Loose Pass: Judgement day for ‘Bulletproof Bill’ while All Black gets away with ‘human missile act’ on Wallabies legend

This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with England’s domestic tipping point, officiating discrepancies and the segregation of fans…

Night of the long knives

How things change. Last September Bill Sweeney told reporters that, despite the sudden departure of two of England‘s most influential coaches, he did not believe that the English national set-up was an unstable environment.

He might have been right about the set-up, which has righted itself most gratifyingly under Steve Borthwick this year, but if it is stable environments you want, TW1 is not the region to be looking in. Mr. Sweeney may be a few hundred thousand richer from his role, yet the money most certainly has not bought him any friends. And on Thursday night, it may be his acceptance of that money that, despite the national team sprouting green shoots of success, proves to be his downfall.

He will quite justifiably point to the fact that the national team is starting to deliver (although he has personally insisted he was only the facilitator of the process that led to Borthwick’s appointment), but the rest of English rugby is in a worrying state. Newcastle Falcons look set to be the next club to vanish off the face of the Premiership, leaving a nine-club top flight and teams below either unwilling or unable to make the step up. In the short term it might improve English clubs’ performances in Europe, but it is nobody’s idea of a thriving club game.

Below the top tier, the Championship has been gutted, while the falling participation rates in the club game are a continuous problem – if not one that can entirely be laid at Mr. Sweeney’s door. But the fact that the RFU lost 38m in operating result and made 42 people redundant, all while rewarding Mr. Sweeney with a 358k long-term incentive bonus continues to be the headline stick with which his enemies beat him with.

Bulletproof Bill may have come through the Six Nations still alive, but the first special general meeting of the RFU for a quarter of a century may yet sentence him to exile; not to mention several of his mates. Judgement day has been hanging around on the calendar since just before the Six Nations; if Mr. Sweeney thought a good performance from England might bail him out, he got it horribly wrong.

Ironically, Mr. Sweeney himself portended this in January. Speaking to the I, he said: “There were three reasons I didn’t take this job in 2017. The one that’s probably most relevant to today is the view of people who’ve been around a lot longer saying that the RFU regularly implodes, you can set your watch to it, there’s political shenanigans behind the scenes, and all the rest. It always happens in rugby.”

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Intriguingly, he also said at the time that “I don’t think the current structure, given the game went professional in 1995, really works,” noting that a split of the vast, sprawling megalith that is the RFU could quite efficiently be carved up into four or five operating pieces, such as one for the venue, one for the community game, one for the pros and so on, with the RFU itself being little more than a corporate oversight board.

It sounds like a fine idea, which rather begs the question of why it was not tabled sooner. Corona, the successful strategic recovery from which formed a significant part of the basis for Bill’s bonus, might have had something to do with that, but was the will for change there then like it is now?

As it is, it is the corporate-style bonus which has probably brought Bill down, personal profit made with appalling timing as the corporation loses and its stakeholders suffer. But it does beg the question: why is profit so important? Couldn’t we have a governing body that simply ensures the game breaks even, simply pays its executives a fixed salary, simply serves the good of the game rather than the interests of the self or the few?

Sweeney is unlikely to survive the vote on Thursday, but will those who come after ensure that this is not a situation repeated for more than 25 years?

Red card cop-outs

We were reminded by many at the start of the Six Nations that although a red card was a 20-minute red card, a permanent one bringing the team down to 14 for the rest of the game could still be issued for more egregious acts of foul play.

Yet France hooker Peato Mauvaka got away with one against Scotland, and this weekend past, Shannon Frizell got away with an even more blatant one on Michael Hooper.

Mauvaka benefitted from a poor set of camera angles, but there was no disguising Frizell’s human missile act. Never mind the fact that it wasn’t even upgraded, there’s not been enough debate about how it is precisely these acts that deserve a permanent exclusion for the player and a disadvantage for his team for the rest of the game, help the player feel the shame from his team-mates. A really poor look.

Shannon Frizell clear out on Michael Hooper
byu/StateFuzzy4684 inallblacks

Away blocks

Loose Pass read about the plans to segregate fans – the word used in the first report I read – with probably similar dismay to you.

But segregation really isn’t the word. That implies police cordons, or cages or some such. In the reality, sorting away fans into one block of tickets in a part of the ground is hardly strong-arm tactics detrimental to the future of the game.

But it still doesn’t sit right. Rugby away days are also about the friends you make among the opposition fans as well as being with your own, the mutual dislike of the officials at entirely different moments and the priceless gossip around another club other than yours. And while club games are blissfully free of some of the drunken trouble that has doused international matches recently, there’s a creeping suspicion that the encouragement of tribal formation may lead down the wrong path.

It sits uneasily as a concept over here.

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