Brian Dick: Not much has changed in rugby's big money era
Under-achievement at international level, controversy over the structure of the domestic game, uncertainty over the direction of the West Midlands’ leading clubs and even a drug scandal.
What a year it was.
And that was just 1999.
How good it is to see so little has changed in the last decade. In some cases, not even the names have altered.
Martin Johnson has gone from leading England to World Cup failure against South Africa on the pitch to regular and ignominious defeat off it.
Just as the last decade ended with Rob Andrew’s blueprint for a franchised, three-part English season, the next one starts with Andrew ensconced as a member of a Rugby Football Union regime that has introduced a bizarre, 12 team playoff-heavy second tier.
Closer to home, although Moseley have steadied their financial ship, fiscal problems continue to blight the sport in the region, with Birmingham & Solihull and Coventry almost going under in the last few months.
And for Lawrence Dallaglio and a tabloid sting read Bath, missed drug tests and an admission of drug use.
The oval ball may bounce unpredictably, but it seems the general direction is roughly the same.
Even the way in which the game is played continues to cause concern. While RWC 1999 was won by a well-organised Australia team, it was a tournament that featured only one classic game – the France-New Zealand semi-final.
The whole event was undermined by an over-emphasis on kicking and an inability of the world’s rugby cognoscenti to break down dominant defences. Anything familiar there?
At least – as we approach a new decade – no-one’s too worried about the Millennium bug.
That is not to say there are not many other, very pertinent issues, to give administrators, coaches, players and supporters a few sleepless nights over the next ten years.
And if the Noughties – if we must call them thus – have taught us nothing, it is that the fault-lines in rugby are fairly constant.
Success at the highest level will be the most important factor in how the game fares between now and December 31, 2019.
As much as the World Cup victory in 2003 was a shot in the arm to the sport, the immediate legacy was squandered and the long-term effects will not be felt until the middle of the new decade as the youngsters it attracted reach the age of senior rugby.
We are still waiting for the first Great White Hope to come into the England team proclaiming: "I started playing rugby the day after I saw Jonny Wilkinson drop that goal against the Wallabies."
Indeed we are still to see the impact at the base of the men’s rugby pyramid, with many junior clubs still struggling, to put out a third XV on a consistent basis.
