Matt Williams: World Rugby asleep at the wheel as game continues to drift

This week I had a chat with my family communist. He is a common, garden variety, lesser spotted red. Your average, every day, Chardonnay socialist.

My Comrade is a great person who I like immensely. He is highly educated, comes from the usual privileged background as do most Chardonnay socialists and he believes that “Manual Labour” was a Hollywood actor from the 1940s.

My Comrade wants to tear down the entire system of institutions within western liberal democracies.

"Pass me that bottle of cheeky New Zealand, Sauvignon Blanc," he commanded. He sipped his chilled Kiwi white wine as he contemplated the end of the decadent West.

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I decided to follow the sage advice provided by the band Sultans of Ping FC, who claimed to have "met Karl Marks eating mushrooms in the public car park". They advised that when chatting with communists one should say, "I like your manifesto, let's put it to the testo". So I simply asked, "Once you tear down the institutions what are you planning to replace them with?"

There was a lengthy silence followed by a polite inter family change of subject. “Comrade,” the lesser spotted red enquired, “did you watch the rugby last weekend?”

While Che Guevara was a decent scrumhalf, he was also a great left winger and rugby still provides common ground between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

“That new 12-a-side competition that’s being talked about will shake up the establishment,” observed my revolutionary relative. “Some new laws and lots of old obsolete ones tossed out. With fewer players on the field, there will be a lot more space created to attack. They will pay the players really good money, like the IPL cricket league in India. Rugby is ripe for a revolution.”

For a bloke whose political acumen is usually as accurate as an under-13 hookers lineout throws, he had hit the nail squarely on the head with his hammer and sickle.

Rugby’s vast “peasantry” is rumbling with discontent about its leadership. Those who play the game and pay to watch it want radical, meaningful change. Unlike most Chardonnay socialists, those demanding change know exactly what they want.

Rugby players and supporters want fewer penalties that are creating far too many stoppages. They want more time when the ball is in play for running rugby. They demand more tries and less penalty kicks at goal. They want the scrum’s laws to change to stop so much precious match-time from being wasted as the players are simply standing about doing nothing.

Importantly the laws must be amended so that penalty shots at goal can not be awarded for technical scrum infringements, which is exactly what the “12 a-side” game is proposing. The community is united in wanting more running backline attacking plays, less kicking, fewer mauls and far less talking from officials.

Running rugby

In short, rugby’s heartland is demanding more running rugby action and far less standing about with nothing happening.

The example from the game’s leading players and coaches places them in full agreement with their community pushing for reform.

In last weekend's 101st match between South Africa and New Zealand, every player on the pitch and both sets of coaching staff approached the game with a positive mindset to play attacking rugby. For 79 minutes and 20 seconds, the players tried to provide a high-quality, entertaining encounter.

Despite the best efforts of the players and coaches, the raft of rugby’s overly technical laws created far too much time wasting that robbed both the players and fans from enjoying even more quality rugby.

The greatest example of the players’ positivity was the liberation of the ball from almost every scrum. Both sets of backs were empowered to attack from many scrums in the match. An event as rare as a smile from a 1960s Soviet politburo committee member, but much more enjoyable to observe.

Sadly, in the last 20 seconds of the match, all that is wrong with rugby flooded back in and drowned the good. Up until that point, referee Matthew Carley had fought against all his training from the referee coaches and had tried to allow the game to flow.

In the dying seconds, he awarded two highly technical penalties against New Zealand that unjustly handed the Springboks the win. During the previous 79 minutes of the match, there were literally dozens of situations where referee Carley ignored those exact same actions and did not penalise those same infringements. There is nothing more infuriating to players, coaches and supporters than referees who change the way they officiate in the dying seconds of a game and influence the outcome.

The final two decisions were hugely inconsistent and are the perfect example of the pedantic influence rugby officials have on the game as they feel compelled to enforce so many overly technical and trivial laws.

In the Rugby Championship, the outcome of three matches was determined by officials awarding penalties for technical infringements. It should be the players’ skills that determine who wins games not the interpretation of technical law by the officials.

We are told that World Rugby’s “high performance rugby committee” and “laws review group” are attempting to address the massive number of law changes that require action. For the 2021-22 season, all those committees could agree to implement was the 50-22 kicking law, which is a positive law change and try line drop out restarts.

Hardly a sweeping raft of reform from rugby’s ruling elite to the great unwashed.

Unresolved issues

To the rugby community, its governing body appears to be asleep at the wheel, as the urgent need for law reforms on player safety, replacements, time-wasting and officiating remain. All of these unresolved issues are stealing rugby’s integrity. Not only are the laws unchanged but they are not even being publicly discussed.

It has reached the point where World Rugby has become so far out of touch with the people across its community that revolution within the game cannot be ruled out.

An environment of discontent with the leadership of the game has emerged, similar to that which existed in 1995 when a player revolution dragged the game kicking and screaming into professionalism.

If World Rugby does not urgently communicate its vision and a timeline on how it will tackle the overwhelming number of reforms that the game demands, other actors that want to create new competitions for elite players are prepared to enter the environment.

Those who are talking revolution are not Chardonnay-sipping dreamers and the proposed “12-a-side” game is not the only new player. Credible alternative leadership with vision, finance and agile governance is organising with the aim of taking control of elite rugby from World Rugby.

If this comes to fruition, World Rugby will only have its own inaction to blame.