Wynne Gray: Rugby rulers need to up their game

Rucks have remained a profound mess at the Rugby World Cup. Photo / Brett Phibbs

As the World Cup surges towards its conclusion it's time for the sports rulers to up their game.

All the heavyweight coaches are in England and should be encouraged to stay an extra week and help nut out the laws with administrators so more people can understand the game. Rugby needs that health check, urgently.

Not in 2017 when global trials are set down to start after feedback from trials in lower level tournaments next year.

Rucks remain a profound mess, mauls are an illegal anachronism, off-sides have a wavy line going through them and we could go on. The framework of the game is strong but the details are becoming more blurred every season.

The World Cup has pulled in more than 2 million spectators and generated massive financial and social rewards for hosts England, World Rugby, sponsors and nations involved in the event.

Pool games delivered a quantity of content to peruse for a month before the tournament went up a notch to the exhilaration of knockout rugby amongst the major nations.

With that lift comes even greater pressure on match officials-men who are waging a losing battle against technology and the thousands of other eyes tuned into their performance.

Craig Joubert lost that fight and gathered the full weight of Scotland's displeasure before his World Rugby employers then delivered another slap about his final minute judgement.

Officials are never going to get many plaudits for games without controversy but cop all the blame when something, especially in the final minute, blows up in their face.

Did Scots centre Tommy Seymour suffer similar loathing when Tevita Kuridrani bounced him out of the way to set up a try for Adam Ashley-Cooper? It was a serious mistake but happened early in the game and was forgotten before perspective went awol in the last few minutes.

Joubert and his assistants got the core of their assignment right although a technical boffin with an intimate knowledge of every piece of rugby law, laser-sharp eyesight, access to super-slow motion footage and the greatest patience on the globe, would compile a lengthy list of mistakes they missed.

There lies the problem. The law-book, that reference book groaning with sections, sub-sections, indexes, paragraphs and clauses. It's far too complicated and technical.

In practice so-called rucks are an abomination where multiple infractions occur while the offside line in every game has a distinct dog-leg which is occasionally penalised.

The tackled ball is a contest to see how many crawls or forward rolls someone can attempt until his teammates arrive in support although Wayne Barnes shocked everyone at the weekend when he penalised a Springbok for ignoring a Welsh tackle when his knee hit the ground.

While most of the bigwigs are in London and their brains are focused World Rugby should be tapping them as part of a serious health check on the state of the game.