Reviewing ourselves

I guess you’ve heard that the All Blacks World Cup review was finally released. It’s just a written version of what we witnessed live. I probably don’t need to discuss it in depth any more than I already have, I’ve spent thousands of words on my own post mortem over the last few months (and then spammed you with it).

In cinema they often make movies from successful novels, and the process is reversible. After a really successful movie from an original screenplay, they sometimes release a “novelisation”.

This World Cup report is like a novelisation of a horror movie.

Why we lost is obvious. Why we reappointed the coaches is less so, but it’s not my concern, seeing as they have my unqualified support no matter who they are.

Since the review has been released though, and while the sharks are circling elsewhere, it’s time for Inky to confront some other issues.

Rugby is a sport for smart people. That’s always been true. Dummies don’t play it so well.

Unfortunately though, they still play it.

Are we asking too much of the modern player, with constant law changes and various other professional pressures, or are our players just getting dumber?

Okay… do we all know what we’re talking about here? If not, welcome to any new subscribers joining our broadcast tonight. Download an Inky for Dummies pamphlet at ssshh while I keep talking dot com.

Anyway, the reason I bring this up… I overheard a couple of old coozers recently bemoaning the current dumbing down of the game, and they were liberally salting the discussion with fairly juicy racial epithets. I was astounded when one mentioned he was a SKY shareholder.

We’ll get to that in a minute.

It seems the time might be just right to attempt (mentioning things like SKY and this falling intellectual capital in passing) to put all the major issues facing our game together into the same argument. Hell, why not… as an intellectual exercise… see if we can’t find some kind of better understanding, eh?

Two of the most important problems are the ones we all face as a sport, not just those the All Blacks or their supporters face as New Zealanders. They are 1. the new laws / the continuing beauty of the spectacle, and 2. the disparity in pay between northern and southern employers / the advent of the transition to professionalism in general.

No problem (SKY subscribers, I’ll be particularly interested in your responses this week).

Televising the game brings with it a big responsibility. Only ever ten percent (at most) of those watching the game are actually there at the ground. The rest of us are watching it on screen. Seeing what’s happening via slow motion and different angles is a huge advantage.

Rugby is better seen on television. Everyone knows it, and just attends the home ground whenever possible because that’s what you do when your team’s playing.

I watch Rugby Channel, the world’s only, to keep abreast. Indeed, I have associates working at various levels on several shows at the station. Some of them occasionally travel to three games a weekend in peak season. They catch up with the best local journalists and stay right up to date.

They, and the best of the written journos, know their rugby.

Understanding rugby may be our job, but understanding as an observer is very different from understanding as a player. Physically demonstrating your rights, skilfully and legally, with others set directly in opposition in an area where several hundred kilograms of rugby are colliding, is the hardest work there is and no stage for expressing bookish sentiments. Your whole world is the six foot circle in front of your face, where you can smell last night’s antelope on Schalk Burger’s breath.

The criticisms levelled at players, broadcast live during their performances, are a big burden. Players watch replays. When, after giving their guts, they hear broadcasters questioning their comprehension they try not to take it too hard.

One close associate is a commentator. He’s very aware of not bagging anyone unless it’s actually Beavis-dumb. Garden variety dumb, ten times a game, he’s far more charitable towards, and noticeably more so than the other commentators. He sees it and is constantly having to restrain himself. He bottles it, bottles it, bottles it, waiting until someone does something REALLY worthy of scorn, then calls it an “outbreak of stupidity”.

Recently we have been discussing whether the new laws and various other pressures have made it harder, or whether the players are, on average, less intelligent than they used to be. We came to the conclusion that it’s a little of both, with the latter exacerbating the former.

With certain exceptions, modern international class rugby players are no longer doctors, lawyers, builders, vets, plumbers and farmers. What they have to say for themselves outside the playing environment is less relevant academically these days… unless you’re writing your thesis on skeleto-muscular stress, or the Collins Equation for halting bodies in motion…

me = wrench knee squared

Most of them, though, are poets with the ball in hand, striving to win games on our behalves. Any lack of intellectual suitability for the fray is usually forgiven.

Outbreaks of stupidity? That’s different… see you later, there are others waiting in line for their chance.

It’s the right balance. The players are not to blame (and, of course, it’s worth mentioning that the gene for athletic, six foot six, high IQ and well adjusted is a rare one to begin with).

Neither are the new laws to blame. They are going to need tweaking over several years. They will need to lose a few of the new proposals, and maybe even add a few other new ones. The process will be ongoing, and globally as a sport we’re hardly looking like we’re heading for some kind of giant schism.

But if the northern hemisphere clubs keep snapping up our players, and those they pay most money for are the smartest ones, then sooner or later we’re going to reach a critical mass.

So… we trial new laws, while slowly the ones best equipped to do so get taken out of our playing pool? Something’s wrong there, and it isn’t the new laws.

New laws might actually be necessary, in a strange way. Requiring new players to be smarter by definition may mean that the replacements we find for our poached players, while younger and not yet physically equal, are at least smarter by way of consolation.

I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy.

PPV Rugby is a cathedral for me. My only beef is that it occasionally has to include ads for the moronic programs on its sister channels between games.

The boys in head office at SKY know that their sports channels (plus Food Channel, not surprisingly) are carrying the others… and there’s a growing demographic, the Undiscerning Dumb, who apparently want to watch an endless supply of such guff.

But here’s my message loud and clear to any SKY shareholders out there. I don’t CARE what’s on your feeble other channels, that’s why I leave the frequency tuned to Rugby in the first place… keep Wrestlemania and the soft porn for yuppies off it.

Don’t tell me our players are getting dumber. Unless there’s something about Hulk Hogan I don’t know, so is your television company.

Chiefs 18-5 Crusaders
Reds 29-12 Force
Waratahs 26-3 Lions
Brumbies 27-21 Sharks
Bulls 47-17 Highlanders
Stormers 20-12 Hurricanes

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