Rough Rugby and penalties: FIRM ACTION BY UNION NEEDED

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32639, 22 June 1971, Page 32

Rough Rugby and penalties: FIRM ACTION BY UNION NEEDED

(By

R. T. BRITTENDEN)

No greater disservice to Rugby football has been done for many a day; Saturday’s match between Canterbury and the British Isles brought disgrace to the game.

An audience of 53,000 on Saturday, and hundreds of thousands more at their television sets last evening, saw the ruin of what could and should have been a great sporting occasion.

There has never been a better stage for football, nor one presenting a finer opportunity for two teams of talent to provide a display of Rugby skills and techniques. But the encounter descended regularly into bouts of thuggery. No doubt each team blames the other for sparking off the violence; no doubt both teams saved some of their displeasure for the referee. It was ever thus. Attempts to apportion resnonsibility are meaningless. Not one player, let alone spectator, could possibly be aware of every action which led to the friction between the sides.

But if there is any pointing of accusing fingers, the administration of Rugby must also be charged. UNWILLING

For year after year, the penalties for rough and dangerous play have been much too light. Referees are clearly unwilling to take the only steps’ which, very often, will suffice: the ordering-off of offenders. This may be, in part, because of the very difficult business of knowing who started the fighting, who is retaliating. But there is a firm belief among footballers that the principal reason for referees being unwilling to act firmly is the lack of support from Rugby administrations—and

the prospect of diminishing their prospects of further major appointments. A referee should be able to act with confidence. And it should not concern him unduly whether a player has been provoked or not. He can be guided only by what he sees, and there is not much better a defence for retaliation than there is for aggression.

There seems to be a belief, among some first-class players, that head-high tackles, obstruction, and the kicking and punching of opponents who, sometimes, are not in a position to defend themselves, carry the touch of the hero. And many Rugby officials, after a game such as Saturday’s, simply smile

and say “You always get a bit of that,” as if it really doesn’t matter very much. BLIND EYES Rugby administrators have turned blind eyes to violence much too often. It is little wonder that Rugby football—a great game, and New Zealand’s pride—is losing ground to other winter sports when exhibitions such as that of Saturday cause concern only, apparently, among spectators. Canterbury, unfortunately, already has a tarnished reputation in other parts of New Zealand. This performance will not improve it. The New Zealand Rugby Union, and all the provincial unions, must surely see, sooner or later, the necessity to take firm action. Perhaps they might borrow from other games, where the dismissal of a player is not necessarily Anal. In hockey, for instance, an offender can be sent off for a period, and then allowed to continue.

Rugby, some will say, is “a man’s game,” and that such exchanges must be accepted. It is not easy to see anything manly in converting a fine game into a backalley brawl? A former provincial frontrow forward, a man as stout of heart as of physique, said after Saturday’s game that he was extremely sorry he had taken his children to see such an exhibition of ill-temper and one in which there was such an absence of self-con-trol.

How many parents who watched the game would feel disposed to spark off enthusiasm for Rugby in their sons? \ One of these days, representative players in New Zealand may discover that there is nothing admirable in brawling, and that they diminish their stature by becoming involved in it. As for administrators: do they want Rugby to be a game of skills, and are they content to allow it to be a place for punch-ups among blockheads?