THE RUGBY hemispheres are in danger of drifting apart. Jonathan Kaplan’s interpretation of the contest in the breakdown during the Tri-Nations decider between Australia and New Zealand was the opposite of the orders the RFU has given referees, orders imposed upon them by the International Rugby Board (IRB).

The RFU has accepted the challenge of restoring the integrity of the contact area. Every referee has been instructed to encourage a contest at the breakdown, and that contest can only take place when players are on their feet. The 13 experimental law variations (ELV) have received all our attention but it is the collision at contact that goes right to the guts of the game.

Kaplan allowed a horizontal free-for-all, especially from the Australians, awarding free kicks instead of the full penalty that Law 15 demands for players wilfully going off their feet and sealing off the ball. And yet Kaplan is the man who produced a benchmark performance at the breakdown in June’s second Test between New Zealand and England when he correctly whistled a tottering set of England forwards into rightful oblivion.

In little more than three months he changed from command performance to cop-out artist without a critical public comment from the IRB refereeing manager, Paddy O’Brien, even though O’Brien has called a meeting in November for the referees who will control the autumn series of matches to be played in Europe, where he will insist on zero tolerance at the breakdown. It is as if there is one rule for the Tri-Nations and one for the rest of the world. Throughout the Tri-Nations the abundance of free kicks awarded caused consternation in the north and bemusement at our old-fashioned concerns, notably in Australia.

In the autumn the nastiest ELV newcomer, the free kick, will not play the distorted part in Test rugby we saw throughout the recent series. It has completed its showcasing at the highest level. Somewhere along the line there seems to have been pressure to apply it fully rather than referee accurately and award full penalties. The view of the full ELV advocates is that free kicks prevent penalties from deciding the outcome of matches. That has been the case in the Tri-Nations but the ill-conceived result of this woolly-headed simplification of the sport is that cheats have a charter to prosper.

Hence we saw Kaplan allow anarchy at the breakdown. Penalties would have slowed the game down and those in favour of the full ELV package being adopted next May hate the grinding of rugby’s low gears as much as they cherish frenetic speed for nothing but its own sake. On the next day in another hemisphere, Wasps lost to Worcester in the last seconds of a Premiership match because Tom Palmer infringed at the contact area when Worcester were on the attack.

The pro-ELV ideologists would regard a match decided by a penalty kick as an indictment of old-fashioned officiating at the breakdown (despite the IRB crackdown). Those of a more traditional disposition might argue that Wasps deliberately committed a technical offence and anything other than a Worcester opportunity to win the match would have been gross injustice.

We reactionaries cherish the dated concept that sport has something to do with the winning and losing of it, whereas the modernists who dream of the utopia of a game – so simple in its rules that referees become accessories who award free kicks to keep up the pace – see it as little more than another light entertainment “brand” that will “grow” in popularity.

Premiership referees have made some errors in the first few weeks of the season, but the improvement in officiating and playing standards from week one to two of the competition was encouraging.

Anti-ELV advocates want more accurate refereeing; those for the changes want fewer subjective decisions. The Tri-Nations trend is shifting the sport in a new direction as the northern hemisphere tries to pull the game back into its original shape. The tensions threaten the biggest earthquake the game has known since 1895.