Australian slang loves to play with words. Its joyful banter often takes the names of famous people and twists them in a child-like manner simply because it’s fun.
A high-profile Australian TV producer from the 1960s, Reg Grundy, had the misfortune to have a name that rhymed with “undy”, which is slang for underwear. To this day, Australians still refer to their undies as Reg Grundys, Regies or Grunds.
I know that all sounds a bit sad, but that’s how we roll.
There is a long list of proper nouns that are now adjectives or verbs.
Barry Crocker, a famous Australian actor from the 1970s, rhymes with shocker. So saying “he played shockingly” has morphed into “he had an absolute Barry”.
Wally Grout, a great Australian wicketkeeper from the 1960s, rhymes with shout. A term used when buying a round of drinks –.“Whose shout is it?” – is now shortened to “Whose Wally?”.
Australians are not xenophobic when it comes to grabbing names and twisting them. One of the most recent additions to the lexicon is derived from Lionel Messi.
An example of when the legend’s name is contorted into Oz slang is when you walk into your teenage son’s bedroom and view the clothes strewn across the floor, the crumpled bed sheets next to a pile of plates, with the entire collection of the family’s bath towels randomly flung on doors and lamps, making the room look like the stage set of the Exorcist, pre-exorcism. A calm parent could say: “Mate, your room is very Lionel. Clean it up.”
Rugby's culture war - Mike Ross on the state of Ireland's scrum
So you will comprehend my meaning when I say that all of last weekend’s Six Nations fixtures were very similar to that teenager’s room. Exceptionally Lionel.
“Lionel” TMOs, scrums, zombie kicking duels and so many offside defensive lines that a few referees can only be described as having a Barry.
Watching the matches at Twickenham and Murrayfield was like being inside a rugby time warp. Everything old was new again as the numbing monotony of the Welsh attack transported me back to viewing grainy historic images of 1950s rugby league when teams could hold possession for an unlimited amount of time with unlimited tackles.
The Welsh revived that epoch of repetitively boring play as forward runner after forward runner after forward runner hurled himself, mindlessly, over and over again into the English defenders who, in turn, were offside again and again and again ...
At Murrayfield, the French also tipped their berets and the Scots lifted their kilts to rugby leagues’ bygone era.
My father would tell me about these horrid, time-wasting and boring things called kicking duels. Again from the 1950s when the two fullbacks indulged themselves by endlessly punting the ball back and forward between each other. Leaving the rest of the players stranded in the middle, scratching at their Grundies and inquiring as to who was having the first postgame Wally.
Like rugby Frankensteins, the French and Scots breathed life back into this long-dead, boring rugby zombie, empowered by inept legislation from World Rugby that was aimed at stopping players from gaining an advantage from their team’s long kicking game.
When the Munster supporters sing Zombie at their matches, we should all remember that it is not only about Dolores and the Cranberries. It’s about the laws.
The Aviva was not immune to “the boring” when, at scrum time, an exasperated referee Luke Pearce rightly called out in desperation to both the Irish and Italian forwards, “Come on boys. Bind up.”
Luke, we feel your pain.
Yet both packs, who had been standing still doing bugger all, completely ignored him.
Referee Pearce, like the rest of us poor unfortunates, was then forced to watch both packs act like fighter pilots, as they methodically and excruciatingly slowly moved through their pre-engagement checklist.
Hookers feet in possession. Check.
Loose head prop right-hand bind. Check.
Encouraging smack to the tight head prop’s arse from the second row. Check.
Looking every bit as fastidious as sprinters at an Olympic 100m final who are overly meticulous in placing their feet on their starting blocks, scrums have been timewasting farces for years. Despite calls from the globe’s leading coaches for a shot clock of 30 seconds for assembly, World Rugby’s legislators refuse to act.
Across the opening rounds of the Six Nations, the average time that the ball has been in play is an atrocious 34 minutes and 45 seconds. With the current substitution laws, which also desperately require major reform, front rowers only play roughly half a match. That means they only play for 17 minutes and 22 seconds, yet they claim they are so fatigued they can’t safely assemble for a scrum inside 30 seconds.
Front rowers are notorious comedians but the joke they are playing on all of us is not funny.
Of course, that ball-in-play time also means that there is an average of 45 minutes and 15 seconds of nothing. All of this is like the gun laws in America – everyone knows the laws are atrociously wrong, many of the answers are clear and obvious, but the internal politics refuses to act to rectify the problems.
Currently, hookers are hanging on to the tail of so many mauls that they are now scoring more tries than centres, while the 7-1 bench, which empowers 14 forwards to participate in the game, while only allowing eight backs to play, is deemed as not only legal but also safe to sit inside rugby’s ethos. Again, all of this is patently and obviously wrong.
When the ball is in play, much of that time is taken up with zombie kicking duels, mauls, scrums, shots at goal and attacking systems consisting of a single line of lemmings running head first into a cliff face of defenders who are offside.
Do not blame the coaches. Their only task is to win the next game with laws as they are. Do not blame the referees. They are handed a law book so thick it would choke a pig, then burdened with the impossible task of single-handedly implementing a set of deeply flawed and outmoded laws across a game of physical chaos.
The responsibility and root cause is a lack of governance from World Rugby’s legislators. This is on display for the world to see at every match.
“Zoombie, zombie, zombie-ie-ie.”
