Rugby missing out on Sydney party

Watching it all unfold on our screens or via our newspapers, the rest of us sports hacks can only pine for the Sydney Olympics and wish our game was there too. Water rugby, synchronised rugby, rugby trampolining - any version would do. We're not proud. We'd gladly sell our heritage just to be at the sports party to end all sports parties.

Normally our colleagues relate horror stories of their Olympic experience, but not this time. To those of us fortunate enough to have experienced the Aussie mix of endless enthusiasm for sport and easy-going efficiency, not to mention laid-back hospitality - especially in Sydney - this is not a surprise.

Perhaps us rugby hacks shouldn't be too greedy. After all, there's a six-week trip Down Under for the Lions tour next summer, while Australia, with New Zealand as junior partner, host the 2003 World Cup. And maybe we've missed the best one anyhow, for Athens - despite all its history - ain't Sydney. Still, as The Cranberries might put it, Everybody else is doing it so why can't we? Never mind that the Olympics can accommodate the likes of synchronised swimming and trampolining, if major international and professional sports such as tennis and football can take part, there's no real moral or logistical argument against rugby being there. At least, not in this column there isn't.

Therefore, it's terribly comforting to know that the International Rugby Board chairman Vernon Pugh and chief executive Stephen Baines are roughing it in Sydney on behalf of all of us in the global rugby family, canvassing the IOC for rugby's return to the Games. Good on ye mates. Apparently they're still roughing it there too. Can't imagine what's keeping them. Such selflessness.

However, the feeling within the IRB apparently is that rugby won't be readmitted in time for Athens, with the 2008 Games a more feasible objective. Indeed, rumour has it that if rugby were to be readmitted then conceivably it could be in a sevens format, which strikes me as a shame. It ain't the real thing and besides, we're pretty useless at it.

Whether or not the IOC is inclined to accept rugby back into the fold, one of the main stumbling blocks would be the logistical difficulties of cramming a tournament into a fortnight. The maximum which the finalists could play in that time-span would be four matches, and even that would be very taxing.

One mooted proposition is for an eight-team competition, drawing on three from the Six Nations, three from the Tri-Nations, and two others, but actually a 12-team competition might be more feasible in terms of limiting the maximum number of matches to four.

It could then be run off in four groups of three, with only the winners progressing to the semi-finals whilst at the same time guaranteeing every participating national team two games each.

Whatever the format, it would have its own unique aspects, making it different from the World Cup. Of course, rugby is seeking to reduce the number of games for the guinea-pig professional generation, not increase them, so something would have to give. But it needn't necessarily devalue the World Cup and in any case, the 1999 fiasco arguably demonstrated the need for rugby to find different ways of globalising the game.

This is a principle which the IRB are committed to anyhow, and one of the immediate spin-offs would be to galvanise the Americans in that an Olympic incentive would make rugby a more accepted mainstream sport in the US virtually overnight. They are the holders too, albeit dating back to 1924.

An Olympic tournament would also fit neatly enough into a four-year cycle, a year after the World Cup and one year before the Lions tour. To further accentuate its individuality, an Olympic tournament could take a leaf out of football's book and make it, say, an under-23 event with two nominated over-age players per squad.

It'll assuredly happen one day, whether as seven-a-side or 15-a-side, and basically, despite our sports editor's misgivings, we're in favour of it.

Despite the counter-attractions, attendances at the Guinness Interprovincial Championship have been remarkably healthy and have almost certainly scaled record highs. Following on from crowds of 10,000 (for Ulster v Munster), 8,000 (Munster v Leinster, in Cork) 4,000 (Leinster v Connacht and Leinster v Ulster), another 10,000 attended last Friday's Ulster-Leinster game while next Friday's potential decider between Munster and Ulster in Musgrave Park is already all-ticket. Anybody who forecast that little lot as recently as three years ago would have been escorted from the premises in a straitjacket.

That Ravenhill defeat constituted the nadir of Leinster's week, which went from bad to worse what with an ever-spiralling injury list. The night before the match, the truck carrying their training kit, TV and video equipment, tackle bags, cones and so forth was stolen from outside their hotel and later burned. (Presumably Leinster's training kit wouldn't be big on the Belfast black market). At least kit manager Johnny O'Hagen had removed the match kit beforehand. Leinster coaching director Matt Williams won't have been swayed from his need for an extra signing or two on Friday night's evidence, especially in cover at outhalf, and admits he has been casting his net toward the Southern Hemisphere these past few weeks. If he's come up with anyone all will be revealed by tomorrow, as the deadline for registering ERC players is at 5 p.m. today.

Overplayed but underpaid? Players in England are seemingly becoming restless and legitimate though their complaints of too many games are, they are surely losing the run of themselves if whiffs of a strike are true. As one cross-channel colleague already weary of poor standards in the Premiership put it when contemplating such an action becoming a reality, "people might forget about them after a few weeks".

Nevertheless, when Kieron Dawson was asked in London Irish's match programme for the visit of Sale on Sunday what advice he would give to aspiring young players, he said, "Marry into wealth."

gthornley@irish-times.ie