Paddy whacking exposes IRB

OPINION: Even by the convoluted, often hypocritical, standards of the International Rugby Board, the stomping of Paddy O'Brien because he dared to speak the truth in public is an eye-opener.

O'Brien is the manager of referees for the IRB, a position you might have thought would give him the right to speak freely about what he believes.

There's certainly no record of anyone at the IRB raising a cheep of concern when O'Brien reckoned Kiwis should grow up, get over it, and applaud Wayne Barnes as a refereeing superstar when we complained over Blondie's effort in the world cup quarterfinal.

And if the IRB appointed O'Brien because he was seen to be an expert on the rules, wouldn't he then be the perfect person to pass judgement on what, in the case of Stu Dickinson and his scrum rulings in the All Blacks test with Italy, he saw as an inadequate performance?

Well, as they say at Christmas time, "ho, ho, ho" to that idea.

This is the IRB remember, a group which, if there was a worldwide honesty in advertising law, would have to use as its motto, "The IRB, treating rugby fans like mushrooms since 1886."

So if you listen very closely you may hear a screeching sound as O'Brien's heels scrape the floor in his haste to back up and apologise to Dickinson, to Australian rugby, to John O'Neill, in fact to anyone wearing a hat with corks hanging from the brim, for daring to pass a frank and sincere opinion.

Those of us who have harboured dark theories for decades about the oppressive practices of the IRB don't take much joy from seeing them displayed in public.

But if this is how their officials react to an expert verdict from someone in their ranks, how much faith do you have in them being active and transparent over fixing the abysmal mess test rugby has been in the next two or three weeks?

MARTIN JOHNSON is one of a lengthy line of great players who has struggled to transform on-field ability into the coaching arena.

Yes, I know that Johnson's job with the England rugby team is jargoned into the title "team manager" but, in reality, if he's not head coach of England then Darren Shand is the All Blacks coach, and Graham Henry is the manager.

It's a nice theory that a brilliant player will be able to rub off some of the magic from his career onto the players he's coaching.

Certainly, the English union hoped that would be the case with Johnson, whose coaching experience before taking on the England job was ... er ... none. That's none, as in nothing, nada, zip, never even coached an amateur club side.

And the reality is that a legendary player is no more likely than a run-of-the-mill one to be a legend when he hangs up the boots, puts on a team blazer, and sits in the coaches' box.

In six world cups only two of the winning coaches, Brian Lochore and Clive Woodward, had been test players, and only Lochore a top one.

Could it be that Johnson is one of those men, giants when they played, who were so good they may not have needed to analyse what it was that made them so successful?

A RARELY CONSIDERED reason why the All Whites' win, by a long way the most wonderfully exciting moment in our sport this year, may not translate into a round-ball takeover of rugby in New Zealand: real estate.

In the cities it's not a big issue, but in the 1950s and 1960s, when New Zealand was a wealthy, mainly rural country, if a town was big enough to have a petrol pump, the rugby club built a clubhouse. To this day football facilities lag behind rugby ones in the vast majority of rural towns. As Kevin Costner's character in Field of Dreams said, "If you build it, they will come." In the case of country rugby clubs, it's already built.

- © Fairfax NZ News