MONDAY MAUL

IT'S clearly that time of the year when rugby officials, who should know better, try to fight the winter chill by warming themselves up through talking hot air.

Over in New Zealand, Springboks coach Peter de Villiers has played the race card after former All Blacks prop Craig Dowd described him as a "puppet". This prompted South Africa's first black coach to moan that Dowd's comment smacked of racism, which he says is rife in New Zealand and Australia.

But is calling someone a puppet racist? Hardly. Then again, de Villiers may have a point. It is obvious his white assistant coach Dick Muir is the puppet, and de Villiers the ventriloquist. Every time the cameras went to the South African coach's box during the All Blacks Tests, Muir was screaming down the two-way line to the sideline staff, and de Villiers was doing nothing.

One time de Villiers seemed to be executing the great ventriloquist's trick of having a drink of water while Muir kept screaming down the line.

But that's nothing compared to the dribble coming out of the International Rugby Board propaganda politburo.

The Herald last week revealed that the IRB has made an audacious dash for cash by slugging countries an exorbitant $207 million tournament fee to host the 2015 World Cup, and a whopping $248m for 2019. It has got the organisation's mice and fat cats running alleyways.

Once again, they are trying to defend the indefensible, which is that the IRB has become little more than a cash register.

Such a reaction is nothing new for their leading "communications" official, who was recently accused of widely disseminating an email that lampooned an Australian IRB delegate. And this is the same person who in 1995 showed how off the pace he was when he told the Herald a media release coming out the next day wasn't worth worrying about.

Not worth worrying about?

The media release reported that Australian official Ian Ferrier had made the historic statement that the game had gone professional. That's all.

We got a Herald front page out of that one.

So now this IRB media spinmeister gets all uppity for us having the temerity to even insinuate his organisation is greedy.

His argument is laughable.

Despite the fact the Olympic Games and the cricket and football world cups do not charge the host nation anything to stage their tournaments, we have apparently got it all wrong for saying the multimillion-dollar tournament fee, which was conveniently left out of the IRB press release, was an up-front payment. No, this fee is to underwrite the World Cup.

Oh, gee, thanks, that makes an enormous difference.

The IRB spokesman says countries such as Japan, Italy, Russia, Argentina, Canada, Wales and the Celtic unions are all considering bidding for the tournaments.

Argentina? He has to be kidding. They can't even keep their leading players at home.

But getting several hundred million is apparently no problem in the back lanes of Buenos Aires. That's like saying the Pacific Islands, who struggle for funds to get the basic essentials such as tackle bags and footballs to train properly, want to host the 2019 World Cup.

And the Celtic unions?

Yeah, right. They'll be too busy trying to latch on to money-rich England.

This IRB spokesman seriously questions Australia's involvement with the organisation, saying its motion at last week's Hong Kong meeting to prevent "the bundling" of the 2015 and 2019 tournaments and request the guarantee was "comprehensively rejected".

This official asks: "This was a comprehensive democratic agreement by the entire rugby community minus Australia. The question has to be asked - 'Is the ARU part of the IRB or only when it suits'?

"Apparently, the only reason the IRB did not approve the 'underwriting fee' at its May meeting was 'because the ARU intervened on a point of process'."

What the spokesman forgot to explain was the "point of process" was that the IRB delegates received the paper outlining the fees only late the night before that May Council meeting. What naturally concerned Australian delegates was that, with such short notice, a major decision was trying to be rushed through.

More time was needed.

The IRB spokesman even argued that the Rugby World Cup "does not require massive infrastructure expenditure".

Tell that to New Zealand officials who were caught up in the drama of considering building a new stadium in the Auckland Docklands area for the next World Cup, or the Australian ones who spent $20m to ensure there were clean grounds in 2003.

And the IRB wonders why it is criticised for not first revealing the full story, and then struggle with the re-telling. Puppets. They're everywhere.