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OPINION: Don't blame Japan for cancellations

rugby15 October 2019 02:40| © SuperSport
By:Gavin Rich
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Sergio Parisse © Gallo Images

Amidst all the excitement of the entertaining game of rugby at Yokohama Stadium on Sunday that blew away some of the residual shadow cast by Typhoon Hagibis there was something that was largely overlooked - the fate of Namibia.

And Italy for that matter, but their captain Sergio Parisse did have quite a bit to say during the week when the cancellation of what would have been his and a clutch of other senior Italian players’ swansong was cancelled.

Parisse asked a very apt question that Namibia, who had their last game cancelled because of the typhoon, must also feel deserves some answering. Scotland clearly would have too had their game not been played and had the Japanese team left them with any leg to stand on once it was.

“It is not news that this is typhoon season in Japan, so why aren’t any contingency plans in place?”

It is understood a contingency was thought of last week but New Zealand, having had an offer to move their game against Italy forward to the Friday turned down, were not happy for their game to be switched to Monday. That would have interfered with their preparation for a Saturday quarterfinal. You can’t blame them.

EVERY TEAM SIGNED UP

But a precedent was set, which meant that even though, with the Pool phase now completed, there is now effectively a four-year window for Namibia and Canada to play their Pool B game that was cancelled, World Rugby was not changing their hardline approach. There would be no contingency plans in place in the Pool phases, and every team at the tournament signed up to it in the beginning.

It is easy to imagine they didn’t think much of it then. A typhoon had hit Tokyo 12 days before the tournament started, but does lightning strike in the same place twice? Namibia, and Canada for that matter, would not have imagined the game they were both building towards, their big one of the tournament, would not take place.

Namibia made a lot of the fact that they have yet to win a World Cup game before the tournament started. Their mission was to break that duck. Realistically, given their other group phase opponents were New Zealand, South Africa and Italy, the last game was the one they were targeting.

The Canadian coach also made no bones after his team’s loss to the Springboks that it was the game his team were building towards too. In fact, it directed the team selections for both Canada and Namibia in their games against the Boks.

That the defining moment of their respective four year cycles, what they had been building towards for so long, should be denied them is unacceptable. But who is to blame? As Parisse says, this is typhoon season in Japan. So why play the tournament now?

OLYMPICS COULD FACE EVEN BIGGER PROBLEMS

It turns out it isn’t Japan’s fault that it is being staged now, just as it also isn’t Japan’s fault that next year’s Olympic Games, scheduled for here in Tokyo, is being staged at the hottest and most humid time of the year.

There are genuine concerns that the oppressive levels of heat and humidity that are considered the norm in Tokyo in the last week of July/first week of August could be a health risk for not only competitors, but also spectators. Heat exhaustion is apparently a problem in this city at that time of the year.

According to a report in the New York Times, more than 1000 people, including more than 150 in Tokyo, died of heat-related causes in late July and early August in the past two years. Tens of thousands were hospitalised, and it was the kind of heat that led the Olympic organisers in 1964 to move that year’s summer Olympics to October.

As the New York Times states, “it would not take an unusual heat wave to turn (next year’s Olympics) into the hottest Olympics in history”.

So we return to the same question we asked of Japan when it came to the rugby cancellations last week and the timing of the World Cup: Is it their fault? No it isn’t, it is the fault of the Olympic organisers who have a set and now seemingly immoveable window in place that is dictated by American television. NBC pay them an inordinate amount of money for television rights. Three quarters of the International Olympic Committee revenue comes from broadcast rights, and NBC owns half of that.

The last Olympics to fall outside of the last week of July/first week of August window was Sydney in 2000, which was staged in late September. It was a disaster for American television as it clashed with baseball and football, which are the main events on American television in September and October. Viewership figures for the Sydney Olympics registered a record low.

Japan would have known that, or been told that, when they launched their Bid for the Olympics. Every city that bids for the Olympics subsequent to 2000 will have to accept the fact that the money behind the show dictates an intransigent attitude to the Olympic window. It has to be late July/early August or forget about bidding. It ruled out Qatar, for a start.

BLAME THE MALIGN INFLUENCE OF NORTHERN CLUBS

In rugby’s case it isn’t television that dictates when the World Cup is played, but the malignant tumour that is impacting negatively on rugby in so many areas across the globe - namely the power of the English and French clubs.

Just like South Africans and British and Irish Lions fanatics have to accept that the window for the 2021 Lions tour to South Africa has been shrunk sizeably to suit the wishes of the English and French clubs, so rugby has to accept that the same pressure group is dictating the timing of Rugby World Cups.

It is that powerful, some would say malign influence, that the likes of Parisse, Scotland coach Gregor Townsend and any others who have quite rightly vented over the past week should be directing their ire at.

If rugby is going to sell itself and rise above the financial challenges facing it globally it does need to be sold to a wider audience and it is only really through the World Cup that you can do that. The farce of having important games cancelled, and perhaps deciding the destination of the World Cup based on weather intervention, does nothing for the selling of the game.

There have been a surprising number of Canadian fans at this World Cup, as there are many Americans. The people from the smaller nations, meaning rugby-wise of course, are interested. But those Canadians and Namibians (there were more than expected Namibians here too) who flew home without seeing their teams play their big game will have done so feeling mainly frustration.

WORLD RUGBY NEEDS TO LOOK AFTER MINNOWS BETWEEN WORLD CUPS

Which brings up another point. If World Rugby is serious about spreading the game through new frontiers, they can’t just wash their hands of the smaller nations after every World Cup as if to say “Bye bye, see you in four years”.

Since Japan beat South Africa in the 2015 World Cup, they’ve played one or two games against tier one nations, but not nearly enough. Given how much they’ve improved in four years, imagine where they might be if this country was a more regular destination for the world’s top teams. We’re not talking every year, but every tier one nation should surely be obligated to visit here at least once every four year cycle from now on.

Something sensibly thought out should apply to the other small nations too. Imagine how much better the World Cup would be if all Pool games had a decent level of competitiveness about them.

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