Having destroyed the best club tournament

….the old Super 12, the suits are in the process of diminishing the Rugby Championship with no contest next year. And then the WC in 2027, the jewel of the rugby world, is given a likely NZ/Bok QF just to accommodate 4 additional teams that are likely to exit without winning a game. Absurd is too kind a word. There is likely to be a sense of anti climax in this carefully engineered farce, designed to ensure a European finalist.

And then we have the painful reffing controversies every week, which only seem to beget more complex laws. Resulting in the Argentinian/English match being decided by a reffing team that didn’t know the applicable law. The expanded role of the refs, who now coach players constantly and the TMOs who seem to have something to look at with every try, is changing the game and not for the better.

Rugby desperately needs a leader with vision as opposed to a 52 man committee that seems to be incapable of protecting the things that made it a great sport.

World Rugby Council

The Council is World Rugby’s highest decision-making body and is chaired by Brett Robinson, the World Rugby Chair who sits as an independent.

It votes on key decisions over such issues as the hosting rights and competition structure for the Rugby World Cup and has the power to admit or expel unions from its membership.

The most significant changes to Council came in November 2017 when World Rugby announced that the number of people able to sit on Council would increase from 32 with the 17 new members to be women, aligning with its ground-breaking Women’s Plan 2017-25 and its objective to accelerate the development of women in rugby on and off the field of play and further gender equality at all levels of the game.

There are currently 52 members of the World Rugby Council.

Perhaps I'm a bit of a calamity Carl, but I have a sense of unease about the current state of rugby.

This Greatest Rivalry tour, is it gonna amount to nostalgia and not much more? It's not gonna fix Kiwi rugby, that's for sure. If anything, it'll be a cash grab and prolong the sorting out of issues that need to be sorted.

The Kiwis were milking SA Rugby for years. Add in the shockingly bad refs and it was inevitable South Africa would move North as I pointed out and advocated for years before it actually happened.

Of course the Rugby governing body is bad. Their recent red card decisions prove that as did the two top teams meeting in the quarters so as to assist a NH team's advances to the finals. They do not want another Bok ab final.

Plum

The fact is New Zealand Rugby is in financial trouble and the "tour" next year aimed at helping NZ Rugby to get some extra money. But then the bug gers cancelled Super Ru gby without regard to the financial implications - so nw they are lookin g for another cash cow.

So lets look at the financial situation as to the RWC costs in 2023:-

The international federation "achieved the best financial result in its history" from the tournament while the FFR made "a minimum loss of €19.2 million, rising to €28.9 million," Moscovici said.

So in Aussie dollar terms the RWC starts off wth a potntial loss of $Aus 50 million plus another additonal cost of mildly put $5 000 000 - the fact is the WC being extended in 2027 ends up in anther financial disaster for Auatralia. It means that the cost of yjr extra teams coud be as high as $AUS 200 000 team will be added to torunament costs meaning the Tournmanet will start off witha loss to Australia of $Aus55 million dolalr

To date the fact is that Aus Rugby will further be bedevilled by the cancellation of the Rugby Campionship in 2026.

The above is the reason why SA Rugby wants nothing to do with hosting RWC's in future - it alwas turn ut to be a disaste for the hosting companies and get worse progressively with each RWC.

S ombody is gettin g rich from RWC 's - but that is not Rugby Unions in the host countries.

What is happening is becoming incresingly financial messes. The fact is that if the top 12 teams divided into 4 groups shul;d be the only teams playing in RWC. Meaning the RWC should last not more than 5 weeks. . .

Who is getting rich, if it’s not the host countries??

The Tourism Industry to start off with. In France for instance in 2007 the Clubs in France and the UK got tickets at normal price and sell them on e-bay at profits of up to 400%

Would be surprised if corruption is not involved.

Management is obviously incompetent ad the budgeting and controls a farce.

There has been so many laws, but I agree that state of rugby has been in decline.

The teams have gotten a lot better and the skill of the players is so much better than in the past. Teams are more professional but it is the current ruling body that spoils the game.

So on the one hand Darren,

They try to fix the scrum and line outs, how much space their should be, what should teams do at the ruck to keep the ruck moving,

But on the other hand Darren, constant replays to check all sorts of foul play, knock-ons and ref debates that takes up ages.

Further to this each ref or hemisphere have a certain way of blowing so teams are coached to play to the limits to figure things out.

What they have done is to turn it into a ref centred game to avoid ref bashing.

They should allow the coaches to call time-out or the captain and make a challenge. But we can't have this nanny state version of rugby.

My biggest bug bear is the fact that the World Cup has become such a farce. I don't understand why they had to make the draw so early.

They have this World Leage next year where we have the north and south completing against each other. Great that we will be playing 3 northern hemisphere teams at home in a space of 3 weeks and 3 nothern hemisphere teams up north which will give us a ranking.

This to me is obvious and the World Cup draw should only be drawn after the ranking. Why are NZ and SA meeting in the quarters. It should give the top 4 teams a chance to meet in the Semi.

However, if you look who is running the game, still stale old people that mills around functions and sipping wine all evening that has no interest in the game itself but rather their social life at this events.

I do think somebody needs to poor in some serious money into rugby and ensure that both country and countries have the correct structures to produce a global brand of rugby.

I was talking to a colleague from Galway and his brother use to play for Ireland. He wanted to know how I feel about the URC and whether many SA people are following it,

I said it is a bit hard to follow because we don't really know the players and we don't know the nothern hemisphere players that well. It is also the fact that the URC are not always against strength vs strength.