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If you read the columnist and reader comments on The Roar, you would believe that rugby is rooned, rather like Hanrahan’s farm.
Well, the real news is that it is booming worldwide, in all its forms, with the men and women’s versions spreading rapidly into regions that have never before seen the oval-ball game.
One of the reasons, I would argue, why lovers of rugby tend to be pessimistic about the present and future of their game is that, for reasons that are inexplicable, they expect every match played to be a tremendous spectacle.
This tendency is reinforced by commentators who invariably write a lot about the spectacle and less about the result and the other incidents of play.
I am, mea culpa, one of those guilty commentators.
This does not happen, or rarely happens, with the other football codes. Phil Gould used to occasionally make the point that the league match he was writing about was totally boring and poorly played. But this is rare.
I have yet to read an AFL or a football match report which pointed out the obvious, that the match was boring and poorly played.
So we get the impression in rugby that most matches are poor spectacles. In fact, most of the matches are well played and for fans of the game they are interesting and often exciting.
This year’s Super Rugby tournament is a case in point. The Waratahs were booed by their fans (a bit like the Parramatta Eels) for their awful play in losing to the Western Force. But a week later, the Waratahs had their fans on their feet and punching the air in triumph as they scored a last-ditch try to defeat the Sharks.
There is another consideration to all this, in Australia particularly. Reading The Roar, you get the impression that the main criticism about rugby union is that it is not rugby league.
Roarers frequently rant against the scrums and the frequent penalties, or that the game is too stop-start. The essential argument against this ranting is to make the point that contested scrums and penalties are part of the DNA of rugby. They are not part of the DNA of league.
After ‘The Split’ in rugby in the United Kingdom in 1895, the recalcitrant northern unions of Yorkshire and Lancashire – which became the rugby league – slowly changed the rugby laws to make their new league game more flowing.
In time the contest for the ball, the cause of most illegal play in rugby, was taken out of most aspects of league.
There used to be a contest in league in the scrums, at the play-the-ball and in the tackle. These are all gone. Now, there is only a contest with kicks. The result of these changes has been to make league less complex and less open to penalties.
The game flows more than rugby. But there is a stop with every play-the-ball. So it is a broken flow, if there is such a thing.
But there is more predictability about the play in league than there is in rugby, where a contest for the ball is often scrappy and messy (much like AFL) and takes place in every play.
My point here is that both codes have their logic and merit. But they are different. League works with uncontested scrums. But rugby does not.
A case in point occurred last week during the Crusaders-Cheetahs match. For reasons that are not exactly clear, the Cheetahs lost two of their props. So the referee had to set uncontested scrums. The Crusaders were not able to use the scrum in these circumstances to force a turnover or a penalty.
There was a blandness about the subsequent play, from a rugby perspective, that would not have been there if the scrums were their usual heaving, shoving, and unruly contests.
As for the penalties and their frequency, critics of rugby should accept them as part of the DNA of the game, just as the frequent penalties in hockey and basketball are accepted as an integral part of these two sports.
Because there are more opportunities to kill off open play in rugby than in league, a strict penalty regime is needed to force teams to play within the laws.
If the perennial baggers of rugby look at the game from the perspective of the game itself, and not from a perspective of another game, they might begin to understand why rugby union is booming right now all around the world.
The IRB, for instance, has issued an update on the 2011 Rugby World Cup tournament.
The tournament returned a net profit of 142 million pounds, which was just under the huge profit generated by the 2007 Rugby World Cup in France.
This profit was 60 million pounds above budget. 135 million fans watched 48 matches in New Zealand. The $268.5 million New Zealand generated in ticket sales was 10 times higher than the ticket sales of the previous best event in New Zealand.
This just happened to be the 2005 tour by the British and Irish Lions. 133,00 fans travelled to New Zealand for that tournament, which was double the original forecast.
In publishing these figures, the International Rugby Board also noted that “the game is currently in excellent health; we now have 5.5 million men, women and children playing in more countries than ever before.”
One of the new great growth areas of the game is among countries that form the heartland of the football code.
Mexico, for instance, defeated Jamaica 68 – 14 last week at La Ibero Santa Fe in Mexico City, in the first of the qualification matches for the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England.
The referee was Craig Joubert, the excellent referee of the ultra-thrilling, nail-biting final between New Zealand and France in Rugby World Cup 2011. There were only a handful of clubs in Mexico a few years ago. Now, there are over 100, and the numbers are rising quickly with seed funding from the IRB.
Jamaica is now the 90th-ranked rugby country in the world. Mexico has moved up to 70th place in the world rankings. Germany, in defeating Moldova 40-7 recently, is now the 32nd-ranked country, ahead of Moldova (33) and Zimbabwe (34).
Last weekend, the Hong Kong Sevens, part of the IRB’s commercially successful Sevens Rugby 10-tournament circuit, enjoyed its biggest crowds ever.
Spain (which defeated China), Russia, Brazil (which defeated Hong Kong) and Portugal made strong showings. So too did the USA, in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. Women’s rugby is the second fastest growing sport in the USA, after women’s football.
And with rugby becoming an Olympic sport at Rio in 2016, a huge investment of Olympic funding is coming into the sport, helping its growth in many countries around the world, including the USA.
The point of this article is not to make inferences about the other football codes. I would never say about rugby what the co-captain of the GWS Giants Callan Ward said about his game: “I just thought AFL is the best game in Australia and everybody would love it. The best game in the world probably.”
Each to his or her own.
The good news for rugby fans is that the game they love is flourishing around the world. Even in Australia. The gate numbers and television audiences for this year’s Super Rugby tournament (the best ever, in my opinion) are increasing on last year’s figures.
More importantly, most of the matches this year have resulted in nail-biting finishes. Any team on its day can defeat any other team.
Compelling viewing, in other words, for those who enjoy the game.