Apparently 16 million people in the UK tuned in for the rugby "world cup" final on Saturday evening. It's unlikely that many of them will have become longer-term aficionados of the sport. I don't like rugby, but I watched for about ten minutes -- long enough to remind myself that it's one of the most tedious of all sports to watch. Even the rugby correspondents in the up-market press have been forced to admit that it really wasn't much of a game.
The question I always put to rugby fans is this: if the game is so good, how come they keep changing the rules? The game is now very different from the one that I was forced to play at grammar school in the 1960s. Mind you, all of the illogical bits have been retained -- you can still get points from a penalty kick awarded for wome minor infraction on the halfway line, conversions have to be taken in line with where the preceding try was scored, and (worst of all), you can't pass the ball forward.
In fact, some other dumb stuff has been added -- lifting in the line-outs and all that palaver about "phases" of play. What's more, the authorities have already announced that, despite the great success of the "world cup", they're going to tinker with the rules yet again. Apparently they think there is still too much emphasis on defence at the expense of attack, though when there are a dozen behemoths rolling around in the dirt with the ball nowhere to be seen, I suspect most of the sixteen million souls who tuned in on Saturday night would have a hard time telling the difference.
Still, never mind: Dolphins versus Giants at Wembley this weekend, with 80,000 tickets sold. That's not far short of the total weekly attendance at the Guinness Premiership.
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