A Good Start, But, Why Stop There

WE ARE in that part of the year perhaps best described as: “The calm before the storm.” Nothing is really happening in rugby, even the World Cup Training Squad, after their warm-weather training stint in Portugal, are on holiday, prior to returning for the serious training block leading to the warm-up games and the tournament itself.

So, here on the media front line, it is difficult to find relevant things to write about; however, we will survive.

We were thrown a bone this week, with comment on the immediately-introduced decision from the World Rugby summit which looked at the Laws, the decision to act to outlaw “Axial Loading” (AL) at scrums. If you really must bone-up on AL, can I suggest the time-honoured instruction: “RTFM” or, if you like: “read the fucking manual.”

I doubt if even the great Bill McLaren or today's font of all knowledge on what goes on in the front tow, Brian Moore, could make a lecture on AL understandable to the layman. Sufficient to say, this is good law, well made. Mind you, as a fully-paid-up member of the Front Row Union, I must admit, I thought AL was just the modern front rowers messing about.

What a pity the law-makers didn't come down so hard on the other plooks on the fair countenance of the scrum, such as:

• Angled-in scrummaging
• Squint feeds
• Holding the ball in the second or back row to plunder penalties

Eradicating the first of these ills, angled-in scrummaging, or, to give it its time-honoured name – boring, would be comparatively easy at the top end of the game, which is after all where all the plooks first appear.

In internationals and in top-flight professional rugby, there is always one of those overhead cameras or even a drone, offering the TV director the option of an overhead shot of a scrum.

Invariably, such shots immediately identify the props who are not pushing straight, but, boring-in. So, at every scrum, you ensure, the TMO has such a picture feed available to him, and he can immediately ping the offending prop. Free kick to the opposition and, very quickly, an end to boring.

Squint feeds are even easier to eradicate – just tell the referees to enforce the bloody laws. And remind me, the centre line of the tunnel runs through the front rows' shoulders, not the waists of the side with the put-in.

This modern fashion for using the scrum as a penalty-winning vehicle can be easily sorted-out. I would still allow the option of holding the ball in, but, only at five metre scrums, where the attacking side has the option of going for a pushover try. Otherwise, the ball has to be played out immediately. The scrum, after all , is a means of restarting play following an accidental break-down in play.

Laissez-faire refereeing has crept into the game over recent years, it is time we got back to hard rulings, let's get rid of the “acne” of:

• The penalty mark being the starting spot for the kicker's run-up, when it should be the mark through which any penalty is kicked
• The practice of holding-in off their feet players at the break-down
• Hookers taking line-out throws from one metre inside the field of play, rather than, as the laws require, from behind the touch line
• The “Irish Offside Line” - whereby players are repeatedly taken out of play some three yards beyond the break-down

I know we are asking a lot of them, but, we really need the match officials to introduce a zero tolerance approach to these wee acts of gamesmanship which have increasingly come into the game of late.

CRAIG “CHICK” CHALMERS the Melrose legend, always has been a miserable we so-and-so, so, we should not be surprised that he has this week tweeted his distress at the tearing-up of the Greenyards pitch, to be replaced by a 3G surface.

FFS Chick, it's the entire ground, not just the pitch which is special. The fact is, 3G, 4G 5G, whatever, this is the future. If you want to moan about artificial pitches, get a job with Rangers, they appear to have the Scottish franchise on moaning about them.

Of course, purists want to see rugby played on pristine, verdant real grass pitches, but, even the Murrayfield surface, arguably the best in Scotland, is a hybrid one. Melrose RFC is no more, it is now Melrose Rugby Ltd., a business, and, once something becomes a business, rather than a vehicle for a pastime, change happens.

The Greenyards re-development is a joint venture between Melrose, Borders District Council and the SRU. BDC want to see greater community use, which can only be accomplished via a flood-lit artificial surface. Get used to it Chick, the old Greenyards is gone.

AS IS increasingly the case with money and the SRU, how much the governing body is putting into the Greenmyards Legacy project is a state-secret. The whole shooting match is reputed to be costing just over £1 million. Take away the reclaimable VAT portion of that, and estimates suggest, the three partners involve are each into it for around £300,000.

This means, the SRU (yet again) appears to be treating Melrose as a special case. They have admitted they have exceeded the normal amount they allocate to a single club for an ambitious project, but, as ever, they are not telling us, how much they have put in. Oh dear! Yet more ammunition for the body of the kirk for the AGM.

Since they have admitted, they have been more generous than usual in funding Melrose, I can see at least three other clubs: A*r, St*rl*ng C**nty and B*r**ghm**r reminding The Junta: “You treated the Greenyards as a special case for funding, you're asking us to also install artificial pitches, so: SHOW US THE MONEY.”

AND FINALLY, I note, the six Welsh Premiership clubs who will be competing against the Super-6 in the end of season cross-border competition, having squeezed an agreement out of the WRU to fund the costs of 33-person official parties coming north for the games, are now asking that the Union fund 35-person parties.

Well seems entirely-reasonable to me. They only need 23 players, plus, three coaches, a team manager, a kit man, a club doctor and a couple of physios – that makes 31 necessary bodies, leaving only two “dignitaries” on expenses.

My God, expecting any Welsh sporting party to travel with only two “blazers.” This is unheard of. Don't they remember the legendary story of the Welsh Football Association World Cup qualifying trip to Albania, on which, when arriving at Cardiff Airport, discovered they had only booked 40 seats, for a party of 41.

One of the players had to stay behind and get a later flight, since the committee were all too-important for one of them to stay behind and travel later. Bufties first, is a long-established principle of Welsh sport.