World Rugby must take note of stark warning as summer tour points way to future

I was asked earlier this week if I thought this summer’s Scotland tour was worthwhile. I’m sure many, comparing it with England’s in New Zealand, Ireland’s in South Africa and the Welsh in Australia, will have their doubts. The first three matches have scarcely been close and, given that Uruguay shipped 70 points against Argentina last week, the fourth tonight should be no more testing.

Certainly, if Gregor Townsend hadn’t left several of his regular first XV at home and hadn’t fielded a very different team in every match, one might have thought that in purely rugby terms, it was of little value. That said, a fair number of the touring party – new or almost new to the national team – have made a very good impression.

They may be unlikely to challenge for a place in the Autumn internationals and the Six Nations in the spring, but some of them, notably Kyle Rowe, they have make their mark for the not too distant future. There can be no doubt that the tour has pointed the way to the future, but what happens next will doubtless depend on their performances in the URC and the English Premiership.

There’s another side to the tour, however. There is a lot of talk about “growing the game” and the responsibility of the top-tier countries to do this. Well, the SRU has always been a conservative body and I am always pleased to remember the SRU president of long ago who said the SRU response to any proposed change was to say “no”, then think about it and say “no” again.

Nevertheless, Scotland had a much better record of touring second-tier nations and playing Test matches against them than England or the southern giants New Zealand and South Africa.

Conservatism has a bad name at present, and not only on account of the wretched performance of the Conservative Party over the last nine years but in other areas we could do with is bit more Conservatism now.

World Rugby, not a body I much admire, seems hell-bent on change both on and off the pitch. It has recently without so far as I can tell much, if any, consultations with the Unions, decided to devalue the scrum in, apparently, the interest of brighter rugby.

Well, there’s a good deal wrong with the scrum, beginning with the abandonment of any attempt to make it a fair contest. The law may still say the ball must be put in straight, but referees have, I assume, been told to ignore this.

Consequently, hookers are no longer required to strike and the scrum is now seen as a way of winning penalties rather than possession. Yet the original purpose of the scrum remains valid: by congragating 16 players in the scrum, it offered space beyond it and a quick clean heel gave an opportunity for running rugby.

That old SRU president would have said “no” very loudly to World Rugby’s devaluation of the scrum. Devaluing the scrum, he might have said, is as deplorable as devaluing the currency.

Off the field, World Rugby seems eager to sell the game to the highest bidders; that is to say, it is eager to accept whatever it can get from private equity firms. Well, there have been very rich men who have invested in the game because they love it, and some of them have nobly endured heavy losses. But anyone who supposes that venture capitalists have the interests of the game at heart, rather than profit and what they can take out of it, is surely delusional.

World Rugby even toyed, and may indeed still be toying, with the idea that the final of their new – and unnecessary – Nations Cup should be staged in Qatar, a proposal that reveals their utter indifference to the people who actually love and follow the game; one might even say, contempt for them. rugby is in grave danger of becoming commerce, not sport. .

Long long ago, it used to be said that the game was for the players, not the spectators. We’ve come a long way from that and will never return there, but we can still resist, or try to resist, the surrender of the game we love to the Gods of Money.

Neil Barnes, veteran coach of a National Provincial side, a man who has worked at every level of Kiwi Rugby, has a gloomy view of the direction the game is heading for. “The people at the top are not doing it to harm,” he says, “but they don’t understand the implications of what they are doing”. World Rugby should take note of this warning.

So should all of us who still love the game.