World Rugby has a year to sort out this farce

A four-game ban for Hunter Paisami?

I had his tackle on Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu in Perth last Sunday as a penalty, and even that went against my better instincts.

It was not “foul play”, despite what World Rugby says.

Rugby fans have been gaslit for years with that terminology when anyone with even a degree common sense can see what happened.

Paisami was upright because he wanted to shut off the possibility of an offload. There is no foulness in his intentions or the act.

When the two collided it was more cheek to cheek than anything, and even that contact looked secondary to their upper bodies meeting. Drunken teenage discos see bodies embrace more vigorously.

But, boy, did Feinberg-Mngomezulu make sure the incident was noticed, throwing his hands up in the air and launching himself towards space for the benefit of the watching Oscar judges.

That’s another pernicious result of the crackdown on supposed “foul play”. Simulation hasn’t crept into rugby, it’s been invited through the front door by World Rugby.

I’d bet good money that high-ranking people within World Rugby don’t even think that incident was foul play, but the game has gone so far down that path it’s hard to turn back.

If that doesn’t make sense, that because what we saw in the Wallabies-Springboks Test last week doesn’t make sense.

Four yellow cards? You would assume that this vicious outbreak of thuggery would result in multiple HIAs to look after player welfare. But again you would be wrong, with neither Feinberg-Mngomezulu nor Malcolm Marx requiring tests after “foul play” by Paisami and Harry Wilson.

In fact, the only HIA the Springboks seemed concerned about was one for Eben Etzebeth, who had a neck injury or a head injury that was significant enough to remove him from the field, but not bad enough for the Springboks to immediately return him to the field when it became clear he couldn’t be replaced with another player.

Etzebeth has been named in the Sharks’ 23 for their game against Leinster in Durban this weekend, so make of that what you will.

World Rugby has a year to sort out this mess before the Rugby World Cup in Australia. What percentage of the 1 million-plus ticket purchasers have made that investment so they can watch TMOs pore over inconclusive video evidence in search of “foul play” whose very definition has been arbitrarily invented in the first place.

A good lawyer should take on World Rugby and require a 5 per cent ticket refund for every yellow card dished out during games. Supporters pay for 15 v 15, but can never be guaranteed of it. In an era when actual foul play is rare, World Rugby seems hellbent on rage-baiting the people who actually keep the game alive.

There were warning signs in an otherwise excellent Six Nations.

England copped eight yellow cards during the Six Nations, including a harsh one in their last game against France and another against Scotland that coach Steve Borthwick later revealed prompted an apology from World Rugby.

These are tournament-defining, and arguably career-defining, decisions but the game does not seem to be slowing down in its determination to send players from the field.

The Wallabies did the game’s administrators a massive favour on Sunday. Had they not hung on to win that Test, all hell would have broken loose.

They were emphatically the better side but were a whisker away from losing the Test to a man receiving instructions on a mobile phone. We can laugh at the absurdity now because the Wallabies won, but Rugby Australia should be furious.

Rugby’s recovery in Australia is fragile, because it is up against a well-funded rival.

Perhaps the penny will finally will drop up north if the NRL buys the Super League and starts eating some of rugby’s lunch in the UK.

But until then Wallabies supporters, and future fans of the code, need to be assured that what they are watching is a credible and fathomable sport that knows the difference between accidental contact and the sort of act that merits a four-game ban.

Some of the wind has already been taken out of the Wallabies’ win, because Paisami’s absence from the Bledisloe series already threatens Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii’s highly promising shift to the wing, especially if Len Ikitau is no good.

Rugby can be great again, but the last quarter in Perth was so far removed from that.