A new year, and soon enough rugby union will swing into prominence as the RBS Six Nations Championship begins. Now place your hand on your heart and tell me: do you understand the laws of this bloody game? When the referee blows for an infringement, do you know what he is blowing for before you are told?
This is not a question that divides serious rugby buffs from the rest. Nor is it a question that divides rugby professionals from the rest. It is not one that divides the players on the field from the rest, or even the player doing the infringing from the rest. It is a question that separates the referee from every other individual on the planet.
What happens in rugby? A player takes the ball, moves forward a little and gets tackled. A whole load of players then roll about on the ground. Pheep! The referee gives a penalty.
It is a judgment that appears to have very little relevance to what is happening. I used to think this was just me and my silly ignorance. But it’s not. It’s a fundamental problem with the game.
All match officials have a taste for power, or they wouldn’t do it. The best use that power without letting it get to their heads. But if you have a taste for power without responsibility, rugby union is your game.
A rugby union referee holds the destiny of a game in the pea of his whistle and has carte blanche to apply this power in a totally arbitrary fashion.
The players don’t understand, the crowd don’t understand, the press don’t understand, the commentators don’t understand. It is a mystery to which only the referee is privy.
This has been the case for years. The most famous example is the 2003 World Cup final in which England, manifestly superior to Australia, were constantly penalised for utterly mysterious reasons. André Watson, the referee, had a reputation for bringing about close games; he made that one close, all right.
But as the laws of rugby union change and change again in their baffling way, so the mess gets worse.
Some apologists say: “Oh, rugby union has to be complicated, because it’s so violent.” Reasonable point. But I can follow the decision-making of American football and rugby league easily enough. Even Australian No Rules football makes more sense than rugby union.
That’s because rugby union makes none at all. Which is why we should all salute Brendan Venter, who has pointed out that the emperor has no clothes, that the sport has no rules.
Venter, the Saracens director of rugby, treated the press to a 40-minute jeremiad on the state of the game, with the main point being that refereeing has become not perplexing but random: “You get a penalty, then they get a penalty.”
You can hire an earpiece to listen to the referees at Twickenham internationals. I never take one; I get too fascinated by the bizarre drivel of pre-emptive refereeing, another thing Venter hates. Imagine trying to do it in another sport: “No, Thierry, don’t touch it with your hand — no, really don’t. Now that’s twice, don’t do it again — oh, it’s a goal.”
It all goes wrong at the breakdown, the point at which the ball-carrier is tackled and must release the ball while the rest scrabble about for it. Then the whistle goes pheep. I always thought rugby was about running and passing and tackling, but it has become a game of scrabbling about until the next baffling penalty is given.
How do you solve the problem? Search me — though rugby league’s simple convention that you keep the ball in a tackle works superbly. But I do know where to begin, and that’s by acknowledging that there is a problem, and that it’s a serious one.
But instead, they’ll fine Venter for telling the truth, and then we’ll have a Six Nations Championship of scrabble-and-pheep.
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