All Blacks captain Sam Cane speaks to referee Angus Gardner during a test last year. Photo / Photosport
All Blacks captain Sam Cane speaks to referee Angus Gardner during a test last year. Photo / Photosport
OPINION
To some degree, events in the UK during these next two weeks will end up shaping how this year’s World Cup plays out.
To be more specific, the next two weeks could end up having a pronounced impact on the All Blacks’ chances in France, as coaches and executivesfrom around the world have turned up in the UK for a pre-tournament pow-wow to determine how they want the World Cup to be refereed and what laws they want to be applied.
And support is growing to adopt the strict time management policies that have been adopted by Super Rugby and empower referees to stop this World Cup being blighted by the time-wasting that has become such a feature of test rugby.
Typically, a World Rugby get-together where the suits shuffle papers and talk in riddles to fill in the time between morning tea and lunch, wouldn’t be worth bothering about.
But the suits and indeed every international coach heading to France later this year is in the UK determined to reach agreement that test rugby needs a massive rebrand and that the World Cup is the place to sell the sport as fast, dynamic and open.
It would seem, that at last, most major nations are on the same page and that they want to empower referees to stamp out the cynical time-wasting that has become the norm in test rugby.
The slow trudge to the lineout, the long huddle to discuss the next move, the dead periods where players are supposedly setting a scrum but are standing doing nothing – these are all on the list to be eliminated at the World Cup.
The days of teams being able to suck the life out of a test by deliberate ploys designed to buy their behemoth players a longer rest period are over.
What’s driven this desire to change and allow games to once again to be genuinely aerobic contests, has been the quality of rugby produced in the Six Nations under the management of a refereeing cohort who have been empowered to speed things up.
Fair play to World Rugby, they sent their officials into this Six Nations – telling them to stamp out all the time-wasting nonsense that has put so many people off test rugby, and the results have been spectacular.
The rugby has been open and fluid, the ball has been in play longer, and while that has plenty to do with skill-levels and more ambitious game-plans, it’s also been aided by the stricter management of referees who have not allowed teams to manipulate breaks in play to their advantage.
It may not sound like much, but it has had a profound impact. It has meant that conditioning has become more of a factor as teams haven’t been able to create additional rest periods or elongate legitimate breaks in play.
Fatigue has played more of a role and so games have been that fraction more open with more space.
And this takes us to the All Blacks and what a fast, less confrontational game may do for them.
Clearly, they have had self-inflicted issues these last few years, but so too is it true that their leaner athletes have been depowered by the time-wasting pandemic which has swept through the game.
The All Blacks are conditioned to play a high-tempo, high-skill game that works best when the contest is not held to ransom by faked injuries and collapsed scrums.
The pattern has been there to see over the years – that the All Blacks tend to be at their poorest when their opponent has been at their most cynical.
The slower the game, the greater the number of collisions and the more the advantage is skewed to those sides who have built bigger, more powerful athletes who can control a test if the aerobic content is low and fatigue doesn’t become a factor.
It’s obviously ridiculous to believe that if World Rugby agrees to adopt a zero-tolerance policy to time wasting at the World Cup, that it will be handing the All Blacks the Webb Ellis trophy, but there’s no question it will improve their chances.
New Zealand may have lost its way as an innovative rugby nation these last few years, but there has never been any doubt about the raw athleticism of the players.
Imagine a brave new world where Ardie Savea, Rieko Ioane, Will Jordan and Beauden Barrett are able to play against tiring defenders.
For much of the professional age that was the key to the All Blacks’ success – they could damage teams in the last quarter simply because they had individuals who were almost impossible to contain once the opposition were suffering from oxygen debt.
No one should run out and bet their house on the All Blacks winning if World Rugby agrees to introducing stop clocks in France, but it’s certainly going to make New Zealand a more dangerous proposition.
