Andy Colquhoun
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee then a Rugby World Cup designed by the International Rugby Board (IRB) is quite clearly a camel’s derrire.
What a dreadful, wasted opportunity this rambling, shambling, stumblebum of a tournament is turning out to be.
Saturday marks the end of the pool stage and the excitement should be building; rugby fever should have the host nations and the watching world in its thrall.
And what happens? The thing goes into hibernation. Put your feet up, read a book, repair that broken tile in the bathroom, because you can turn your back on Rugby World Cup ’99 for a while. After all, everyone in the northern hemisphere, bar the Welsh, has.
The last round of matches meant zilch, nada, nothing. If you can find one of real significance in the schedule then you’re as optimistic as a Murrayfield ticket tout.
And who is to blame? The IRB, that’s who.
They sanctioned the idea that five nations should host the tournament.
They have let the Rugby World Cup company blunder repeatedly with ticket pricing policies allied to utterly inappropriate venues. And they allowed them to fail to promote the tournament in the United Kingdom, Ireland and France.
This is supposed to be a World Cup, you dummies. It is supposed to have a collective dynamic, to snowball like a Swiss kindergarten class, to strap us into a roller coaster of rugby drama.
Instead we’ve had a series of one-off Tests whose venues were apparently selected by a computer’s random number programme.
Tragically, the culprits will sail blithely on, accounting to no one and patting themselves on the back as they slide under their tartan blanket in the president’s box at the Millennium Stadium for the final on November 6.
The lot of ’em should be rounded up and used as tackle bags by Tonga so that we can find an IRB and Rugby World Cup executive who can forget their vested interests and show the vision to take the game into the next century.
The blazered Sir Tufton Buftons who run the game in the north are a dead anchor on the sport’s development. When you compare the vibrant atmosphere that surrounded the Euro ’96 soccer tournament in England with the black hole into which all rugby life is currently being sucked, it could make you weep.
At least the southern hemisphere has begun to growl out a complaint. This week Nick Mallett endorsed the idea put forward on these pages last week that two tournaments should be run in parallel. One for the pros, one for the amateurs.
And the New Zealand camp have even begun to map out their blueprint. Significantly, perhaps, they include in their back-room staff Ross Cooper, who is also on the IRB’s technical advisory committee but not, alas, the powerful council.
They envisage a slimmed-down 12-team tournament comprising four groups of three. The top two from each group progress to the quarter- finals. The next best 12 teams in the world contest an identical tournament in parallel.
Five games for the two finalists (rather than the current six) and every match a meaningful contest. Imagine what a tournament these groups would have given us from day one: Pool A – South Africa, Scotland, Italy; Pool B – Australia, Ireland, Argentina; Pool C – New Zealand, Wales, Tonga; Pool D – England, France, Fiji.
As it is, releasing a bucketful of minnows into a piranha-infested tournament may have seemed like a jolly wheeze at the time, but it has made for a tournament which has left the public cold and the tournament sub-zero.
Just because lots of countries have a few enthusiasts who want to play rugby does not mean they should be allowed to run out a couple of weeks later with the All Blacks and Springboks. It’s akin to letting me run the Olympic marathon because I enjoy the occasional jog.
The more radical solution is to take the Rugby World Cup out of the hands of the rugby administrators and make it independent of the IRB.
Of the 21 members on the IRB council, 10 were appointed before the game went professional. They include chair Vernon Pugh and, naturally, the most senior members of the organisation.
They were raised and are steeped in the worthy tenets of the amateur game. And being such men they fought tooth and nail to resist rugby’s transformation to a professional game.
And now these same men hold the future of the game in their hands. No wonder they have come up with a camel’s behind of a World Cup.
Never again should the power games of the member unions be permitted to give us multiple hosting nations. Never again should RWC be allowed to get away without marketing the tournament. And never again should they foist on us a structure that gives us final-round matches as meaningless as South Africa versus Uruguay; Scotland versus Spain or Australia versus the United States.
See you for the quarters … I’m taking a week off.