Rugby's balls-up of its own making

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OPINION: 'This is great stuff. Phil Bennett covering, chased by Alistair Scown. Brilliant! Oh, that's brilliant! John Williams, Bryan Williams, Pullin, John Dawes. Great dummy! David, Tom David, the halfway line. Brilliant by Quinnell. This is Gareth Edwards. A dramatic start. What a score!' – Cliff Morgan, TV commentator, Cardiff Arms Park, January 27, 1973; Barbarians v New Zealand.

Even now, with the benefit of more than 3 1/2 decades, it's difficult to know which was the more inspired.

The try, still considered among the greatest in the history of the game of rugby. Or Cliff Morgan's unashamedly breathless description of it. In its way, each was outstanding because, just as this was no ordinary piece of commentary, this was no ordinary try. It was the perfect convergence of action and account in the traditional finale to a rugby tour of Britain.

If you watch the try, and it's easy enough to find on the Barbarians own website you might be moved by many things, not the least of which is Morgan's ability to convey the drama of the moment not by language, but inflection.

On anyone else's tongue, it might have sounded like a list of names. On Morgan's it is the perfect soundtrack to one of rugby's most celebrated moments.

You might also be struck by the genius of Phil Bennett, as he side-steps three times off his right foot, while making that declaration of Barbarian intent by running the ball just a couple of metres from his own line.

But you might also wonder, as I did, what the hell has happened to the game in the 36 years since. I look at that game and others from that time and I wonder: Who stole rugby? Because it's becoming increasingly clear that the greatest threat to our national game isn't football or league or any other sport, but rugby itself.

Let's concede, shall we, that sport in the 21st century is more athletic and with more at stake both physically and economically. This is only natural.

But football – for instance – has, I think, about three rules. You can't handle the ball (are your listening Thierry Henry), you can't be dirty and you can't be offside. There may be more, but if you stick to those three you'll be fine.

Every few years some mad scientist tries to tinker with the size of the goalmouth or the technology of the ball, but the game we see today is essentially the one played 30 years ago. Or 50 years ago.

The grounds are better and the players are richer, but you get the feeling George Best would have been a superstar in whatever decade he chose to be born.

How about other sports? Well, cricket seems to be getting shorter by the day.

But really, whatever flavour you prefer, it's pretty much the same game and if you got one of them in an honest moment, even the Twenty20 millionaires might concede that the greatest examination a cricketer can face is over five days.

So what has changed, really? They cover the wickets now, of course. Batsmen have become quite fond of their helmets. And there's the third umpire.

Tactics haven't changed because the laws of the game haven't changed, so again what we're talking about here is tweaks to the spectacle but not the sport.

Golf? The greatest progress has been in technology. The balls are better and the clubs are advancing every year. There will always be those who believe they can "Tiger-proof" a golf course, but they will always be wrong.

It used to be that American Football made no sense. Its rules were confusing and they stopped all the time for reasons no one could understand. You watch enough games though, and you start to pick it up, and before you know it, one day you find yourself shouting at the screen because some hero quarterback's run a passing play on the fourth down.

Which brings us to the catastrophe that is rugby.

When an international referee such as Stu Dickinson can get the rules so wrong so often, what chance do we have? And how are we supposed to know the difference between a genuine transgression, and a referee just having a bad day?

Why should I risk my enjoyment on an untrustworthy interpretation when other sports are happy to reduce the risk by simplifying the question.

It's either a catch or it isn't. He's either in or he's out. He's either offside or he's not.

There is still genuine joy to be found in the skill, endurance and the athleticism. I can celebrate suffocating defence as much as I enjoy relentless attack. But then we'll accidentally arrive at the tackled ball or a scrum and I am once again cast adrift because rugby fails where other sports do not. It fixed what was not broken.

There are plenty out there who have a deep and abiding understanding of rugby and its rules and mostly they will be players, because who the hell else can be bothered keeping up?

The reason we have so many problems with referees is that we have given them far too much opportunity. They aren't the near-invisible enablers of other sports, but part of the show.

Rugby has no one to blame but itself because if you fill a book with rules, someone will always feel the need to apply them. And if you change the rules every other year ...

A final thought. When, in 1997, rugby finally got around to creating its "International Hall of Fame", two of the original inductees were Gareth Edwards and Cliff Morgan. Of the 63 others, not one is a referee. Doesn't that tell us something?