Despite fierce opposition, the IRB hopes this week to sneak changes through the back door that could have dire consequences for the game
THE WEEK ahead could prove one of the darkest in the history of the International Rugby Board, the ruling body of the game, and could harm rugby for generations. On Thursday, the IRB council meet to vote on an extraordinary proposal originating from their laws project group, a body many see as unrepresentative of the modern game, that a series of experimental laws, effectively including a bewildering 32 new or revised measures, be imposed on all rugby from August 1.
The measures have run into ferocious opposition in Europe. The English, Welsh and Irish unions confirmed on Friday that they remain implacably against blanket imposition of the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs), therefore joining all 12 of the Guinness Premiership coaches and all of the Top 14 French clubs.
Owen Doyle, the Irish spokesman on the ELV issue, effectively spoke for all the opposition: “The radical ELVs change the key characteristics and identity of rugby union and we are very concerned about them for that reason.” The laws would be imposed initially for a one-year period, but as one opponent said: “Once they are in, how do we claw the game back? The experiments become the status quo.”
In my experience, the reaction of the big European unions and their technical debate has been markedly more constructive than that of the IRB hawks. I have found not one IRB supporter of the ELVs who will admit that even one of the new measures is shaky or dangerous, that they will inevitably change the charter of the game by stealth and artificiality, or that to rush through untried laws could threaten the sport’s growing commercial power and cause chaos to the community game.
On this last front, the RFU launched a website (www.rfusurvey.co.uk) on which anyone can express their views. Some IRB grandees blithely dismiss any hint of a problem, but this abysmal failure to grasp the scale of confusion that faces the sport is possibly the most disturbing aspect of all. The idea that, during the holiday season, a torrent of new measures will cascade down to junior clubs and schools and players at all levels in 120 nations with the required clarity is ridiculous.
There is, apparently, some good news. The three main opposing unions (England, Wales and Ireland) hold two votes each and I understand that Italy also have major reservations. Each major union holds two votes and, as any radical motion needs a 75% majority, it should be possible for the unions opposing the ELVs to stop their imposition.
However, it may not be so simple. With the looming possibility that the IRB will fail to get the necessary majority, we have had reports of serious pressure and horse trading, aimed at the smaller rugby countries.
IRB tacticians have spotted two possible ways to get the trial through by the back door. They could ask the council to propose that the ELVs are merely imposed on the professional game, hoping to attract support from countries whose chief gripe is the community chaos and therefore betraying one of the game’s oldest tenets – one set of laws for everyone. Or they could force a debate on each individual ELV, voting as to whether each could have a trial.
I have seen a document giving the reaction of all six of the major European unions to each ELV. Even with the tame acceptance of France and Scotland to every measure, there is barely one radical ELV which gets a majority in favour. However, with different nations objecting to different experiments, it may just be possible that most of the laws are pushed through one by one. The opposing unions are alive to this. “We have told our delegates not to vote for anything until they see what the whole picture is,” one chief executive told me.
Of course, none of this is even to begin a discussion of how appalling has been the fate of other laws down the years forced onto the game. Nor has the IRB managed to persuade supporters, given the scale of support for the measures in the southern hemisphere, that this is not another attempt to speed up artificially the pace of the game.
The IRB insist that scrummaging will still be a staple when it is obvious that, with the tap-and-go style seen in the southern hemisphere under the ELVs of late, coaches will rapidly opt for smaller and faster players.
Yesterday, members of the laws project group denied to journalists that there was panic over their bid to get the laws ratified. Yet all they achieved in their presentation was to create an even thicker fog around the whole issue. A well-meaning trawl through the key ELVs produced not one that stands up to their claim that the laws are working excitingly well.
After three years of effort, it seemed a poor return. It also seemed to me that those who have allowed the project to become their lives are afraid to admit that it is too big and that it does not work. As I said last week, they must be stopped.
