Former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers has hit out at World Rugby for constant law changes and referees that pass the buck.
De Villiers was speaking in an exclusive interview with Talking Rugby Union, where he also critcised SA Rugby for not “stamping their authority” in the saga surrounding Rassie Erasmus.
The former Springbok coach took the opportunity to raise his own frustration with World Rugby, who he believes are making too many alterations to the lawbook too often.
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“If you look at netball, if you look at soccer, you look at basketball, you look at all these games; they all remain the same,” De Villiers explained. “It is only rugby that has changed its laws every year.
“The great thing is how clever you can become. Every game you are waiting for new laws to tell your players and suddenly the whole thing is so confusing, but at the end everybody has got to make a living.
“We don’t care about this game anymore, we don’t actually have a passion for this game anymore, because it became work,” De Villiers added.
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“We have to go to work because somebody is paying us to do it and then the guys who were very invisible when I played the game, the referees – sometimes you didn’t even know there was a referee on the field – they became the most prominent people.
“I don’t think it is doing justice to the game. The last thing I want to say about referees; when I played the game, the referee was the sole judge of the game. He took responsibility for whatever he did. If you look at referees today; ‘it’s not me, it’s my TMO’, ‘it’s not me, it’s the assistant referees’.
“Everybody is blaming everybody and nobody is taking responsibility for anything and we have paid millions and billions of dollars to go and watch the game.”
Photo: Frikkie Kapp/Gallo Images
