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Don’t blame Stade Francais for Will Genia’s unavailability to play for the Wallabies against Wales at the weekend, the fault lies entirely with the governing body World Rugby.
Why would World Rugby designate June and November as designated windows for franchise clubs to make their foreign internationals available to play for their countries, and then stimulate the dates are only the second, third, and fourth weeks of the two months?
So the terminology is not June and November, but just 75 per cent of both months.
That translates to Genia not being available for the first or last of the Wallabies spring tour schedule, as the game against England at Twickenham is on December 3.
That’s the fault of ARU boss Bill Pulver, even though he’s on World Rugby’s Regulation Committee that’s made the automatic availability decisions.
Seeing Pulver was instrumental in the current schedule, why did he select France in the middle of firstly Wales and Scotland, and followed by Ireland and England?
As it turns out only Genia will miss the Wales and England games, but had Kurtley Beale been fit, and James Horwill, Matt Giteau, Adam Ashley-Cooper, and Drew Mitchell been good enough, they would have missed Wales and England as well.
None of it makes any sense. That’s the World Rugby way.
To further prove World Rugby is a long way shy of reality, that Regulation Committee calls the southern hemisphere Rugby Championship tournament of the Wallabies, All Blacks, Springboks, and Pumas, the ‘Four-Nations’.
It has never been called the Four Nations from inception.
The reasoning is crystal clear in the very wordy World Rugby Handbook of 504 pages. If rugby fans took the trouble to read the Handbook, they would be very quickly bored to sobs.
So fingers crossed the new World Rugby president Bill Beaumont since July 1 will sort out the rubbish.
The 64-year-old former lock was capped 34 times for England, 21 as captain, plus seven appearances for the British and Irish Lions in a stellar career between 1975 and 1982.
He’s a class act, and bit by bit he’ll make World Rugby respected instead of pilloried.
By making the June and November windows the full four weeks, and rightfully recognising the Rugby Championship, Beaumont’s presence will go a long way to righting on-going wrongs.
The chances of the Wallabies emulating the 1984 Wallaby Grand Slammers have been severely dented with Genia missing from two Slam Games.
Hopefully replacement half-back Nick Phipps will turn in another excellent performance as he did against the Pumas at Twickenham last time out.
It was long overdue, but welcomed nonetheless.