Gregor Paul: The absurd campaign that is killing rugby

Angus Ta'avao of the All Blacks is injured as referee Jaco Peyper talks to captain Sam Cane. Photo / Photosport.co.nz

OPINION:

Maybe when Twickenham and Aviva Stadium are regularly only half full for Six Nations tests will rugby's decision makers wake up to the fact that they are not saving the game with their yellow and red card fixation, but killing it.

Perhaps it will take a World Cup final being reduced to a lopsided farce for a great awakening to take place and for some of the most archaic and outdated thinking in administrative circles to be dragged into the second decade of the 21st century.

Rugby has been held hostage like this before. In the early to mid-1990s players around the world, most Southern Hemisphere administrators and the more free-thinking types from the North, all lobbied for the sport to go professional.

It was inevitable it would. Amateurism was not a realistic concept given the riches the sport was generating and the time it was demanding from the players and yet, despite the fact the tsunami was building, a minority of administrators denied its existence and clung to their belief that the game could indefinitely continue to slip envelopes of cash under doors and give players phoney jobs – do whatever it had to do to prevent a formal conversion to professionalism.

The current situation is not so different. There is a unified majority who know that the international game is dying as a modern entertainment product because of this crusade to use cards and the probing eye of the TMO to supposedly change player behaviour that is wild and reckless.

But it is an absurd campaign that has virtually no support. Players don't want it. Coaches don't want it. Fans don't want it. Broadcasters don't want it and most sensible executives and administrators don't want it.

And the truth is that referees don't want it either: they are caught in the middle at the moment, forced by their superiors to make decisions they don't support, like or understand. Decisions that make them the subject of social media derision and goodness knows how their mental health holds up.

In the South, there were moves made to mitigate the lunacy by introducing a trial law where teams could, after 20 minutes, replace someone who had been sent off.

It was a compromise move to prevent tests being ruined by the nonsensical rigidity of the laws, but when it came to vote on making this trial permanent, there was not enough support around the World Rugby table.

In their infinite wisdom, there were some representatives on World Rugby's voting committee who genuinely argued that a 20-minute sanction would incentivise teams to deliberately nobble their opposition's star player through an act of violence.

This qualifies as rank stupidity as well as being grossly offensive as it suggests that international coaches and players are stunningly devoid of any moral code.

But this weird position is the basis on which the whole movement for change can be built.

If there are genuine fears floating about that 20-minute red cards are going to encourage assassins across the globe to act as hit men, then the sanctions for foul play need to be lifted to extraordinarily punitive levels measured in months rather than weeks.

And in return, the sort of incidents seen in Dunedin last week involving Angus Ta'avao and Leicester Fainga'anuku are no longer considered foul play.

Because that's the idiocy of things at the moment – Ta'avao was red carded for foul play, but who on earth could sensibly argue that what he did should be considered in the same context as someone who punches, kicks, or headbutts an opponent.

Referee Jaco Peyper of South Africa makes a call during the International Test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and Ireland. Photo / Getty Images.

If he was guilty of anything, it was being slightly slow to anticipate that Ireland centre Garry Ringrose may have been about to cut back at him on the angle, but to call that foul play seems a fast way to kill fan interest.

If Ta'avao had stuck his arm out and coat hangered Ringrose – red card. If he'd punched him in the head – red card. If he'd gouged his eyes – red card because all three are clearly foul play.

But he was in the wrong place at the wrong time as he went about covering the defensive line and so there is no sensible law framework under which that should be considered foul play.

It really is that simple and rugby needs to either agree to 20-minute red cards for those sorts of incidents or an NRL report system so as the whole rugby ecosystem does not have to pay the price for a high-impact moment that was not borne of revenge, lunacy or technical recklessness, but instead some big lug trundling about doing his job.

For how much longer this minority of administrators can keep their finger in the dyke is open to debate. It took years longer than anyone expected to break the resistance to professionalism.

But the fight is coming, and it is going to be led by England coach Eddie Jones, who has expressed his exasperation with the state of affairs.

"I'm certainly going to be pushing for it [to change], because I've had enough," Jones said this week.

"I don't want to see a New Zealand-Ireland game like that ever again, where we don't even know how many people are supposed to be on the field. They get it wrong and they still don't right it. That's not the referees' fault, it's what they're being pushed to do, so we have to get that right.

"Otherwise, imagine at the next World Cup, you play a quarter-final, you get a red card and two yellows, you're down to 12 men and it's just ridiculous.

"We've just gone too far down one road. But certainly before November, I'm going to be agitating for something like that. We've got to keep the game safe, don't get me wrong, but accidental head contact and this incessant use of the TMO, we've got to cut out."