Cheika is doing the game a favour by taking dig at referees
Australia coach is wrong to question ruling on high tackles – but he is keeping the debate live
From Toyko to Doha, the weekend snapshots told you all you needed to know about the respective wisdom of staging global events in non-traditional locations. Trains returning from Shizuoka on Saturday and the Tokyo Stadium 24 hours later were bouncing, shaking, singing vessels of joy, a karaoke on rails, as thousands of Japanese, Irish, Australian and Wales supporters, plus a good many neutrals getting their vicarious kicks from great sporting occasions, returned to base, wholly immersed in the experience, value for money and a balm to the soul. In Qatar, meanwhile ….
It is easy to overlook the fact that as RWC 2019 presents stories and vistas daily, generating headlines or delighting the senses, it was considered a real risk 10 years ago to take this tournament to Japan. Rugby in Japan, athletics and football in Qatar? Even now, there is evidence that chunks of the local population remain untouched by the event and certainly there are concerns that any legacy might be wasted if the Japan union does not put in place better programmes for kids and colts.
The tournament is reaching out into its own locale as well as transcending boundaries within the sport. It has proved there is scope for expansion, shown that teams such as Japan itself, or Georgia in Europe, Uruguay too, have claims on being admitted to established competitions.
Image is everything in the modern age, beamed through television sets or projected on social media. The pictures may embellish the scene, but they do capture a mood. The backdrop is one thing; the sporting detail on the ground another. The World Cup is working on both levels.
There are some here who fear the controversy over officiating at the World Cup is detrimental to the tournament. It is anything but. It is just what it needs. Every time there is an incident, or every time Wallabies head coach Michael Cheika sounds off about the “spirit of the game” being traduced by Fiji or complaining to be “embarrassed” as a former player by what he considers to be fussy rulings made on tackles and contact to appease “doctors and lawyers”, and “spooking” the referees, it highlights the very issue World Rugby wants to see up in bright lights and strident headlines.
The naysayers complain that it will deter mums from allowing their kids to take up a sport which seems so potentially dangerous. It is the opposite. It is still beyond the ken of some coaches and players that this is not a governing body adopting a hard-line stance just because it wants to exert its authority for no other reason than to indulge itself in power gestures. It is being done because there would be no way back for a sport in which there were four deaths alone in France last season through destructive contact with the head if there were further fatalities. Rugby would stand accused, rightly so, of being negligent if it shrugged its shoulders and hid behind the myopic view that it was a tough game where knocks happen.
That appeared to be the opinion of Wallaby centre Samu Kerevi, who bleated that he might have to switch to rugby league after being penalised for a fend on Wales fly-half Rhys Patchell. The Welshman had come in high and Kerevi tucked the ball into him and drove forward, carelessly raising his forearm as he did so. Patchell escaped censure although he was fortunate given that he was upright and could easily have made contact with Kerevi’s head. The outcry from the Wallabies is misplaced. A fend-off is illegal, a hand-off is not. For Cheika to have a dig at doctors for forcing the administrators to take action is lamentable – a slur on their integrity. Making the game safer is the paramount concern, not the few borderline decisions that cause coaches to get hot and bothered. The end will justify the means. Any confusion will dissipate as on-field decisions become more consistent.
As for claims that there is subliminal racism in play as to who gets penalised and who does not, the fact that Wallaby wing Reece Hodge, with the looks of a Bondi Beach surf dude, was the first to get banned must have escaped the attention. By all means let us bemoan the lot of Pacific Island countries in terms of opportunity and heed too the penalty counts against them, but this rash of citings and sanctions has no basis in the colour of skin or ethnicity.
The debate will run and run through this intoxicating World Cup. The rancour, the outbursts and the questioning are all part of the narrative of a tournament that just keeps on giving.