STOP WHINING ABOUT CANCELLED MATCHES

IT IS a shame that matches have been cancelled at the World Cup. It definitely takes a bit of oomph out of the tournament and makes it stutter a bit. Whoever goes on to win it, there will always be people saying that some games were missed, but the rules are put in place for a reason. It is unfortunate, it is not what we want to see, but they had to think about the safety of everyone involved. We’ve been talking about HIAs and high tackles, and everyone has been saying that player safety is paramount. Well now there’s a typhoon coming! It is such a dangerous situation. People who are whining about what has happened probably don’t really understand what a typhoon is. I had to google it, to get my head around it. And it’s not good. At all. I got my weather report from Paul Grayson’s tweet, saying that the last typhoon had done hundreds of millions of pounds worth of damage and three people died, but that was not even half the size of what’s coming this time. People living in Blighty think that we have wind and rain all year round, so they could deal with a typhoon, but they might have to re-evaluate. These things rip up buildings. I would be interested to know if they could have played those cancelled games anywhere without supporters. Could they have moved them somewhere, to closed stadiums if necessary, to make sure they still happened? There are conspiracy theories going round about New Zealand not wanting to agree to a five-day turn-around, but those theories don’t matter because there were rules put in place. The rules were agreed and everyone signed up to them before the tournament. So if the All Blacks want to use those rules to their advantage, they can do that.