Cards Ruining the Game
World Rugby has got itself into something of a pickle. It is one thing for Michael Cheika to complain about referees’ rulings; but when Steve Hansen joins in with expressions of disquiet about two yellow cards issued to the All Blacks, we know that there must be something seriously wrong.
The Rugby World Cup in Japan is in danger of being discredited as a contest and ruined as a spectacle by the number of cards – both yellow and red – being issued in one match after another. The referees will no doubt say that they are responding to instructions from World Rugby to come down harshly on dangerous play.
Their intentions are no doubt for the best – they are quite right to have regard for player safety and to try to minimise head-high tackles. Rugby players are not usually small and can do considerable damage to fellow-players if they tackle them incorrectly.
The concern is not that the referees are prepared to use sanctions in order to restrain such dangerous play. The problem arises because the sanctions at their disposal threaten not only the offending players, but also their teams as a whole, and ultimately, the viability and meaningfulness of the match itself.
There is a further problem. There are circumstances, quite frequently, where the requirements of the game itself make it almost inevitable that a player will transgress. Where an opposing player is coming (and falling) forward at knee height in the attempt to score a try, the defender is necessarily in a quandary.
If he uses his arms to halt the ball-carrier, he is almost certain to engage that player in the head or neck area. If, in recognition of the rule against head-high tackling, he desists from using his arms, he will be guilty of a “no-arms” tackle.
In either event, he will be penalised. And this is where it gets really difficult.
The referee will not only penalise the offender and award a penalty kick but, in order to signify the seriousness of the offence, will reach for his pocket and issue a card – a yellow one, requiring the player to leave the field for ten minutes, or a red one, that banishes the player for the rest of the match.
The referee might compound the damage by also awarding a penalty try if he believes that a try would, but for the offence, have been scored. And, in terms of piling penalty on penalty, it does not end there; the offender will then be cited after the match and will often be suspended for a significant number of weeks or matches.
And all of this for a player and a team who were doing no more than making a tackle to defend their line. There need have been no malice or ill-intention – the mere fact of physical contact is enough to constitute the offence; it is usually the posture of the ball-carrier that makes a breach of the rules unavoidable.
The referees clearly believe that they are acting under instructions when they impose this range of sanctions. The fact that most games are ruined as contests once a card has been issued seems to be of no consequence.
There is a further puzzle. It is almost as though World Rugby and the referees have come to see an ordinary penalty as ineffectual and having no teeth. But this is a mistake – the award of a penalty kick can have a great bearing on a game.
To concede a penalty can interrupt a period of dominance and good play by the team penalised. It can offer the team awarded the penalty the chance of a kick at goal or, at the very least, of biting off a good chunk of easily won territory, perhaps opening up the possibility of a line-out throw-in and drive, five metres from the opposing line.
We do not need, in other words, the whole superstructure of cards and penalty tries in order to enforce the rules – especially when there is no malevolent intention. The ordinary penalty is in most cases sanction enough. The deliberate or reckless causing of injury is of course a different matter.
Bryan Gould
7 October 2019
Voting in Local Elections
Local government elections are upon us again. It is a fair bet that, when they are over, we will have all the usual complaints that, despite their undoubted importance, the turnout was depressingly low. So, why do local elections attract so little attention and involvement from the general public? I have a possible answer to that perennial question.
It is generally thought, though on what basis I am not sure, that local government is not an appropriate arena for party politics. It is presumably felt that political parties are legitimately concerned with – and are the expected participants in – the contest to produce the government of the country, but have a less obvious role in local elections.
Whatever the merits of this view, we pay a heavy price, I contend, for the absence of political parties from the local election contest. That absence means, first, that the resources commanded by the political parties, and which are available to raise the level of attention and the volume of information available to the voters in national elections, are missing from the local scene.
Voters are therefore less likely to be aware that local elections are taking place, let alone cognisant of their significance or of the issues involved. But there is also a further factor.
My wife and I are keen to do our democratic duty, and we well understand the importance of the functions undertaken by local government. Where we live, there is no shortage of information arriving through the letter box and telling us why we should vote for particular candidates. So, why do we struggle to persuade ourselves to cast our votes?
The problem is that one of the potentially most important pieces of information is usually not available. Although there are often a number of candidates put forward by the local branches of the political parties, they do not identify themselves as having a party allegiance – presumably for fear that they would thereby alienate those who are hostile to the party to which they belong.
But the result is that the voters are left without an important shorthand indicator of a candidate’s views on signifiant issues. What, for instance, is their view of public expenditure? Would they think it worthwhile to raise rates a little in order to afford a valuable local facility? How far would they take into account the wider public interest on issues like climate change?
A party label will often provide a useful clue as to where a candidate might stand on such broader issues. Without that information, we are left to assess the candidates on their own account of their achievements and attitudes, and that often means that the candidates who stand out (if we are prepared to wade through the often quite lengthy and detailed cvs) are those who seem to have some experience of “running things”.
A party label can, in other words, save the voter a great deal of trouble in assessing who to vote for, and could lead to the election of candidates who are more widely qualified than merely on the basis of their individual “business” experience or lack of it.
So, my conclusion is that local elections would produce better outcomes and attract wider participation from both voters and candidates if the political parties made their involvement more obvious and provided essential information to voters about the party allegiances of the candidates they are prepared to endorse.
The candidates themselves should also come clean. Many budding politicians see local elections as the first step on the ladder to a political career. They should learn the lesson early that it is never a good idea to keep secrets from the public.
But the real lesson is that local government is an important element in the government of the country – and, like every part of government, it raises real questions of political belief and principle. It is not merely the domain of the well-intentioned. The voters need to know where their potential councillors are coming from, in terms of their fundamental beliefs about how society should function. Their party political allegiances do not by themselves provide a full and accurate picture of that issue, but – where they exist – they are an important element of that picture nevertheless.
Bryan Gould
1 October 2019
Parliament’s Failure
Amidst all the “shock horror” of recent days, the convolutions of law and constitution, and the parliamentary confusion and wrangling, there is one undeniable fact arising from the Brexit saga that should really cause concern.
A full three years after the British people voted to leave the EU, a Parliament stuffed full of MPs elected on the promise that they would “respect the result” of the referendum has still failed to deliver on that promise.
Instead, those MPs have contrived to frustrate the will of the people. They have, by implicitly working with EU leaders, made sure that an acceptable exit “deal” is not available, and have then gone further by placing obstacles in the way of departing without a deal – and all this, presumably, in the hope that Brexit can be forestalled and ultimately negated.
These manoeuvrings may have “succeeded” in stymieing Brexit so far, and those responsible may hope to avoid any recriminations on the part of that majority who looked to Parliament to act according to their wishes and now feel betrayed. But they will be disappointed; the long-term damage to the principle of representative democracy is incalculable.
Even in terms of the immediate objectives of those who have conjured up these delaying tactics, the desired outcome looks likely to prove elusive. Those whose response to defeat for their viewpoint in the referendum has been a rearguard action using these guerrilla tactics do not seem to realise that the difficulties they have helped to engineer in the way of the UK leaving the EU make the eventual departure even more certain.
The ordinary British voter is unlikely to conclude, in the light of the parliamentary difficulties, that Brexit should be abandoned. They are far more likely to see those difficulties as further evidence that EU membership is a burden and constraint that must be removed.
Having decided, after 40 years of membership, that it was a bad idea that had turned out badly, they will see continued EU intransigence over the process of departure as further evidence that – if even leaving cannot be achieved without seeking permission – the sooner we remove the shackles the better.
And it will not have escaped their notice that those who are responsible for delaying Brexit today are the very same people who took us into the whole sorry shambles in the first place. All those bien pensants, those who “know best”, are precisely those who assured us in the 1960s and 1970s that joining the Common Market would usher in a new era of prosperity and national success.
Those of us who warned at the time that the consequences of membership would be anything but beneficial have, sadly, been proved right. There has been no economic revival – only perennial trade deficits and a decimated British manufacturing industry. Despite the promise that there was no intention to create a European super-state, we found ourselves subject to European laws, economic policies and jurisdiction, with no ability to decide our own destiny or even to control our own borders.
When we have to go cap in hand just for the privilege of leaving, the British people are not likely to change their minds about the acceptability of government from Brussels. They are not likely to look kindly on those who misled them in the first place about the nature of the arrangement, and who are now compounding that misjudgment by colluding with the EU in order to stop us from leaving.
Even if the people were to be required, on the ground that they got it wrong the first time, to go through the process again, the machinations which have been resorted to in order to keep us in the EU are unlikely to induce them to change their minds – quite the reverse.
What many voters now want most is to be shot of the whole sorry business, and as quickly as possible. We will then, they feel, be free for the first time in decades to seek our own salvation. They will realise that the dire warnings about our future outside the EU look very unconvincing when one grasps that that is exactly where the whole of the rest of the world has always been and continues to be, and that it doesn’t seem to have done them much harm.
The guerrilla warfare faced by Brexiteers may have some success as a diversionary and delaying tactic, but it is, in other words, most unlikely to change the eventual outcome.
Bryan Gould
26 September 2019
The Value of Balance in News Treatment by Our Media
I was born in Hawera, and grew up and went to primary school in the small Taranaki town. Hawera was a miracle; it had a small population and a short history, but it sported many of the facilities and attributes of a much larger and longer-established town.
Among those was an excellent daily newspaper which provided regular coverage of International, as well as local, news. I grew up, like many Kiwis, relying on my daily paper for what I thought was an impartial account of what was happening in the world. It simply did not occur to me that what I read in the paper was anything other than the plain and unadorned fact.
It was only when, in my early 20s, I arrived in the UK that I discovered that newspapers did not all tell the same story but, rather, could be defined by the particular stance they took on politics and everything else.
The saving grace in the UK for this state of affairs is that the great national newspapers, London-based on the whole but with nation-wide circulations, did not hide their political affiliations. As a result, readers knew what they were getting when they purchased their newspapers. If you had your own well-defined politics, you would buy a paper that reflected your preferences.
The situation in New Zealand is a little different. We do not have the equivalent of the British national papers; instead, each major city has its own paper to which readers turn for their daily news.
Those readers do not generally have a choice of paper and therefore have no ability to choose a paper that suits their own views. They must therefore take what they are given, and they are implicitly invited to accept that what they read is the unvarnished and impartial truth.
This imposes on each of those papers a responsibility to present a balanced view of what is happening. If they do not, they fail to meet one of the most important duties of a free press.
That balance is not achieved merely through allowing occasional access to contributors whose views are at variance with those of the paper. The balance that matters is in the selection of the stories that are reported and in the prominence and frequency with which they are treated.
Any disturbance of that desirable degree of balance can be easily recognised. A newspaper that constantly rehearses stories that disadvantage one side of an argument – or of the political divide – rather than another, or that treats what is plainly partisan comment as headline news, is manifestly failing its readers and leaves them with no other option than to find their news from a different source – which usually means the broadcast media.
But the damage done to the proper functioning of democracy by such behaviour is not so easily undone. In a small country like New Zealand, the broadcast media are often in the same ownership as the newspaper and – even when that is not the case – will all too often take their lead as to what is news from the headlines in the major newspapers. And those city-based newspapers will themselves often have a common ownership and will therefore reflect a similar view as to what is newsworthy, thereby again limiting the possibilities of a balanced approach to news stories.
As we can see in various countries around the world, the threats to impartial and reliable news reporting grow day by day. The issue in many countries is not just whether the press is free or not, but, rather, how well and responsibly it uses that freedom.
So, what is the interested reader and seeker of news to do? If the news they seek is constantly presented by their usual paper in a partisan manner, the only remedy is to stop buying and reading that paper. But that is no remedy, since it would mean, for the individual concerned, further restricting the available sources of news and the range of views to be found in them.
In the end, the price of deliberately partisan news reporting is paid by us, the readers, and by our democratic system. Responsible newspaper owners and editors should take note.
Bryan Gould
23 September 2019
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What the All Blacks Mean to Us
The All Blacks have been, for more than a century, arguably the most successful International sports team in the world. But they are more than that; even for those Kiwis who are immune to the charms of rugby (and there are more than a few), the All Blacks are ambassadors for New Zealand and a symbol of how a small country can hold its own on the world stage.
I have grown up, like most Kiwis of my age or younger, with an intense interest in how the All Blacks fare, especially against their main rivals. The All Blacks’ opening match against South Africa in the World Cup will take place before this article appears in print; as I write, I can only hope that they will win or at the very least acquit themselves well.
When I was a boy, it was the Welsh who were the main challengers for the All Blacks’ crown. When the two teams met in 1953, as part of what was one of the then regular major tours of the UK by visiting teams, the Welsh enjoyed a winning record over the All Blacks, and they enhanced that record by winning again on this occasion. I had been allowed to get up in the middle of the night to listen to Winston McCarthy’s commentary on the match. I was distraught at the result.
It was the last time Wales tasted victory over the All Blacks. Only Welsh octogenarians are old enough to have been alive at that moment and to have understood what had happened on that day. For most Welshmen, victory over the All Blacks is the stuff of fable.
By the time a Rhodes Scholarship took me to the UK, the All Black legend had grown apace. It is my proud claim that throughout the 32 years I spent in the UK, pursuing – for most of the time – a political career, I never wavered in my support for the All Blacks. I remember being grilled by David Frost on one occasion; the famous interviewer insisted, on the eve of a rugby test between England and the All Blacks, on knowing which team I would support.
I evaded the question for a while but was eventually compelled to admit on British national television that, having grown up in New Zealand, I had no choice but to support the All Blacks, even when they were playing the national team of the country of which I had aspirations to be Prime Minister.
The All Blacks deserve that kind of loyalty and have done more than enough to repay it. They embody so much of what it means to be a New Zealander. They play hard and they play fair. They respect their opponents but they play with an indomitable will to win, and their levels of skill and commitment mean that they usually do.
An All Black team is both an exemplar and a beneficiary of the bicultural and multicultural texture of our national life. It demonstrates many of the qualities that are essential to success in the wider aspects of life more generally – determination, effort, teamwork, camaraderie and courage. The All Blacks’ success has played a huge part in developing, in the early days especially, our sense of nationhood and the image we have enjoyed internationally.
It would be easy to conclude this rehearsal of what the All Blacks have meant to so many New Zealanders without mentioning one of the most important of the gifts they have brought us. That gift is the pleasure of watching them play – and, most of the time, watching them win. It is the pleasure of seeing something inherently difficult being done very well – and of seeing, in a competitive environment, the side one supports and identifies with doing well and prevailing.
As for the South African match, and the ones to follow, fingers crossed! My money is on the All Blacks.
Bryan Gould
17 September 2019