Too much for too few
by David Campese | 23 November 2009 (10:29)
The Springboks being shoved around by Italy, the Wallabies going down to Scotland for the first time in 27 years! ... what’s gone wrong with this game?
I suppose one should be applauding Italy’s improvement and lauding the Scots for gutsing it out but I think what we’ve seen from these summer Tests (summer for us, winter for them) is proof that the structure that has evolved in professional rugby is just wrong.
There’s way too much rugby and you can see it in the type of game that is being played.
Most teams seem to have settled on a plan of kicking the ball to kingdom come, rushing up and waiting for their opponents to make a mistake.
When you get both teams doing it you end up with the kind of game England and New Zealand dished up at Twickenham. I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t cross the road to watch that rubbish; never mind pay to do it!
A situation has been created in which you can almost see the players going through the motions. Their hearts are not in it, there’s little passion (other than from the French when they took the Boks on at their own game and belted them) and the message is loud and clear – oh hell, not another game… but at least it’s a pay-day.
There’s talk of hitting the players in the back pocket with a bonuses for wins and penalties for defeats but that might be treating the symptom rather than the cause.
The game is now run by administrators who don’t respect tradition and whose only solution is to arrange another game. So the rich look after the rich and the minnows are left to flee from the sharks and the upshot is that too many Test matches have been rendered meaningless.
The only reason for the Wallabies, the Springboks and the All Blacks to be overseas at the moment is revenue because their tours aren’t doing much for the integrity of the game. In fact Australia might not have been on a Grand Slam tour had Fiji not agreed to forego their Twickenham Test in return for one in Australia!
And while on that subject, what’s really being done for the islands – Tonga, Fiji and Samoa? Their players are spread around the world, they always have to play without the benefit of any warm-ups and, because of the financial considerations, they seldom get to play at home.
Yet they possess players who have an incredible love of the game – who’ll do anything just to play. So why not, for the next World Cup, cancel all the tournaments and arrange for all the nations to have some hit-outs before the World Cup starts and then see how they go?
Test matches have to mean something and administrators and the so-called marketers who think it is they, and not the players, who fill stadiums have created a situation where to play for your country is not that big a deal any more.
And the reason is that we play too much to give it any deep meaning and, just in case you thought I’d miss beating my drum one more time!, the rules have got to change to engender a more entertaining game.
