IN his three years running Welsh rugby Australia's David Moffett, who is now tying up loose ends before returning south, made more enemies than friends. And for the former you could look around the union offices of Ireland and Scotland as much as the valleys of Wales. So his singular achievement of putting manners on the Welsh union's crippling debt of stg£72m was more than balanced by what he failed to secure: moving all professional Welsh players onto central contracts, and influencing the other unions to radically change the landscape of the game in the northern hemisphere.
At one level it is rich to read his comments last week about the threat to professional rugby in the Celtic unions. It was Moffett who last season presided over Wales's solo run to sign up with the Powergen Cup, leaving Ireland and Scotland in the lurch. "The reason we did that was firstly financial, because we live in the same market as the English clubs, and secondly, if you want to be the best you have to play the best more frequently," he says.
Given that the 'best' have seen fit to send out their second strings to play the Welsh clubs in that competition, that criterion is hardly being satisfied. Moreover, it flew in the face of his current - and plausible - position that it is wrong to address every financial issue by playing more rugby.
At another level, however, Moffett has interesting points to make about how the game is governed at this end of the world. Having been involved on the ground floor 10 years ago when Sanzar was formed to run the Super 12 and Tri Nations, he is still adamant that the model adopted by the three southern hemisphere nations is the only viable route for us. And he is convinced that the IRB haven't the appetite for change.
"They have this integrated season review thing going on but there's no real will in there to change anything," he says. "They'll just fiddle around at the edges. And all the time the southern hemisphere is just rubbing their hands and saying: 'Well you guys just flog each other.' You guys (Ireland) have got as many injuries as we have in Wales and it's the start of the season, not the end of it.
"The fact is that there is a solution, and it is to expand the European Cup into a European League and it would be very easy to work because there is a model already in existence. Take the southern hemisphere: they have the Super 14, then they have incoming tours for a couple of games; then the Tri Nations; and finally they come come up here for three or four games, and that's it. That's what they play.
"And on that basis they're able to run the professional game, the community game, and they're not going to kill their players. New Zealand have two bloody test sides who are capable of beating most sides in the world, and that's because they don't overplay their players."
The concept of less is more is worth exploring, for in its rush to finance the professional game rugby went headlong into filling every date on the calendar with competitive action. The attraction of a pan European competition would be less congestion; smaller squads and reduced reliance on imported talent. It would withdraw the source of conflict between the clubs of France and England and their respective unions, and reduce their need to shop in the Celtic nations to supplement their squads. Every item on that list is attractive. Moreover, Moffett reckons such a competition, with three conferences of perhaps 14 teams each, would generate big money.
"I would absolutely guarantee you that if I was negotiating this from a tv and sponsorship point of view, I could get more money from that competition than the sum of all the other competitions (Celtic League, Guinness Premiership and French Championship) put together. More importantly you would only need one organisation to run it.
"At the moment there's a huge amount of money lost in administration. And the only way to do that is to test it. Go out into the market place and see how much money you could get from all of those things.
"But there was no desire to even talk about that, which I understand. But I always felt it merited a discussion. Let's face it: one of the biggest problems we have in the northern hemisphere is the structure of the season, which is an absolute dog's breakfast."
His presumption in this is that we can't survive without the order that governs the southern hemisphere competitions. In fact, unlike New Zealand, we can cross at traffic lights when there are no cars coming and live to tell the tale. We are used to mayhem and how to negotiate it. And given the scrapes he has gotten into in his three years in Cardiff, Moffett has an idea of the political avalanche that would descend on such a process of change.
But he is absolutely right in his frustration that the size of the mountain has ruled out even discussion of how to climb it. The state of the game in Europe is hardly so healthy that it can afford to put on the blinkers and plough on regardless.
