Changing times – or maybe not?

The UK may think that it is currently immersed in the mother and father of mess-ups over politics, Brexit and where the hell it is going, but you can take comfort in the knowledge you’re not alone.

Those at the top table of rugby administration – not least World Rugby itself – are making a decent fist of flailing around, clutching at straws in the wind, as they seek to reconcile the unreconcilable and take the sport forward.

Football may be corrupt, beset by its competing interests and the ever-present lure of money but rugby begins from a much lower popularity base and is desperate to tap into new territory markets and thereby take advantage of perceived future commercial opportunities.

It’s a situation where the old world and the potential new have different and conflicting interests. Nobody’s fault, of course, but still a bit of a minefield in other words.

These days the traditional ‘old world’ (Tier 1) countries vary greatly in the health and success of their elite rugby teams but have operated for 140 years on a well-worn basis in which proverbial deals done off-stage in smoked-filled rooms have suited them all very well.

Turkeys are not known for voting for Christmas and over the first four Rugby World Cups the Tier 1 cabal of nations retained a happy stranglehold on the sport which ensured their position at the top.

However, the winds of change, commercial possibilities and growing playing popularity grew ever stronger and necessarily required the taking of radical not to say visionary steps if the game in a global sense was to take advantage, thrive and expand.

Inevitably even the robust and athletic Southern Hemisphere Tri-Nations (Australia, New Zealand and South Africa) have had their fault-lines and weaknesses.

Australian rugby union has always been unique in the sense that at home rugby union is only ever second (or even third) best to rugby league and Aussie Rules in popularity.

In contrast, in South Africa and New Zealand it remains supreme and runs through the cultural core of both nations, part of their identities.

However, the issue that dominates all three of them is popularity and turnover/profit – or rather, the relative lack of it compared to the numbers the Northern Hemisphere (and in particular the Home Countries) can generate.

This fact is a running sore between North and South, firstly because Southern players can make a whole heap more money by playing in the North than they can at home. Rugby careers are very short and the needs/priorities are all too clear to see. It’s why the Tri-Nations are always griping about losing their players to Europe.

It’s also why international tours to the Southern Hemisphere – and in particular those of the British & Irish Lions – are so popular, even necessary: the Tri-Nations each make far more money from hosting a Lions tour every eight or ten years than they ever do from playing amongst themselves.

But the ‘brain drain’ – or ‘player drain’ – operates at another level with far-reaching ramifications for any rational plan to develop rugby worldwide.

It’s no secret that down through rugby history the Pacific Island nations – blessed with populations so wonderfully naturally-talented at, and genetically-suited to, the game – have always been systematically denuded of their finest, both directly at first-hand by unofficial poaching but also because – when talented players emigrate to say New Zealand or Australia – their often-similarly talented descendants stay there and help to improve those nation’s  gene pools.

Out here in Japan, whilst I’m not conversant with the exact figures, hearsay has it that in the 2019 Rugby World Cup there are just about as many players of Pacific Island descent representing other nations as there are representing Pacific Island ones.

It’s not exactly a healthy place to be, some liberals might argue. Some in the World Rugby organisation, mindful of the situation, want to do something about it – maybe provide additional funding or development opportunities, for example.

In the meantime, rumours out here have it that whilst some of the Tier 1 squads are rumoured to be on deals whereby – depending upon results – individually they could be in line for five-or-even-six-figure bonuses, other (Pacific Islander) squads are on as little as £1,000 – British pounds – apiece for the entire tournament.

How different might it be if there was, so-to-speak, a level playing field.

Not long before the World Cup began the Six Nations countries refused to play ball with a World Rugby proposal for a standardised ‘world rugby season’ and regular world club and country tournaments.

However logical the Word Rugby arguments were, the Six Nations were not interested – why would they dismantle what is the most commercially successful rugby tournament of all, even for the sake of the future of the game’s hoped-for expansion?

As a Kiwi of Scots heritage myself I’m only picking on Scotland as a ‘what if’ example here, but why would Scotland ever vote to switch to a world rugby playing and ranking system that, in as little as five seasons or so, might well see them slip down to a position potentially permanently below that of Georgia, Romania, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, the USA, Canada and even potentially Russia or Uruguay?

On the other hand, if that eventuality should ever arise, for the good of rugby development in a wider (world) context, wouldn’t “Stuff happens, that’s life …” be the only correct and proper attitude to take?

In the meantime it won’t surprise Rust readers and sports fans everywhere that the rare and unexpected ‘upset’ results – such as Uruguay’s over Fiji and yesterday’s epic Japan victory over Ireland – have been launching excitement and interest in the Rugby World Cup out here sky-rocketing into the stratosphere.

For me, however, the real tournament won’t begin until the knockout phase. For the record, although it’s still early days yet, on the evidence so far I can only see a Southern Hemisphere hand clutching the trophy when the tournament reaches its end.