KEY POINTS:
It's time the International Rugby Board sorted out this new rules nonsense once and for all. The All Blacks on Saturday will be playing under one set of rules against the Wallabies in Hong Kong and then will head off to the UK where they will play under another set of rules.
Hello? Why don't they have a game of league, football and maybe netball while they're at it?
What is the point of the international game shooting itself in the foot like this? It's a joke. I have been rubbing shoulders recently with a few once-was'ers like myself and their view is the same as that of the general rugby public: bugger it.
The game has been jerked around with two different versions of the new rules for long enough. It's confusing and boring and ultimately damaging to the game.
The length of time it has taken to complete the transaction - and it still isn't completed, incredibly - is annoying people.
You wonder whether the IRB even realise what harm they are doing the game. First, they can't even agree on which set of rules they want to trial. One set down here, another up there. Good grief.
They want to put the ELVs in place, apparently, but they can't even put one set in place. They want to globalise the game but can't even get a set of globalised new rules together. They change every five minutes.
I am doing a spot of under-15 coaching with former All Black Jeff Wilson and we had to stop and think the other day, `now, do we coach those rules or those ones...' It's ridiculous.
Former England captain Will Carling called the IRB old farts but it's worse than that - they are old farts who can't make up their minds.
Put the new rules in place, if that's what they want. Make a decision. But they can't. Now, to make matters worse, the Northern Hemisphere and Wales in particular are embroiled in another player release issue. Scotland and Ireland have central control over players but in Wales, England and France, the clubs control the players and their availability for international rugby.
It's all upside down and turned-around. The international game is going to be badly damaged if they don't get to grips with this problem properly. I note that Warren Gatland has already warned Welsh rugby he might leave if it doesn't get sorted out.
The IRB need the new rules sorted out and they need to get the issue of who's in charge sorted out. I don't know who is in charge but it sure isn't the IRB.
If they aren't careful, the international game will go to hell in a handcart.
While I'm talking about Jeff Wilson, I think it will be good if he and Craig Dowd get the coaching job at North Harbour. I know some people think good players do not necessarily make good coaches but Dowd has done a lot of coaching in the UK and Wilson has been involved with the Highlanders and with Murray Mexted's rugby academy.
Wilson's availability may mean the Highlanders may not have sorted themselves out properly yet - though I note that Peter Russell, the successful coach of Hawke's Bay, is going there as assistant coach.
We have lost more than a few coaches overseas lately - Robbie Deans and Gatland and now I see Tony Hanks of Waikato has been pulled over to Wasps to help coach them, with an eye to when current Wasps coach Ian McGeechan and Shaun Edwards are with the 2009 Lions in South Africa.
But we do have good young coaches coming up. Russell's assistant in Hawke's Bay was, I believe, highly influential there - Tom Coventry, the former Waikato forward. He took the forwards who were the Bay's strength this year.
So we do have young coaches doing the hard yards and coming up - and that has to be good for our game.
