroke.

Even so, there were many pluses to the tournament. Despite the often barren backdrop to Murrayfield, attendances averaged 41,000 for the 41 games, and a staggering 65,000 for the knock-out stages, comfortably more than was the case in France for the football equivalent a year before.

The independent citing procedures were welcome if inconsistent, likewise the decision to expand the tournament was well-meant if flawed, and further afield the World Cup has assuredly been portrayed in a more positive light than here - for example, Argentina, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and perhaps even Uruguay and Spain, not to mention Australia and even France.

It's just that the pall of depression seems most acute in the home unions, with Ireland and England as its epicentre. This pall was palpable, so to speak, at Donnybrook last Friday night. Where a year ago they'd have been queuing up for this supposedly high stakes game (indeed, an estimated 6-7,000 actually did) there was barely 1,500-2,000 in attendance to see Munster clinch the interpro title and deny a truly abysmal Leinster automatic entry into next season's European Cup. On this latest evidence, Leinster will again be relying on someone else, most probably Munster, to reach the semi-finals and gain Ireland a third slot in next season's competition, for they seem incapable of it themselves.

No less than the international team, the game here needs a shake-up and a radically new approach. A possible solution would be for the IRFU to approach one of the world's foremost coaches now in the market place, John Hart, and offer him the role of Chief Development Officer/Supremo; pay him handsomely and give him the power to develop new structures, identify young talent, fast-track them through the Academy, help determine a common-game plan, etc.

Of course, this would be an admittance of failure. So, of course, it won't happen.