Beware this move to 15-a-side Rollerball
IF THE Six Nations failed to meet expectations, it was in a good way. Italy’s knee-clenching World Cup humiliation turned out to be the opposite of terminal; England ripped up their plan to win rugby matches without actually playing any rugby; and the tournament did not become ground zero for head-high tackling, although Paul Willemse’s red-card behaviour on opening night was so transparently reckless, you wondered if the French lock had somewhere better to be before the final whistle.
So far, so heartening. But what’s this coming over the sea from the southern hemisphere? Why, it’s the latest attempt to turn the union game into a form of 15-a-side Rollerball, courtesy of one Brendan Morris, the chief executive of SANZAAR – a position that gives him a very loud voice, more’s the pity.
Morris was the subject of an article in last weekend’s edition of TRP, to be found at the bottom of page 2. Look it up, if you haven’t read it already. And then think carefully about its implications for the sport.
Down there in Rugby Championship territory, the idea of a “20-minute red card” has gained significant amounts of traction, to the extent that its most enthusiastic proponents – Morris being one – want it written into law as soon as humanly possible, if not sooner.
For the avoidance of doubt, this is not about allowing teams to replace the worst kind of miscreant – the head-kicker, the gouger, the biter, the Anthony Joshua-strength puncher – after half a half of playing a man short. We’re talking here about yellow-card offenders whose sins are upgraded to red-card status after due consideration by the fact-checkers in the disciplinary “bunker”.
On the face of it, then, it is just about possible to discuss this brainwave without coming to blows, albeit in the style most closely associated with Brian Clough, who famously said of disagreements: “If I had an argument with a player, we’d sit down, talk it through…and then decide I’m right.”
However, the rationale put forward by Morris is another thing entirely. Here’s the relevant quote: “The biggest issue I think we have in the game at the moment…is the balance between safety and spectacle. It’s not about one overriding the other. It’s about having a balanced approach to the game. Player welfare is still our number one priority. However, we have to start looking at this game with a fan-obsessed lens. We’re in the entertainment business and we’re just not competing against the NRL and the AFL (aka rugby league and Aussie Rules), we’re competing against Netflix and Taylor Swift, and the beach and the movies.”
Read in a certain way, this is dangerous talk. Is Morris simply arguing that full dismissals at Test level ruin the contest for the viewing multitudes? If so, he’s wrong. Last year’s World Cup final was at its most compelling AFTER the All Blacks lost their captain Sam Cane,
“Last year’s World Cup Final was at its most compelling after the All Blacks lost their captain”
not before. And if, God forbid, he’s arguing that red cards for shoulderto-head hits amount to a betrayal of the sport’s gladiatorial spirit and, as a consequence, make it less of a “spectacle”, it makes him even wronger.
Maybe something was lost in translation – you can never be 100 per cent sure when it comes to understanding the things they say about the union game down Wallaby way, as the Eddie Jones fandango demonstrated. But anyone tuning into some of the rugby league chat shows in that part of the world will be left in no doubt that the only thing the 13-a-siders love more than a legal big hit is one of the illegal variety.
The coaching community will of course deny it with its collective hand firmly on the Good Book, but the dog in the street knows that some of those planning their tactics for a big game on the weekend – not all, but some – will suggest that someone might, in extremis, go high on the opposition’s best player and send him straight to La-La Land, secure in the knowledge that a 20-minute penalty is absorbable. We’re all familiar with the “take one for the team” theory of rugby. This would be the “give one for the team” version.
Perhaps most alarmingly, Morris and his fellow travellers are anything but outliers south of the Equator. Plenty of people think the way they do, some of them arguing that sendings-off are distorting too many high-profile contests and others falling into the “game’s gone soft” category. We have them up here in the north, too, even though the Six Nations governing class is reported to be deeply sceptical about the move to 20-minute cards. Even now, with health and safety supposedly at the top of the sport’s agenda, there are well-paid broadcasters who wet their pants whenever a car-crash impact propels a player into the middle of next week – “Ooh, what a hit”; “Wow, he was absolutely melted” – and big-name podcasters who insist that rugby should stop apologising for itself and “embrace the physicality”.
Whatever turns you on. But language matters in top-level sport and when we’re talking of something as vital as the “balance between safety and spectacle”, we should choose our words carefully.