Time to balance a weighty problem

A CLEVER man once predicted that progress would eventually turn out to be a circle rather than a straight line.

- CHRIS HEWETT

As the shadows close in on the union game – professional clubs disappearing into the darkness of their own balance sheets; the existential threat of a player welfare legal action reaching its witching hour – the people charged with running the sport in a direction other than into the ground must be hoping he was right.

Modern-day rugby’s straight line is the highway to hell. Something a little more spherical might at least offer the governing class a chance to row back on some its more egregious errors – some of them sins of omission, others very much of the commission variety – and repair the damage.

Contrary to received wisdom and popular assumption – and, in the case of World Rugby, the non-governing governing body, an unnervingly large body of evidence – it is perfectly possible for the top brass to make good decisions rather than bad ones, and, in so doing, bend “progress” to their will. They should start immediately, if not sooner.

Intelligent, well-meaning rugby aficionados wonder if their sport is a victim of its own improvements. All the measurables tell us that the 15-man code is miles better now than it was in the golden age of Gareth and Barry, Blanco and Rives, Campo and the Ellas. It is faster and more dynamic, the fitness levels are off the scale, the power outputs are quadrupling by the decade, the “hits” – bloody awful word, but the broadcasters seem to love it – are eye-watering. But where are we as a result of these advances? Stuck in the upper branches of a gum tree, it appears.