It’s a shambles and that’s all down to World Rugby
It’s six years since the Oxford English Dictionary first included ‘omnishambles’ in its pages, and there can rarely have been anything that more deserved the term than this RWC.
First we had the totally avoidable confusion surrounding the tackle area, something which is still happening three weeks into the tournament, and now we’ve got the situation surrounding Typhoon Hagibis.
Integrity has to be at the heart of any sporting tournament, and that means every team getting a fair crack of the whip, something that has gone right out of the window in this RWC.
We’ll never know which team would have finished top of England’s group, as their final match against France has been cancelled. Similarly, the Italians, irrespective of whether they merited their place in the tournament, should have had the chance to concede a barrowload of points against the All Blacks, but instead they are on their way home. England, New Zealand and France now have an extra week’s rest, and surely that isn’t fair on their competitors?
I was surprised to read some of the Press corps in Japan defending World Rugby’s actions, and comprehensively missing the main point. Of course it right to postpone the games if there was a risk to life, but not to cancel them.
If you decide to run a major sporting event in an earthquake zone during the typhoon season, you don’t need the wisdom of Solomon to work out that there’s a risk of disruption. That’s why you need to have contingency plans in place, and to have thought through the implications of what might happen.
I’ve seen the argument put forward that this month is out of the prime typhoon season, but the biggest-ever typhoon on record happened in October – it’s really not that unusual.
regular readers will know, I’m no fan of World Rugby, and I think they have hugely damaged rugby’s image with their actions. Their defence will probably be that with just six weeks to play the tournament, there wasn’t room to postpone and reschedule, but they mustn’t be allowed to wriggle off the hook that easily.
It was crystal clear to everyone that asking the finalists to play seven Test matches in six weeks was ridiculous. That happened because the much-vaunted global calendar has never been adequately settled, and that is down to World Rugby.
The time has surely come to ask serious queswas tions about their role – how much more dithering and ineptitude does there have to be before people finally lose patience with them?
Scotland’s victory over Russia on Wednesday epitomised everything that’s wrong with the RWC. As a proud Scot, my overwhelming feeling was one of embarrassment.
Russia started with a defeat to Japan, were asked to turn out four days later and were beaten by Samoa, before losing heavily against a mediocre Ireland. They aren’t very good, and after playing four matches in 19 days were clearly shattered.
The ITV commentators did their best to put lipAs stick onto this particular pig: we were told that this Russian player, and another, had had wonderful World Cups, but they were fighting a losing battle. We then heard that the Scots were in full stride, and they were ‘bigged up’ to a ridiculous extent, even as the Russian missed-tackle count soared into the 30s.
Here’s the reality: this is a Russian team beaten heavily in a RWC warm-up by Jersey who finished fourth in the Championship. Imagine what the likes of Saracens or Exeter would do to them!
I stand by my view that matches such as this devalue the tournament, and it’s time for a serious rethink.
Wales finally came through against Fiji, and again we had a decision that may have changed the course of the tournament. I have watched Ken Owens’ tackle on Fiji No.8 Bill Mata quite a few times now and I cannot understand why it was yellow and not a straight red.
We keep hearing that players have a duty of care, but in this case Owens seemed to disregard that and should have seen red.
That was in the first-half of the match, so the end result might have been very different had Owens gone.
Some have posed this question, and it’s a good one: had it been a Fiji player tipping a Welsh one, would the decision have been the same? I have my doubts.