Yellow bibs not welcome
The thing dragging rugby down; plus final thoughts on the Open Championship
With the Open Championship and an unprecedented glut of southern hemisphere rugby series deciders on the menu, it was one of those exhausting weekends on which one wears a hole in one’s sofa – even despite ignoring test cricket (Sri Lanka v Pakistan) due to there not being enough hours in the day.
As I’ve always said, posh sports tend to be long! (Probably because the toffs who invented them didn’t have to go to work.) The one exception to that was always rugby – and this was a good thing for the longevity of my couch. Sadly, as we’ll explore at the top of this week’s wrap, that’s changing…
Photo: @IrishRugby on Twitter
How it drags
Congratulations to England, South Africa and Argentina on their respective series wins over Australia, Wales and Scotland. And above all, despite the All Blacks obviously having misplaced their mojo, hats off to the bulletproof Irish for their thoroughly-deserved triumph in Aotearoa.
There was some terrific and entertaining rugby played, yaddah yaddah yaddah.
No, really, there was.
Which makes it all the more appalling that what I’m taking away from the July internationals is not a showreel of my favourite tries or juicy thoughts about Ireland finally mounting a World Cup challenge. Instead, it’s a lasting horror at the level of fannying about that has crept into Test matches.
July 2022 struck me as the month where rugby union started to look like the worst possible combination of the NFL and soccer. Interruptions to the match at every possible opportunity seem to have become par for the course (NFL), while the number of ‘injuries’ is beginning to make me suspicious (soccer).
For a sport that has always impressed with its approach to dusting yourself down and getting on with the game, that’s a sad, sad moment. Rugby has a flow to it. Ideally, a viewer should be able to lose themselves in the flow – perhaps even the ebb too. Now, for the first time I can recall, I found my mind wandering in unusual ways. I’d catch myself looking out of the window and dreaming. Why? Because the relentless stoppages had begun conditioning me to switch off my brain between every play.
This last weekend was better than the absolute low point that was the previous one, on which the nonsensical game in Dunedin took the cake for making a mockery of the sport. Wayne Barnes, for example, clearly showed that keeping the game moving was a priority this time around. In both the Australasian games, I noticed things that ‘could have been looked at’ but weren’t. That improved the show no end. And it hinted at a possible way out of this tangle.
Let me outline a few of the problems we’ve got, and then look at constructive solutions:
1. Prayer Time
There’s this thing where a player goes down on one knee – this genuflexion appears to have become a significant protocol not dissimilar to the Koranic imperative followed by Pakistan cricketers at any drinks break – and gets a visit from one or two people in yellow bibs. But they’re not getting knighted, they’re just having a chat! In some cases, the clock stays running.
I’ve pictured one such incident below. It’s from the game in Wellington. The ball is kicked into touch with the clock reading 34m48s. Then Andrew Porter goes half-down, seemingly just looking for a few sweet nothings from the physio to be whispered into his ear. Barnes appears suspicious and calls time on it – but not before the paying public have been robbed of 43 seconds of game time: play resumes with the throw-in at 35m31s. Given ticket prices, that’s absolutely unacceptable.
Far be it from me to claim that Porter didn’t have a genuine issue in this case. That’s neither here nor there. I’m just saying that stoppages of this nature are beginning to get on my nerves. Something about them doesn’t look right.
Solution:
Obviously, now more than ever, potential injuries must be treated with due care and attention. It can take time to establish the nature of any issue, and it would be foolish to issue a rigid ‘get up or get off’ time limit. But referees need to get into the habit of hovering menacingly. And at least stop the clock the moment a player is down. It’s only fair to the paying punters.
2. Herd mentality
When one player goes down – be it for genuine injury or not – it has become customary for the entire support staff to take the chance to burst onto the field. If an ‘injury’ provides an opportunity for the entire XV on the field to get a water break, isn’t there a little more incentive for someone to go down on one knee for a moment of mindfulness? Especially if you’re playing New Zealand at their best, or Fiji, or France, and you want to put the brakes on their game. Not only can that influence outcomes in the most boring, cynical of ways, but it’s unfair on the viewers who support the game. People have other things to do on Saturdays besides watching 80 minutes defy physics by swelling to 120.
Solution:
Support staff should only enter the field to attend to a specifically injured player. Taking advantage of a break should be abolished. If they’re slow to learn, perhaps penalties will be the answer.
3. Scrum tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime
Every time a scrum is called, that seems to be the cue for everyone to stand around for a couple of minutes and, again, a bunch of lumo yellows to scoot onto the pitch. There doesn’t even need to be an injury! When did this become standard practice? Watch a game from the eighties or earlier, and you will see that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Solution:
Here, I think, you can introduce a time limit. Twenty seconds should be plenty of time for everyone to get in place. If you’re not ready, scrum feed reversed!
4: Checking, checking, checking…
The benefit of checking dangerous play on the big screen – namely meting out punishment during the game in which the offence takes place – is starting to get outweighed by the disadvantages. Which are namely twofold: more stoppages in play and decisions that are set up to be rushed, emotional and lacking in context. As for somewhat less life-threatening transgressions like ‘deliberate knock-downs’, it feels like referring this stuff makes referees look for (and find) something that isn’t there. If wasn’t obvious in real time, it probably wasn’t a thing.
Solution:
Dangerous play punishments should be left for after the game. More rational decisions could be reached, and more consistency applied. You could, for example, build on the citing system and have a panel handling issues from all the weekend’s tests in one sitting. They can take all the time they need without crowds baying in the stands and everyone else around the world twiddling their thumbs. Some of the ‘how is this one different from that one?’ conversations could be avoided with this approach, too. If someone is truly guilty after cool analysis, then bring on all the punishments you like!
5: Front row cards
When front-row players get dismissed, there’s even more of a delay at the next scrum whilst everyone figures out who goes on or off. See New Zealand v Ireland, second Test.
Solution:
When a front-rower has to leave the field, he should automatically and immediately get a like-for-like replacement. And somebody else comes off then and there. So when a scrum comes around, we’re ready to go and the time limit is no issue. Sorry if it inconveniences the ‘carded’ side, but a yellow is supposed to be a punishment, after all!
You’ll have noticed the conflict going on with much of the above. Rugby Tests need to stop taking up half of one’s Saturday – yet equally, paying spectators deserve 80 minutes of real rugby. I’m not even sure that a kicker lining up a penalty should count as playing time, to be honest: all those seconds of staring at the goalposts can add up to a beer’s worth of dollars wrenched from the punter’s pocket.
But I believe we can become stricter about stopping the clock and still reduce overall match time through fighting the plague of yellow bibs and big-screen tomfoolery in areas such as the above.
The Open: What now?
I’m not sure there’s much I can add to the reams that have been written about the Open Championship in the four days since the 150th showpiece came to an end at the sport’s Grand Old Dame.
Rory didn’t lose the tournament, but given the magnitude of this particular event and his play across all the Majors this year, it still felt a bit like a Tom Watson situation. But Cameron Smith is no Stewart Cink: he’s haunted enough leaderboards in recent times and is a worthy Major winner. Who else but the Queenslander would you rather have standing over a 12-footer to save you from a flock of stampeding cassowaries?
The course just about survived the onslaught from the world’s best in windless conditions, but the urgency to keep it that way next time around was evident enough.
St Andrews is a unique treasure. It’s something other sports can’t quite match. Little changed since the days when the game was first moulded into the challenge its founders wanted it to be, it absolutely should be the yardstick by which OTT power-hitting should be measured.
It was also remarkable to see that the arena around the spacious, generous first and 18th holes still sends jitters through the world’s finest, steeliest players. How about Ian Poulter almost punting it into the town on the first morning? (Maybe the LIV boos played a role in that…) Or Major specialist Will Zalatoris getting all crossed up and dunking it as he got his Friday round underway? Or playing partners Brooks Koepka and Seamus Power’s undignified dalliances with the Swilcan Burn on Friday? (Smith made up the trio, interestingly.) We also saw Dustin Johnson top one all the way down 18. This stuff is almost unthinkable elsewhere, but on those two holes, club hackers terrified of that first drive in front of the clubhouse could feel a certain kinship.
With the Celebration of Champions on Monday and other understated, not-overtly-commercial British touches, the week was a fitting celebration of an incredible milestone for one of sport’s very oldest competitions. The camera angle behind the 18th tee, with the grandstand, clubhouse and ubiquitous, double-edged ‘everything has led to this’ looming in the distance, was one to stir the soul.
What now? Only this weird feeling I just can’t get used to since they moved the PGA Championship: it’s July and the golf year is kind of over. Courtroom battles between establishment and breakaway are arguably more compelling than the PGA Tour playoffs and equally dreary Race to the End of the Emirates or whatever it’s called. Only the President’s Cup stands a chance of getting the pulse racing, and then only because I’m South African.
What would solve this? Ah yes, something like a World Golf Tour! You know, like Formula 1 managed to put together seventy-plus years ago? A schedule of events where all the best players turn up in a bid to grab a set, constant share of points. One that isn’t weighted towards any one country or market. One that could potentially include the Majors, but doesn’t necessarily have to.
As I wrote back in February, I hope LIV Golf is the catalyst for something like that to happen. That doesn’t mean I’m rooting for LIV to morph into such a series. If their challenge gives the establishment a push to work together like they should have done decades ago, that’s fine too. But said establishment might do well to put its energy into coming up with a greater product rather than banning anyone they might want to keep on-side ahead of its fast-tracked launch, hiring lawyers and playing the moral supremacy card.
(On this matter: In a global system where we fill our cars and planes with fuel from killer regimes, use electronics made in countries where human rights aren’t a thing and have no idea whether the guy farming our coffee even manages to scratch out a living, nobody but an ascetic living in a cave can point fingers, okay? We all have blood, guts and war on our hands. I’d be the first to vote for an end to that rotten system, but as long as we’re stuck with it, let’s quit scapegoating a handful of golfers.)
If we do emerge from this messy time with something better than we have now, then…dare we use the poison phrase?...the game of golf may just have grown in some way.
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