Dialogue: Rugby by committee - no wonder public brassed off

What is wrong with rugby? T.P. McLEAN* casts his veteran's eye over the modern game and finds that there are plenty of reasons for disenchantment.

Is rugby as good now as it used to be? Never, but then it never was.

While still recovering from the huge task of three readings of "The state of the union" in the Weekend Herald - the longest story the Herald has run in my not inconsiderable experience ("even longer than some of your club rugby reports," said the fellow whom I intend to throw into the Mangere sewage ponds) - I called up a few old comrades.

They, like me, were astonished by revelations of the vast income that now annually pours into the Bank of New Zealand accounts of the New Zealand Rugby Football Union.

They were gratified that substantial portions of this was being chucked into the coffers of the 27 provincial unions and thence to clubs and, I surmise, schools.

But the Weekend Herald also reported that minor bodies of the game were troubled by the discovery that money isn't everything in their sport.

It is at this point that not a few ardent lovers of the game are becoming more and more unhappy. Money, they are saying among themselves, isn't everything. Surely what counts most to players and spectators is the quality of the game.

"When the Super 12 competition was formed," that smallish but champion loose forward, D. J. Graham, told me, "I forecast that while South Africa and Australia would benefit, New Zealand wouldn't.

"In what used to be South Africa's Currie Cup competition, the strong provinces had the benefit of easy gallops against their smaller unions. With only three states playing (I include Australian Capital Territory), the Aussies would be offered a chance (which they have seized) to build up teams and players.

"But in New Zealand, the club competition, basic to our success, would be killed stone dead. I go back to my own experience of playing for Auckland University as a kid in the company of such tough, strong men as Bob Wall and Barry Hutchison in the front row alone. Gee, they knew their onions. You just had to try to catch up."

Graham was one of four men - Colin Meads, Tane Norton and J. J. Stewart being the others - who last year were commissioned by the Rugby Foundation to report on aspects of forward play in the modern game. Their collective experience was vast. Their diligence was keen. Their report, of 21 A4 pages of single-spaced typing, was even more extensive than the Herald's state of the union report.

The report is a candid and fundamentally unhappy statement about the modern game. Can you wonder at this when you observe the profound changes wrought by the instinctive player who himself didn't know what he was going to do until the ball was in his hands.

Are there such players today? Only one, in my observation: Orene Ai'i, who would be the last to thank Frank Oliver and John Kirwan for playing him at fullback when his proper place is first five-eighths.

The All Black selectors have spoken. As seems to be inevitable in the modern game, there are no real sensations, not a sign of interest in those players - Ai'i, James Arlidge, Ben Blair and Paul Steinmetz, - who among the backs of the Super 12 season seemed to be to be unusually gifted.

When that brilliant money man, Brian Gaynor - would that he were writing rugby - recently discussed in the Herald the finances of the New Zealand union, he published a graph showing that television had contributed $34.5 million and sponsorship, and licensing $33.9 million.

Far below, all but invisible, was the line for gate receipts - no more than $3.9 million. That figure demonstrates that public interest in rugby in terms of spectator attendance is diminishing.

Who can blame John Q. Public for being disenchanted? The frantic heeling at the ruck would put off any mother. The change from the referee being the sole judge of the game to being one of a committee of four is distressing. Lineout play sees men running hither and thither, like so many headless fowls.

And how would you like to be in the front row, straining hard and waiting an eternity while the referee stands at the mouth to make sure his command of "Engage" has been understood?

Oliver Cromwell said to the Long Parliament: "You have too long been here for any good that you may be doing. Begone, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

I have a feeling each of the Big Four could feel like saying this to the International Rugby Board.

* T.P. McLean, a former Herald rugby writer, is the author of many books about the All Blacks.