KEY POINTS:
Leave it to rugby. The spat between the International Rugby Board and numerous international news agencies, which threatened to affect coverage of the Rugby World Cup, was a wonderful window on what is wrong with the governance of the world game.
We'll sidestep, with your permission, the details of the spat. Suffice it to say that it was a control/financial squabble over intellectual property rights - a vexed and complicated issue. It might even be that the world's news media do have to give some ground on this and other issues as those who organise such big sporting events strive to "own" matters in every possible way. You could even say the IRB is getting into the media business.
What drops my jaw is that this row broke out just a day or two before the RWC starts.
Let me see - maths isn't my strong point - but, yes, I think I'm right... the IRB has had four years to sort matters. How come it went off all Middle East on World Cup Friday?
Here is a small list of things the IRB might more usefully be doing rather than picking a fight with the world's media a day or two out from the Cup:
1. Driving nails through their feet
2. Smearing cat poo on their heads
3. Humming May The Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose while standing on one leg and attempting to drink nail varnish.
Rugby is not such a great sport and it is not in such a great position that it can afford to brass off (a) some of the people who help take it to the masses and who help their sponsors and broadcasters get their 'payback' and (b) the fans.
Here is a small list of things that rugby has been for fans this year, if you take into account issues like rotation, reconditioning, and over-emphasis on the World Cup:
1. Boring
2. Confusing
3. Arrogant
Look in the Handbook Of How To Be A Successful Global Sport and you will find none of these three dubious qualities listed as essential.
This is the same sport which reacted to the horrendous mess that is rugby's rules by - tah dah - bringing in new rules. But not until next year, therefore making sure the global showcase is held with the current nonsensical ones.
Australia's NRL, faced with an idiotic rule, changed it - with a conference call.
Here is a small list of things that move faster than the IRB:
1. An ice age
2. Continental drift
3. A dead hippo
This is the same IRB who do not really govern their sport. They cannot prevent the Northern Hemisphere's rugby clubs from squeezing their international players so that, progressively, international rugby is becoming ruled more by clubs and less by countries.
This is why Samoa turned up at the World Cup and had to be rescued by kindly French souls as the team did not have enough money to buy food because - get this in a tournament making a ¬135m profit - IRB rules do not allow paying for teams until the tournament actually starts. This is the same Samoa whose national team has suffered because its players are prized in northern club competitions, not to mention New Zealand and Australia.
This is the same IRB who have talked for 20 years about finding an international 'window' so that Northern and Southern Hemisphere teams can play each other in a mutually convenient timetable. Twenty years and still no window. Not even a hole in the wall. This is the same IRB who have flapped the jowls about Argentina being admitted to the big boys club but have done nothing. Small wonder the Pumas rubbed it in after beating France yesterday.
The IRB has embraced the professional age with gusto. They have embraced the broadcasters and their bounteous money with even more gusto.
There's just one teeny-weeny thing. Any sport which hammers its own supporters by inviting the media not to cover a global tournament deserves to go the way of the dodo. This would never happen in football. Nor rugby league. Not even cricket - and cricketers will happily bitch-slap each other to death at the drop of a hat.
Only rugby. You see, the IRB know exactly where they are going. They are heading down the Yellow Brick Road, earning more and more money; fixated by brand and marketing and rights and intellectual property and... what was that other thing?
Oh yes, that's right - rugby.
Any sport which forgets its roots is in grave danger. The IRB will feel it is doing its sport a great service. But, if I can paraphrase Alice from Lewis Carroll's Alice Through The Looking Glass: "I can see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"I wish I had such eyes," said the King. "Imagine being able to see nobody. And at such a distance too."
