Now the Money World Cup has kicked off

INCENDIARY tweets, guerrilla gum shields and mean-spirited old farts – kind of makes you yearn for the innocent pleasures of dwarf throwing and bungee jumping doesn’t it?

Thus the 2011 Rugby World Cup rumbles on here in New Zealand and just as the tournament itself has entered the serious end of proceedings with this weekend’s quarter-finals, so too has a nasty edge needled its way into the off-field business of organising a major global sporting event.

All those relatively harmless shenanigans of a month ago, when some people questioned the wisdom of allowing players to hurl themselves off mountain ledges and bridges attached to slender lengths of elastic, seem like light years away.