A jeremiad lamenting professionalism’s impacts on rugby circa 1995-2010, focusing on New Zealand’s game but also emphasizing on tensions borne of globalization (i.e., homogenization) and commercial management. Oscar Wilde’s mot that America went from barbarism to decadence with no intervening period of civilization is well cited. Professionalism polarizes public opinion because of its inherent conflict with amateur competition: the more top-end success, the greater the contrast. The observation might well extend to administrators. Universities brought the game to the English-speaking colonies, so their diminished role is emblematic of homogenized full-timers and likely to result in the game’s declining appeal to middle classes.

Laidlaw struggles, however, in identifying the one thing needful of reform, sometimes pointing to the European club-driven escalation of player salaries, which distances the game from amateurism (p. 27), and other times the judicial system, which indicates rugby’s doubts of its ability to govern itself (p. 44). In the end, revenue has become overly dependent on TV and other commercial interests, administrators have forgotten their loyalties to amateurs and the fan base, and the sport’s credibility tarnished by unrealistic aspirations.

Eventually the work resolves into short essays on such questions as the decrease of schoolboy playing numbers, whether arts deserve the same subsidization as sport, the role of 7s, why union hasn’t reconciled with league, and so on. The author is sometimes astute, as in foreseeing Ireland’s advance, and sometimes naïve, such as the impact of IRB ‘investment’, centralized planning sitting uneasily alongside distrust of professionalism.

Pro players should work in the off-season as development officers – but what rugby is on? This clever suggestion might easily resolve itself as officers in foreign countries. His understanding of America is shallow, such as in the assertion the pro game has hurt amateur basketball, baseball, or football.