OPINION

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Voice from the stands

Tuesday 15th July 2008

John O'Neill: Please chew while you are eating

On and on and on and on and... Another Springbok player suspended, another round of moaning over flaws in the disciplinary process, another outpouring of national 'banter' between South Africa and New Zealand.

Accusations of cycloptic referees and double standards from judiciaries are nothing new, but the one about television producers being biased did bring a smile to our faces. A national broadcaster is playing to his audience? Surely not!

There are flaws in the judicial system, and they are as follows:

1) Why are SANZAR using people from their own countries to do the job when IRB-appointed delegates, or any set of northern hemisphere judges/officials could do the job neutrally and as swiftly as possible.

2) Why on earth bother banning players for periods of time rather than periods of matches?

To imagine 1 becoming a reality with SANZAR on their ring-fenced newscorp-sponsored cheerleader-ridden paradise island is a pipe dream, but 2 must be a consideration if just to stop all the bickering and build up some trust in their ability to administrate properly.

Brad Thorn only got one week for his stupid and ultimately damaging tackle on John Smit - although the jury is still out on when exactly Smit was injured - while Bismarck du Plessis copped three weeks for (and the wording for this one doubles up as our joke of the week) "careless, not deliberate, contact with the eye area" of Adam Thomson.

So picking someone up and dropping them to the ground from a height is three times less serious than a mis-placed slap. Yes, so it seems. But crucially, both Thorn and Du Plessis are only going to miss one match. So why not say they are banned for one match, instead of making the punishments seem more disproportionate than they essentially are?

I am about to say something very rare here: this is one of those scenarios where soccer has it right. Rare instances like Cantona attacks or failed dope tests will carry long-term time-based bans, but on-field transgressions are disciplined by sanctions over matches rather than weeks. Rugby has something to learn after all!

Anyway, with or without Du Plessis, South Africa head to Perth where I can't see them losing to Australia. That's not a slight on Australia, but it is one against this miserable extended schedule that has the head-to-head matches we have just seen, and now has Australia coming into the tournament cold against the Boks who are two matches down and in prime match fettle. If it were the other way round I'd be predicting an Australia win.

After this match, South Africa have a four-week break, and New Zealand have a four-week break in August before their potentially decisive final match against the Wallabies in Brisbane. Can you imagine teams in the Six Nations taking four weeks off in the middle?

Nor me. The extra round of matches was dull enough, but spacing the tournament out over more than two months is crazy. How is anyone supposed to build up and maintain momentum with four weeks off?

So I'm none too impressed with SANZAR at the moment, and John O'Neill's dummy-spitting over the north's refusal to play the game he wants to is not helping. In case he has not seen: the ELVs are being trialled in the north next season. They are trialling the ones that help to both speed the game up and maintain the shape and structure of our wonderful game. A compromise has been found. O'Neill has his cake, he could at least show good table manners and chew when eating it.

Elsewhere in the north, the appointment of Brian Smith as England's attack coach is interesting. He has brought an attacking flair to London Irish probably only matched by Gloucester in the Guinness Premiership, but the Irish are not renowned for magnificent defence. Will Smith's style come at a cost?

On Thursday comes one of my most enjoyable days of the year: the Heineken Cup fixture list. I rarely plan more than a month in advance, but six weekends of the year are spent, without exception, at one game and glued to a television set for the others. Heineken Cup atmosphere with Super 14 rules this year too. Bring that on!

Which part of rugby's world has caught your thoughts this week?

By Danny Stephens