You may have heard the story of the Selby man who won a competition to name the town’s new leisure centre with his inspired entry, “Selby Leisure Centre”. In which light, the International Rugby Board clearly missed a trick by not asking him to get involved in the rebranding exercise that resulted in its organisation becoming known as “World Rugby” last year.
For while the rugby authority’s new title tells us very little about what it actually does, the Bard of Selby would surely come up with something more pertinent and descriptive. Something like “Shameless Collection of Bungling Dodderers Who Are Hopelessly Out Of Their Depth Running A Global Sporting Event”. A bit wordy, I’ll admit, but it covers most of the salient points.
That much became clear on Tuesday evening when its disciplinary processes resulted in a verdict that would scarcely have looked more like a dog’s breakfast if it had chucked in a couple of worming tablets as well. The three-week bans handed down to Ross Ford and Jonny Gray, of Scotland, for their tackle on Jack Lam, of Samoa, have provoked a righteous anger among Scotland fans and that fury is perfectly justified. It is not the Scotland players who should have been standing in the dock, but World Rugby itself.
The sequence of events that led to Gray and Ford being ruled out of the rest of the World Cup has heaped shame, embarrassment and ridicule on the game. Moreover, every step of the way has been marked by the grotesque pomposity of rugby’s rulers who have failed, or chosen not, to spot what others see as blindingly obvious flaws in the system they have created.
An Australian given the job of initiating discipline procedures against players who are about to play against Australia? Hey guys, what could possibly go wrong there? And why should anyone think there’s anything remotely untoward about letting David Pocock, the Wallaby forward, off with a retrospective (and effectively meaningless) yellow card for sticking his knee into the ribs of a Welsh player?
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Given all these Antipodean connections, it would be no surprise if Gray and Ford concluded that they had pitched up in a kangaroo court and half-expected Dame Edna Everage to be hearing the case. Now I’ve no doubt that Christopher Quinlan QC, the appointed judicial officer and a man with wide experience across many other sports, carried out his duties impeccably, but he was working with a bizarre set of rules.
But it gets worse. You can argue as long as you like about the rights and wrongs of the tackle(s) that brought Gray and Ford into the spotlight, but the processes, the verdicts and the sentences have demonstrated something between selective myopia and outright hypocrisy on the part of World Rugby.
Soon after the news of the punishment broke on Tuesday evening, a friend emailed me a video clip of a tackle by François Louw, of South Africa, on Kahn Fotuali’i, of Samoa, in their recent clash in Birmingham. Louw’s action looked exactly the same as Gray’s, but the citing commissioner did nothing. You could also go back to the infamous “spear” tackle by Tana Umaga and Keven Mealamu on Brian O’Driscoll in 2005, when the two Kiwis got off scot-free. As someone asked on Twitter: How can a sport that produces such consistent respect for its officials, have officials who have so little respect for consistency?
Alongside all this we have also endured the arrogance of a body that considers it acceptable to operate at a pace that would be outrstripped by the movement of a tectonic plate. The wheels of justice might turn slowly, but they appeared to have ground to a halt on Tuesday as the Jarndyce v Jarndyce process did not produce an official verdict until almost 9.30pm. As the World Cup is officially the most expensive sporting event in history, with an average ticket price of over £100, this amounted to a disregard for the paying public that bordered on contempt.
Ford and Gray might have been careless, reckless even, but in their actions last Saturday and their previous disciplinary records there is nothing to suggest either acted maliciously. Can the same be said of Sean O’Brien, the Ireland flanker, who blatantly punched Pascal Papé, the France flanker, in the stomach? Can the same be said of Pocock and his knee? Yet O’Brien is banned for one week and Pocock gets a complete non-punishment.
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Perhaps the two Scots should have given Lam a good kicking as well, as World Rugby appear to think that sort of thing is much more acceptable. But given the shortcomings of the game’s global rulers, it is now incumbent on the Scottish Rugby Union to take a far firmer line than they have in the past, when compliant acceptance of ridiculous punishments has been the norm.
The Scots can do the wider game a huge service by standing strong on this case. It is not just about fighting their players’ corners, but about taking a stand against a system that is riddled with inconsistencies, posturing, sanctimony and unfairness. If they don’t then they, and rugby, will be a laughing stock.