After Sunday's Heineken Cup semi-final, Chris Hewett argues why draws should not be settled this way again. Read his thoughts in The Independent.
"Ever since the sport went open in 1995, administrators have talked of the inappropriateness of the football model. Where the people's game went, they insisted, the union code would not follow. And what do we find, almost a decade and a half into the professional era? A growing obsession with football's fripperies and excesses. Already, a career as a head coach in rugby is less secure than one in football: as detailed in these pages recently, the average tenure over the last five seasons has been a mere 20 months. Now, rugby has sold a little more of its soul for the price of a penalty shoot-out.
The Heineken Cup semi-final between Cardiff Blues and Leicester at the Millennium Stadium on Sunday was blessed with everything required of the classic and, sadly, the one thing required of the farce. At 26-26 after 20 exhausting minutes of extra time, it was left to the kickers, trained and untrained, to decide the matter from a central position on the 22-metre line."
RSS feed
