48 hours: Cynical Cantabs get away with murder

While Canterbury and Auckland were battling for the log o' wood on Saturday night, I was at the intimate Silo theatre in central Auckland, watching a play about a man who has an affair with a goat.

The major risk - about replay rugby watching as opposed to being a goat in the wrong place at the wrong time - is that the gremlins do their worst while you are away.

In other words, the main danger is that you've stuffed up the video settings again.

In this case a catastrophe was only just averted because, seconds from departing for man and beast, it was realised that the daylight saving clock clean-up operation of a week ago had failed to net the video recorder.

Missing the first half of the final Ranfurly Shield challenge of the season would have meant missing the winning and the losing of the game.

Canterbury with a lead at home are about as safe a bet as Roger Federer in a tennis final or Tiger Woods teeing off last at the end of a golf tournament. Barring major accidents, like being reduced to 12 men, Canterbury would never surrender that advantage.

There actually was a case, however, for reducing Canterbury to 12 men rather than the 14 they survived rather well with for 10 minutes. A strong case.

First things first. Auckland deserve no great sympathy - they are too mad and disorganised, although often entertaining. But they deserve some.

If the Ranfurly Shield holders and NPC champions won the game in the first half, then they lost respect in the second. The level of persistent offending - to shut down an Auckland side that relies on flow and ball movement - was beyond the limit of what should be tolerated.

From interfering on the wrong side of rucks and mauls to constantly loitering and charging offside, to suspicious wrong number counts at lineouts, the country's finest team were a blot on the game.

And it is a game which encourages such blots.

If this is what union is about, then maybe Graham Lowe is not crackers in claiming that the magic of Benji Marshall can lead to a league revolution to depose union.

Not that you suspect this will happen in Godzone, but the rugby monolith may stand at a dangerous point next to the exhilarating league which flourished among a few underdogs this season.

If this had been South Africa against the All Blacks, and especially if the Springboks had won, there would be an outcry against these tactics. What is more, Canterbury are better than that and should have more respect for their mana and the game.

Which leads to the general subject of rules and match officials. Paul Honiss and his men let Canterbury get away with murder.

Despite all the pomp, dramatic lectures, constant instructions and high-handedness, the officials are often out of tune or hamstrung in dealing with what really goes on.

The referees appear as a policeman handing a parking ticket to villains about to leave for a heist, while their assistants wade in as back-ups who notice that the tread is starting to wear on the back left tyre. And hey fellas, those windscreen wipers need looking at. Make it snappy.

It is now a standing (collapsing) joke among commentators - most of whom actually played rugby at the highest level - that the referees know next to nothing about the dodgy dealings at scrum time.

At least they have an excuse there, because who would really know. But when it comes to persistent breaching of the offside line it's a different story. Ball-starved Canterbury somehow staged many of their illegal deeds in official blindspots.

Rugby is at its most ludicrous when not only do the players fail to take heed of the sternly issued warnings, but so do the referees themselves.

You only have to watch those kid psychology programmes to know how bedlam spreads when the little darlings can't work out their boundaries, when threats of punishment are not followed up.

The question is whether rugby bosses will remain happy with the status quo and resist another overhaul.

An alternative is a much tougher route, maybe where the warning system is formalised as in, say, basketball. For example, two team warnings of offside leads to an automatic sinbinning. And the blatantly deliberate offside charge (read Mose Tuiali'i) is almost worthy of instant yellow cards. The emphasis needs to switch around, to breed extreme caution among defenders rather than allowing so much benefit of the doubt.

It's also hard to see the value of referees dishing out arbitrary lectures and warnings, and then even failing to act on them. The game is in danger of being strangled by ruck infringers and advancing defensive lines who know the rewards heavily outweigh the risk of offending.

And why, for instance, does getting the numbers wrong at lineout draw only a free kick. Players perfectly capable of calculating into the hundreds of thousands when it comes to their wages turn dense when asked to count up to seven.

The law book may claim this to be a "technical" offence, as opposed to untechnical things like punching a bloke on the jaw, but it is a tactic employed to remove the threat of lineout drives or swift attacks from long throws.

The record books will suggest that Canterbury were an attacking colossus with a four tries to nil victory. If only.

Rugby is not alone in wilting under big-game pressure - just check soccer's World Cup qualifiers.

But it fails too often because defenders have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by lying on the wrong side of rucks, putting a hand to the ball on the ground, or being offside.

Canterbury were hammered in the penalty count, but they weren't hammered to the point that it actually meant something.

It is common at this point to say "that is not to take anything away from Canterbury's win", but I'll resist that temptation. The game was a carefully planned shambles.

At times like Saturday night, the love of rugby becomes an affair with a goat.