ONE THING RUGBY DOES (did?) almost better than any other sport is to create moments of great intensity, great drama, that hinge on actions taken ine the next few moments, or seconds, on the outcome of which it feels (at the time) like worlds might fall or empires crumble.
It seems, on the evidence of the weekend, that that might be over. That rugby officialdom has shot all that in the foot.
To be emotionally invested in a sporting contest -- and that's why we invest so much time and, sometimes, money, to watch the damn things, isn't it? because we are so emotionally invested -- then we have to know that what we're seeing in front of us is final. Is authoritative. Is complete. Is over. That the thing that's just happened has happened, is irrevocable, that worlds have lost (or been won), and we can rejoice or lament as deserved.
In short, that the actions of that moment, for good or ill, are exactly as final as death.
But why commit emotionally when you know all decisions (bar send-offs) are contingent?
Why commit, as a fan, to your team defending the line for phase after heroic phase, when you know there's a match official with his arm out waiting to bring the game back five minutes by saying "No advantage."
Why care, even a little, when you know the defensive effort will only be a reward for the other team?
And why care at all about a try, the one thing his or her team is straining heart and sinew to score and the fan can celebrate with whole heart and soul? Because even this, after whistle has gone and celebrations subside, can be taken away now at the tweak of an off-field match official's microphone which happens to bear the words "No try; we're going back four phases [four phases!] for a fumble on the other side of the field." A fumble which the on-field match official saw, at the time, and said "Play on"!
Why celebrate?
Why care?
Why invest emotionally, even in (what should be) the greatest of things in the sport, of a scintillating and possibly match-winning try in a World Cup Final, when even that can be overturned so blithely? (Turns out, ironically, that the one thing, the only thing, that is irreversible is the awarding of a penalty. Even if the match official himself tells the players before the resulting kick is taken -- for three points in a game lost by just one -- that the decision he made was wrong, it turns out that he's barred from reversing it.)
I ILLUSTRATE BY CONTRAST. I take you to the very end of this year's home-and-away AFL season, in which the fortunes of five teams hinged on the result of one game -- a game in which Adelaide kicked what looked like a winning goal against Sydney. To give them a win. But almost immediately (and the speed was the key) the goal umpire called "no goal." No goal, he said, because the ball had hit the post. No goal, meaning that because of that decision teams went into the final eight that wouldn't have otherwise, and other teams missed out. Including Adelaide. (And my team, Geelong.)
Turned out however that the goal umpire was wrong. That the ball didn't hit the post. That Adelaide coulda-shoulda won. That (because of that putative win) several teams who had already started their off-season prep might have to be called back.
So what's the AFL to do? Here's what they did: they came out on the Monday and said two things: "We wuz wrong." And: "Tough." It was left to sports commentators to say the third: "Suck it up."
At the time, I thought they were empty-headed. That they were wrong. Not so. What they perhaps understood, and what the weekend's failure of officiation illustrated so well, by its absence, is (and I capitalise this to be sure to make the point) that FANS NEED TO KNOW THAT WHAT THEY'RE SEEING IN THE HERE-AND-NOW REALLY MATTERS. Because if they don't, if they start to think that it's all contingent, that it's all mutable, then there's no point in hanging on the outcome of every damn moment in what otherwise is a pretty stupid spectacle.
And when that happens, people just stop caring. And stop watching.
And let's not even get started on red cards and yellow cards, and the foolishness of importing, into a man-on-man game of collisions in which every man matters, a system borrowed from soccer. (I'll let a sports writer at RNZ do some of that heavy lifting for me, suggesting a sport from which it might be better to borrow.)
Let's instead lament the decision of our team leaders who decided not to take three points when it mattered, and congratulate the Springboks and their coaches -- who worked out that to win, with the rules as they are, that it's best to play low-risk rugby in which you invite the other team to make the mistakes.
And to wonder whether we should really care about it at all.
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