The IRB has ruined my favourite winter sport...

When I moved to NZ in early 2003, England had one of the best rugby teams in the world... I sometimes wonder if it's their inglorious decline that has ruined the appeal of this country's premier sport (and, dare I suggest, national obsession?) - and the answer has to be... no (although it obviously hasn't helped!)

As a child, I always believed that an average game of rugby league was always good value... lots of hit-ups, tackling, ball-in-hand running... all the things that make a game good to watch; But I genuinely believed that the best a game of league had to offer could not compare with the aesthetic beauty of a free-flowing game of union; I remember watching the famous 1973 All Blacks vs Barbarians at school; that wonderful try finished off by Gareth Edwards!

So what's happened? Why is it that as a spectator, I have turned away from Rugby, and this season am more likely to be seen at Mt Smart stadium (home of the Warriors in the NRL) than Eden Park?

I'll try and answer this by giving you two examples; one in union and one in league.

Firstly, union: In an attempt to make the scrums safer (I suspect,partly in response to the Matt Hampson incident), the IRB introduced a new, 4-stage engagement process at scrum time. To ensure opposing packs are suitably distanced from each other, the props must 'touch' each others arms before engaging. It just hasn't worked. These new scrum laws have *not* made scrum-time quicker, simpler, safer. The referees are *still* having to constantly reset scrums and the spectacle (let's not forget, Rugby is a spectator sport!) has been seriously compromised. And yet the new law persists...

Now consider the law change introduced at the start of the 2007 NRL season. In an attempt to combat the use of 'shadow' runners, the referees were instructed to confer with the TMO (Third Match Official, watching the replays on screen) to ensure that no defender had been impeded off the ball, before awarding a try. Great! Only problem was, teams who had scored legitimate trys were subsequently being penalised because some defender *who had no chance of making a tackle anyway* had been blocked by a dummy runner... It came to a head around week 6 or 7, when 5 or 6 perfectly good tries had been scored (2 by the Warriors!), but on all occasions the attacking team were penalised for the above infringement. So what did the governing body do? They gathered all the CEO's of the competing franchises together on a conference call, and took a vote... 'should we allow referees to use their discretion as to whether the defender would have made the tackle if he hadn't been impeded?' unequivocally they voted 'yes' - and by that very same weekend; before another game had been played in the competition; the amendment was in place.

I wonder where the IRB would be now (Week 13) if they had the same issue? Almost certainly in the same place as they are with the much-ridiculed new scrum laws... Scratching their behinds and contemplating how much money they can make out of France 2007...

Of course, the last thing to say for now about this switch in allegiance is that I'm now on the roller-coaster ride that is: Being a Warriors fan. But more on that another time...