When will World Rugby clean up its messy rules?

So Rassie Erasmus and SA Rugby have apologised and accepted their punishments from World Rugby, but what will be done about all the officiating errata that has marred the game this year?

Most probably nothing because the northern hemisphere bloc that now enjoys the hegemony at World Rugby will be too busy power-mongering and money-chasing to pay much notice to the real problems the game is facing.

Rugby pundits around the world have been writing about the need to bring clarity and uniformity to the way the game is officiated for more than a decade now, and all World Rugby seems to do is print new and even more confusing law interpretations.

The sport itself is losing credibility because fans no longer understand the laws or how they are blown. Frustrated, they end up casting aspersions on the integrity of the poor referees, and it is a dangerous place for any sport to be when you are alienating your own supporters.

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While Erasmus’ hour-long video was perhaps a bit too much like starting a riot for World Rugby’s authoritarian tastes, a rant was inevitable following British and Irish Lions coach Warren Gatland being able to get away with questioning the integrity of South African Marius Jonker when he was appointed TMO shortly before the first Test due to Covid restrictions that stopped Brendan Pickerill from travelling from New Zealand.

Predictably, the 50/50 calls went the Lions’ way, but Erasmus was more upset with the poor refereeing of Australian Nic Berry.

But it’s not just Erasmus who has lashed out at officials this year. Wallabies coach Dave Rennie was publicly furious over how his team were treated by the officials on their European tour, and rugby fans in South Africa were eagerly awaiting news of what action would be taken against him, especially since Jonker was the target of his rage, even though on a couple of key decisions he was left trying to find compelling evidence to overturn the referee’s on-field decision.

World Rugby ended up just issuing Rennie a written warning on Friday.

Losing teams are always going to have one or two gripes to complain about, and generally the side that wins would have had a couple of decisions go against them too, but the mathematics of the recent officiating seems to have swung well away from 50/50.

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Things are not adding up too often for World Rugby to continue to turn a blind eye to this crisis.

Speaking about adding up, England conceded 11 second-half penalties against the Springboks last weekend as the pressure mounted on them, but there were no team warnings and no yellow cards.

The great Nigel Owens stated in his column in the Telegraph that he felt South Africa were especially unfortunate not to get more reward out of their dominant scrum, but the Springboks obviously don’t want to dare say anything critical and add to the bans and fines World Rugby are launching their way.

We can only hope that, as one of their New Year’s resolutions, World Rugby can find it in their hearts to sort out the officiating crisis and placate the bee’s nest that has been stirred up this year.

Of course referees will err and no-one wants to see them put under undue pressure.

But when the governing body turns a blind eye to accountability across the board, then it puts the high-stakes international game, made even more tense by bubble life, under untenable strain.