The last day of March 2009 could possibly go down as the most momentous day in recent rugby history. For some, it will be the day the powers that be got together and stopped the madness. For others – and one person in particular – it'll be the day that started the decline of the game in their country.
That’s because the international conference in London on that last day in March saw them decide to make recommendations on which of the ELVs are to be absorbed into the laws of the game and which are to be discarded. Ten of the ELVs are to be adopted into law for the start of the global season on August 1. The others will darken our doors no more.
So we can all welcome back the grunting, puffing, grinding rolling maul – the element of the game that saps the strength of defences and rewards forward power in attack. And we can say a not-so-fond farewell to the spectre of the ‘sanctions ELV’, the one where it doesn't seem to matter what the transgression is – all you get for it is a free-kick.
Killing the ball at the ruck is rightly a penalty offence, and the laws will stay this way, unified across the globe, until after the 2011 RWC at least.
Over the last couple of years, the ELVs have been the subject of heated debate in conference rooms, press boxes and club bars, with the division of view largely going along hemispheric lines – or so we were led to believe by the spin doctors.
Throughout the last two years, we heard and read countless statements from beyond the equator that were all decrying the way the game was being played and that the ELVs were the solution to a faster, more dynamic game with the ball in play more and therefore more entertaining to watch.
John O'Neil, chief executive of the Australian Rugby Union, was the most strident supporter of the ELVs, and never failed to get his quotes in the papers and online media about how good they were for the game. He was extremely rude about the Northern hemisphere unions only agreeing to trial 13 of the original 23 ELVs devised at Stellenbosch University and took great delight in lambasting those people – dismissing several ELVs without trialling them were, in his eyes, not playing fair.
O'Neil went as far as to threaten a schism and potentially a third rugby code if all the ELVs weren't approved. The ARU would have to think about breaking away. Not exactly waiting for the trials himself there!
There were, of course, some of our own dear people prepared to weigh in on the opposite side of the fence, two notables being the Sunday Times journalist Stephen Jones and the Telegraph's own pitbull Brian Moore. I am clearly biased in my own view of the ELVs, but it did seem to me that Jones and Moore argued the case on pure rugby grounds, whereas the delightful Mr O'Neil was arguing on grounds of spectacle and bums on seats. It wasn't the game at all for him but rather who would be prepared to watch it.
But now the decision is made and Mr O'Neil has not got his own way. Suddenly, reports from the South have dried up, and the once eponymous chief executive is just as conspicuous in the rugby media, but now only by his absence.
If he was ever serious about a 21st century schism then all I can think is that he has retired to his bunker to plan his next task: to remove the ARU from the world game, and take the ELVs forward on his own.
Yeah, good luck with that…