Is the Rugby World cup a Spectacular event or has it become a farce for rich syndicates?

As the Rugby world cup 2019 progresses, there are some themes that are becoming increasingly evident

1. The complexion of the teams is growing darker.
2. The pacific island nations are performing below par.
3. The refereeing decisions have been inconsistent and had undue influence on outcomes

Let’s look at each of these in more detail

The complexion of teams is growing darker

This is an observation I made almost 10 years ago. But 5 world cups ago it was a near 100% white affair. Yea, there might have been the odd Maori in the All-Blacks and the token black in the Springboks. But that was about it – it was as white as snow white.
Over the last 20 years, with the All-Blacks increasingly becoming all black, with the Polynesian Islander body type proving to be ideal for the sport, other white nations have struggled to compete.
Each of the white rugby nations have had to adopt differing strategies to address this. France has tapped the Africans from their former colonies. England’s strategy has been more complex. They have tried to tap their African’s from the colonies with less success. So their strategy has been to buy them from either Africa or the pacific islands. South Africa has been forced to rely on their own majority population. The All-Blacks, who started this trend, have an ample supply of Maori's and other Polynesian islanders who are welcome to that country.
The Wallabies struggle to leverage the Polynesian communities resident there, mostly because of the racist and elitist attitudes of Rugby Australia – the governing body, who have, for ages, been reliant on the exclusive private schools to deliver a pool of rich pesky little white boys to play the sport. It worked for a while when the competition presented similar looking teams of pesky little white boys – but not anymore. So, the strategy has been to poach Polynesians from other codes of the game or buy them.
Japan simply buys them although it is evident that they are the best coached and a well drilled team displaying technical superiority and so, performing well above the individual talent in the team.
Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Italy have had limited options and probably lack the funds to splash on Polynesian stars and so, mostly remain white and uncompetitive – and I say that despite Ireland ridiculously being ranked 1.

The Pacific Island nations are performing below par

At first glance it may seem that this contradicts my statement about the Polynesian body type being the most suited for the sport. These players display flair, speed, power, manoeuvrability and perhaps the only attribute they may lack is height for certain roles in the sport.
Whilst in the previous world cups, these nations have shown improvement from one world cup to the next, this year they have, as a group, failed to impress. Tonga, Samoa and Fiji have all had no impact in this world cup.
This is ironic, because it is their own people who are strengthening the other nations who are beating them. It is the lack of funds and facilities that prevent them from providing the incentives to keep their best players.
Last night Japan beat Samoa with Samoans scoring for both sides. It was disheartening to watch the numbers peal off the Samoan jumpers – an appropriate reflection of the funding of the two teams.

The refereeing decisions have been inconsistent and had undue influence on outcomes

This third theme is somewhat unrelated to the general gist of this discussion, but I have included it here as I don’t plan to write a further entry simply for this topic.
In one the early games, the Wallaby winger illegally tackled a Fijian play maker. The offence resulted in a simply a penalty against the Wallabies but knocked out the Fijian player from the tournament. In contrast an English player slides to avoid a tackle by a Puma lock and there is contact above the shoulder. The decision made by the referee was to red card the Puma putting an end to the team’s prospects of getting into the quarter finals. This English player fakes an injury and simply gets up, dusts himself and plays the rest of the game and tournament. In effect the pedantic Nigel Owens, ensured England’s progress and destroys the prospects of one of the few nations (apart from Japan, as the Polynesian nations are under performing) that might have disrupted the usual established eight teams from getting into the final stages of the tournament.
High tackles are a serious offence, however, there are different levels and situations under which contact can happen above the shoulder. If one took this too seriously, there wouldn’t be a single player on the field at the end of each game – they’d be all red carded! The issue is that the penalty should be proportional to the impact of the illegality. For instance, the Wallaby player should have been banned for the rest of the tournament since that was the case for the Fijian star. The Puma should have been yellow carded and back on the field in 10 – considering the English player didn’t even end-up going for a concussion test. Make it even more interesting by letting the opposition decide which player needed to face the consequence – that would really make the coaches ensure they didn’t field thugs.
The more cynical of you would see a trend here. The minnows of the game are consistently treated unfairly in favour of the “controlling” nations. This is not unique to Rugby, it happened in cricket where the white nations did not want Sri Lanka in test cricket because of the possible loss of white control. We now have the sport completely controlled by a coloured nation.

So, what should we make of all of this?

Last night I watched Japan play Samoa, but it seemed like a multi-national syndicate play Somoa. I watched England play a 14 man Argentina and once again, it seemed like a multi-national syndicate play Argentina. The Wallabies walloped Uruguay and guess what, it seemed like a multi-national syndicate play Uruguay.
The question is, has it become farcical to have this tribal tournament with passionate jingoistic patriots supporting their tribe, when really the teams representing them have nothing much to do with them other than to get lots of money for their efforts.
The teenager sharing our dwellings suggested to me that it would not be fair to exclude people who migrated to countries from the sport. But the reality is that no Polynesian is welcomed in white-supremacist England other than to help England win the world cup and they are paid well for it.
This is the case in Australia as well. Polynesian’s are welcome to pick fruit or help us win world cups whether it be NRL or rugby union. Australia now has migrant from Africa who could be moulded into great rugby players, but the preference is to label them as “gangs” and “thugs” and mistreat them.
Since rugby converted to a professional sport, players have migrated to places where they can make their lives and their loved ones lives comfortable – who can blame them for that. But no codified rules can really address the fact that these teams no longer reflect the nations that they represent.
So, why worry about them representing nations anymore? Why not make them complete commercial syndicates? Are we in denial about the truth? Or will the more wealthy nations, who have historically controlled the sport, continue to prefer the advantage their wealth provides them to boost the jingoistic egos of their citizens. We cannot ignore that there is commercial value in jingoism. Perhaps things will change when China decides that it wanted to win the Rugby World cup!