Do it and do it now: fix

World Rugby need to step in and take action to improve both officials and laws

It will be a test of rugby’s collective maturity in the wake of the series between the All Blacks and Lions to confront sensibly the giant issues that exist with the problem of an ambiguous rule book and officials too prone to making avoidable errors.

All anyone really wanted to do post series was to be able to cherish the combat, skill, resilience and bravery of both teams and yet such a pleasure was effectively denied by refereeing decisions in the last two tests that were so difficult to understand, so inconsistent and random, that they can’t be ignored or dismissed as irrelevant.

The All Blacks don’t want to become a team who give the impression they only fail to win because they have been robbed by the officials. That’s not the narrative they want to promote. They were confronted by an excellent Lions side in this series and weren’t good enough to put them away.

It’s that simple and yet it’s not. The facts have to get in the way of this story and for all the blown opportunities, for all the tries they could and should have scored, the series still came down to the All Blacks being denied either a legitimate penalty or an advantage in which Anton LienertBrown was going to score near the posts.

The choice for World Rugby seems clear — bury their heads in the sand, suggest the All Blacks are the only ones worried about officiating — and that may be because they didn’t win — or confront what surely everyone can see: that drastic, immediate action is needed.

The danger for World Rugby if they chose the former path is that they will encourage a number of undesirable behaviours.

The first is that it will be hard to retain belief in integrity. When three of the four match officials review to death one incident, agree it’s a penalty, only for the referee to inexplicably and without explanation award a scrum, it is so random that it invites dark thoughts.

The week before in Wellington, TMO George Ayoub was obviously being ignored by referee Jerome Garces.

Then after the game, the judiciary rejected the citing of Sean O’Brien with no explanation.

Again, thoughts of a conspiracy are hard to reject as paranoid and ridiculous.

Rugby doesn’t want to be going down this path where it can’t explain or justify the actions of key officials.

Perhaps, though, the bigger worry in the wake of this series is that cynicism was richly rewarded.

The Lions were terrific. They defended supremely well, attacked with poise and vision and deserved their share of the series.

But they played a cynical hand in the second and third tests that was unquestionably smart, but still cynical. They conceded penalties in Wellington as a way of shutting down the All Blacks’ attack game.

They sensed that a yellow card was not forthcoming for repeat infringements, so they kept going. Smart but cynical.

The penalty that won it for the Lions in Wellington was fair, but it highlighted that the rule about playing players in the air needs some extra clause because the danger now is that teams try to manufacture scenarios where they jump for the ball and invite contact to milk the penalty.

The penalty they won to draw level in the third test should force World Rugby to send out an edict to referees that they can’t reward halfbacks who throw the ball at opposition players who are not interfering with play.

Lions halfback Rhys Webb won the decision when he pretended Wyatt Crockett was illegally blocking the pass to first-five Johnny Sexton.

Halfbacks around the world do that every week and World Rugby has to be strong and empower referees to say play on if they believe that any player has manipulated a situation to win a penalty.

It is decision time for the game’s governing body. They so nearly had the perfect series. They so nearly had the final game they wanted to promote the unparalleled brilliance of international rugby at its best.