Will There Ever Be A Proper and Much-Needed Overhaul of The Laws of the Game?

BEING surely a long time dead when it happens, I shall miss that future day – perhaps in 2050 or 2070, when, for some rugby anniversary – perhaps the 50^th anniversary of The Grudge, or the Centenary of the 1971 Lions – they re-run an appropriate video clip of Rugby Union, back when it was the greatest game you could play.

Suddenly a new generation – as yet unborn as I write – will see Phil Bennett side-stepping Alistair Scown and igniting the move which finished with that try. They will see Barry John running onto a Gareth Edwards pass and ghosting through the All Blacks' defence, or lightning-fast fingertip passing setting Gerald Davies free to side-step his way to the try line.

They will watch Fin Calder running straight at the English pack, with seven other Scottish forwards right up his arse and scattering the white-shirted Orcs to the four winds, before slick rucking sets the backs free.

Then, they will reflect on the glorified game of British Bulldog which rugby has become – where pods of forwards trundle forward to bash into another pod of forwards, prior to a lengthy arm wrestle, repeated up to 30 times, before one pod flops over the try line – or the referee gets bored and awards a penalty.

At that point a back will step up, boot the ball into the corner for a line-out, leading to another spot of British Bulldog – repeated for 80 minutes.

Am I being too downbeat and depressing? Perhaps, but, if the fare we have had to endure over the Autumn Nations Cup is in any way a glimpse of things to come, then sorry, once again, I am with Private Frazer.

Of course, all is not yet lost. That was a marvellous try which the Georgians conjured-up in Dublin yesterday. The French are still able to lift the spirits, as witness what Teddy Thomas and Gabin Villiér did in scoring tries off just about the only passes they received, while the All Blacks still seem able to unearth try-scoring wingers from the bottom of any available sheep dipping tank.

However, unless we address the current obsession with rutting stags impressions and put the élan and pizzaz back into rugby, the current lack of crowds will not matter, because nobody will want to watch Rugby Union.

There are so-many things currently wrong with the game. We are still in a pandemic which makes playing the game all but impossible. You might think the game's high heid yins might have used the available time to sit down via Zoom or whatever and try to sort out the problems. But, no, they were too busy focusing on whatever wee point around money was their particular Union's main beef.

Like the residents of River City, Iowa, I think right now, World Rugby has got “Troubles,” which it will take more than a marching band with 76 trombones to sort out.

BT's rugby coverage – even allowing for the presence of Craig Doyle and Brian O'Driscoll jointly filling the role as what used to be known in Scottish football coverage as “the Token Tim,” remains overwhelmingly a vehicle for demonstrating that England is the only show in town. But, now and again, as last night, when they had Nigel Owens on, there is a diamond in the dirt.

Old Nige while admitting there were one or two things the referees could do, to make things better, admitted, they were largely helpless when it comes to clearing-up the game's ills. The best referee of the age admitted to concerns over players being in front of the kicker when it came to the kick-chase game, but:

Let's see how long a list we can come up with regarding things that need sorting-out:

1. The Scrum

2. The breakdown

3. Squint lines-out

4. The driving maul

5. Players “stealing” inches (well in some cases metres) at kicks

6. Use of replacements

7. The mark

8. The prevalence of “kick tennis”

9. Tackling

10. Offside

Now, let's look at these ten points in greater detail.

The Scrum

We really, particularly at the top end of the game, need to clamp down on the scrum. It is meant to be a means of re-starting the game following a breakdown in play which did not involve a breach of the Laws. So, we get back to that – by largely eliminating scrum penalties.

I do not think you can completely do away with scrum penalties – deliberate misdemeanours still have to be punished - but, a dominant scrum was never meant to be a means of “milking” penalties.

I think there is a case for stopping the clock while a scrum is set, then re-set; in fact, I feel there is a case of, as in American Football, making a game last for a pre-set ball-in-play period. OK, 'Grid Iron' matches last for 60 minutes, but that is 60 minutes of ball-in-play. You never get that in professional rugby, so why don't we go with that?

That way, all these pre-line-out tactics meetings would not take game time away, ditto, multiple re-set scrums.

I would give referees a “three strikes and you're out” sanction option at scrums, so, if a tight-head is pinged three times for messing-up a scrum, he is out of the game for a period of time, two temporary ejections and he is out of that game for good. Same with squint feeds.

A team winning a scrum can only hold the ball in the back row at a five-metre scrum. We all enjoy a push-over try. But, other than at a 5m scrum, the ball has to be released quickly to the backs.

Clamp down HARD on squint feeds. Let's bring back proper hooking, strikes against the head and so-forth. Finally, this is one I got from an experienced former prop who went over to the light side and started refereeing: If a scrum penalty is awarded, the non-offending side cannot kick to touch. They can either take a tapped penalty, for which the opposition must retire ten metres, or, they could opt for a kick for field position.

The Breakdown

BRING BACK 'REAL' RUCKING – Ban “JACKALING' – insist the ball must be played by a foot. OK, some mummies might not like their precious offspring being stood-on, so maybe don't have it in youth rugby (where we could adopt Rugby League's “play the ball rule”)' but, real rucking is still the fastest way to clear the ball from the breakdown, so, bring it back.

If the view is not to bring back rucking, then, insist that, apart from whoever is playing half-back, at the breakdown, both sides, particularly the defending side should be five metres back from the rearmost body in the pile-up.

Players diving into the breakdown – an immediate penalty to the opposition.

Players holding down an opponent at the breakdown – a penalty.

Squint lines-out

Same as a squint feed at the scrum, do away with it. Three strikes and you're out.

Also, insist, as it used to be, the thrower-in's feet are BEHIND rather than as happens today, ON or INSIDE the touch lines. Some international hookers today are throwing-in from four metres – and still cannot hit the jumpers unless they throw squint.

The Driving Maul

As currently refereed, the driving maul is the most-illegal move in the game. It cannot, when done properly, be halted legally – it is therefore, unfair.

If the driving maul is to be allowed, then the player who catches the ball in the line-out MUST retain possession. To transfer it back to a team mate should be illegal. This way, the opposition has a chance of legally gaining possession. If this is not to be allowed – then do away with it completely.

Players Stealing Inches

As with hookers' foot positions when throwing into the lines-out, this one annoys old timers like me. When I was playing, if you were awarded a penalty, the referee would make a mark on the pitch, that was your mark, you HAD to take your kick from behind that point and were expected to more or less kick the ball through the mark.

Today, they still make the mark, but, it is only really a guide as to from where the kicker can start his run-up, generally, kicking to touch from a penalty, every player steals at least a couple of yards – This is wrong and should be eliminated from the game.

Use of replacements

This is a hardy annual. My view is, having spent a lot of time covering games such as Basketball and Ice Hockey, where there are multiple substitutions – in the case of ice hockey where you have teams running with two or three “lines” of players – special teams formations and so on; I am fairly comfortable with the notion of replacements.

Mind you, when you see the work load imposed on tight forwards, the carries they are expected to make, the sheer physical toll today's game takes on them, it is difficult to make a case – on the grounds of player welfare – for fewer substitutes.

My own gut feeling is, certainly at elite club level and above, I don't see much of a case for fewer substitutes – again on the grounds of player welfare.

Further down the food scale, where the hits are less fer4ocious and the pace slower, yes maybe we could get bye with fewer guys on the bench and more guys playing for more teams.

The Mark

Confession time – I actually started off as a full-back. I was whippet thin then and fast. Then I discovered chips and beer and ended up playing in the front five.

Any way, at 15, I was hopeless under the high ball; I know, it seemed easy, but, I did tend to have too-much thinking time and ended up dropping the ball. But, give me a poor pass, at around ankle height, which called for an instant clutch and I was your man.

Back then, the Mark law was simple – you had to be on the ground, upright and actually make a mark, simultaneously to catching the ball and calling: “Mark!”

Now, this was, on reflection, unfair. These actions, as described in the lat paragraph call for multi-tasking; and as we all know, men cannot multi-task. It's just another of the ways that rugby as a game calls for intellectual as well as physical attributes.

However, that old-style mark law is a lot easier to understand and justify than the current one, whereby a player, diving horizontally across can catch the ball and call mark when in mid-air. That's a nonsense.

Any how, in my view, the mark is an artificial means of halting the flow of the game, it gives the defending side an unfair advantage, and I think it is time it was consigned to history.

Kick Tennis

As I am forever pointing out, Rugby Union's USP in the crowded world of various forms of football is its handling context. The Rev. Bill, when he risked a good thrashing back at Rugby School in 1823, did so by picking up the ball and running with it. Today, with defences on top, the top-line players seem to spend a lot of time doing impressions of midfielders in junior football – standing there, looking skywards as the ball is hoofed back and forth over their heads.

Can the great brains of World Rugby – and John Jeffrrey – not find a way of cutting out so-much “kicking for field placfement” and get us back to being mainly a handling game? Surely it's not that hard.

Tackling

Fair enough; in an effort to cut-out the head shots which had crept into the game, the supposed “tackle line” has been lowered to chest level. I would go further and ban tackling above the waist. Nothing like a couple of matches in which the whistle blew every five seconds or so for 80 minutes, to convince the coaches to coach proper tackle technique, the players to adapt to this and the administrators to enforce it.

Result, probably a better, faster, cleaner game.

Offside

When are the guys running the game going to really tackle offside? Let's clean-up the Offside Law, even if it means laying down strict demarcation lines around it? When are the Assistant Referees going to start policing it properly?

I am convinced, if the defending lines were forced back a clear distance from the breakdown, and ARs, like their football counterparts, had to raise their flags to indicate offside – we would soon see a cleaner, better, faster game, with more opportunities for good handling.

This current pandemic, with most play stopped, offered a marvellous opportunity for the game's big thinkers to look at its ills and do something about it. It is an opportunity they have failed to grasp, as they concentrated instead on money and how the lack of it might adversely affect their big or small empires. It was an opportunity missed.