Williams appeal farce underlines arrogance
It felt awfully like a yes or no question — one that would take five minutes to answer.
On Wednesday night, New Zealand Rugby asked a judiciary appeal panel — Graeme Mew (Canada), Shao-Ing Wang (Singapore) and Stefan Terblanche (South Africa) — whether they would consider the All Blacks’ planned ‘Game of Three Halves’ on August 11 as a bona fide match.
They didn’t have to evaluate the seriousness or intent of Williams’ actions in the second test which saw him pick up a red card for a high tackle on British and Irish Lions wing Anthony Watson. They weren’t being asked to review the four-week sentence and determine whether they could hand down something more lenient.
All they had to do was deem whether the All Blacks’ proposed clash with Taranaki and Counties Manukau is a valid fixture, knowing that if they said it was, Williams could skip it, serve the last of his four-games on the sideline and become available to play in the first Bledisloe Cup clash on August 19 in Sydney.
Game or not? A decision right up there with chicken or fish in terms of complexity. Game or not? Surely there must be criteria set down to determine what constitutes a game and what doesn’t.
Either the ‘Game of Three Halves’ meets the criteria or it doesn’t and Wednesday night’s hearing surely should have been a five-minute job, 10 at most. Yes or no?
But the panel deliberated for two hours and then, seriously, went to have a lie down, promising they would bravely struggle on as soon as they could — suggesting the problem was up there with striking peace in the Middle East.
And it’s as much the attitude of the panel, of the judicial system, of the wider rugby executive that irks more than anything else.
The statement issued on Wednesday night gave every impression Williams, the All Blacks and the rugby-investing public should be grateful that such busy, important people have bothered to take the time to look at something so trivial and they would provide an answer when they were ready and not before.
It’s this culture of arrogance that is killing rugby. There is an increasing divide between the people playing and watching and the people managing and administering.
The latter are drifting further out of touch, stuck in a forgotten world where they feel it is their right to use information as power.
It draws parallels with industrial England. The workers are being pounded in the factories, asked to do ever more grunt work to create ever bigger profits, while the dandies lunch, deliberate and come up with increasingly bad decisions they don’t feel they have to explain or justify.
Someone needs to explain why it took four weeks to have an initial hearing and now, after six men have deliberated, discussed and debated, Williams had to wait even longer to learn when his suspension would actually end.
Perhaps, in this information vacuum, we should assume the six men involved in the two separate panels felt the more important decision was chicken or fish.