The Toughts Of A Veteran Reader - I Think He's On To Something

FRIEND OF this blog 'Left Field' posted a BTL (below the line) comment in response to my last post. Old Lefty is a fellow Ayrshireman, these many years on missionary service in the Sudentenland, where he is a member and regular attender at London Scottish games at Richmond Athletic Ground.

He played the game to a high level, is a weel-kent face across the game in that part of the world, and he has a contacts book to make the rest of us jealous. His thoughts on the game, I greatly respect, so, I thought I would use his post as the basis of this entry. Here is what he had to say:

“Forget about protection a la American football - they are already leading the pack when it comes to law suits because of concussion type injuries, no doubt worsened by all the protective gear they wear.

I once met Darris McCord who was a famous NFL player with the Detroit Lions; and when I told him what protection we had in the 60s - maybe a scrum cap and jock strap it reminded him of when he started American football they had a scrum cap and thin leather strip on their thigh and shoulders - now see where they are and the legal pickle they have got into on concussion!

I return to what I have said already: Law Changes Needed - NOW to SAVE the game of rugby.

With the increase in concussion injuries leading to law suits and parents becoming less keen on their children taking up rugby, major LAW changes are needed NOW:

• To make the game more attractive, safer, faster, more aerobic, and more fun

• To encourage more players of all shapes and sizes to play

• To build on mini rugby success and have more game time and stay longer in the community game thus growing this area of the game

• To provide spectators and future players for the pro and international game.

These suggested law changes have been prioritised after consultation with past and present club, international and British Lions players, with input from major rugby playing countries in the UK Europe and Australia/NZ.

All of these law changes, some of which simply mean better policing of existing laws, can be easily and quickly implemented:

1. Maximum of three reserves on the bench but only as injury replacements

2. Ball in straight at scrums and line outs

3. Tackles waist high or below

4. No double tackles

5. No taking out players without the ball

6. In the breakdown penalise players, other than the tackled player and first tackler, for going off their feet and for side entry

7. Bring back rucking

8. Stronger refereeing of offside with players 5 metres back from set pieces and rear feet of rucks

9. Six points for a try, two points for penalties, drop goal and conversions

10. No penalties or free kicks at scrums, except for foul play

11. Revert to old scrum laws - front rows go down alone immediately, then 2nd row, then back row and ball put in straight at once

12. Ban lifting of players anywhere - especially fielding high kicks

13. No time wasting in taking penalty kicks, forming lines-out and scrums. BUT DO IT NOW !”

On many of these points, I have to admit, I'm on the same page as Left Field. I look, for instance, at the game of golf, where the rules are still strictly enforced, and even the top professionals can be thrown out of tournaments for what might seem, top the layman, to be minor infractions.

In Rugby Union, at the elite level, we have allowed a laissez-faire attitude to policing the Laws, perhaps, wrongly, in the n ame of “entertainment.” I honestly believe, one of the principal aims of coaching is to see how much cheating they can get away with.

My own feeling is that, certainly at amateur grass roots level, there might be a case for adapting the laws to take-out some of the more-dangerous areas of the game, specifically the break-down.

This might mean, at “Performance” level – to use an SRU term, rucking was allowed, but, at grass-roots amateur level, something like the Rugby League “play the ball rule” came into play after a tackle. But, that's merely my own answer to the problem.

I do fully endorse Left Field's call for action NOW. The problem, as I see it, is wakening-up the World Rugby decision makers from their slumbers. In getting into bed with the likes of CVC and courting other corporate partners, they may have to some degree worked out the COST of Rugby Union – I wonder if they realise and fully appreciate the game's VALUE.

With regard to Left Field's various points above. Could I, in regard to point 9 – scoring values, suggest differential penalties. I have long agreed with a suggestion, made decades ago now, by Alan Hosie, for a ten-point penalty, to be taken from a penalty spot in the centre of the offending team's 22 – regardless of where on the field the offence had taken place – in cases of serious foul play, punching etc.

I also have doubts about reducing the penalty to two points for some of the technical offences, this just might encourage teams under the pump and in danger of conceding a try, to settle for the lesser sanction of conceding a penalty.

Do we maybe go down the road of sports such as basketball, where team penalties are counted and, above a certain figure, the non-offending side gets a penalty from that penalty spot mentioned above.

We might also, I feel, want to, at the top level, take a look at “ball in play time” rather than the current game time of two x 40 minute halves. I would still, however, look at cutting the time allowed in which to take a place kick.

I would also continue to allow lifting at the lines-out. I think the touchline duels today are a lot more edifying than the free-for-all, unarmed combat which went on when I was a boy. Getting the combination of throw, leap, lift and take correct is one of the beauties of the modern game.

What is the feeling of the body of the kirk?

We Don't Do Brain Farts In Ayrshire - We Follow Through

WE STAUNCH YEOMEN, living in God's County of Ayrshire suffer from a local phenomenon – first identified, as I understand it, by weel-kent local farmer and authority on Rugby Union football: Auld Auchlin. This is what he termed: “A rush o' shite to the brain.” I was struck by one, about five minutes ago.

In my case, I was reflecting on what rugby might look like in ten years' time, always assuming someone among Sir Bill Beaumont, Bernard Laporte, John Jeffrey and the rest of World Rugby's high heid yins might lay-off the gin and tonics long enough to realise – our game has serious problems, then decide to do something about these.

I would like to think they might put in place processes to mitigate against the effects of head injuries on players – before some former player actually sues and takes the game for millions, in the process precipitating a whole raft of such cases which, just might get the game either stopped, or so-altered on safety grounds as to have no similarity to the game we grew up loving.

Much of our game's appeal comes from its confrontational nature, as it allows young men and women to test their physical prowess, in a controlled manner, against their peers. As such, there is an in-built element of danger in playing the game, the question going forward seems to be, how better do we control the danger element than we have in the past, and can we do this without fatally neutering our sport?

Other sports – American Football, baseball, cricket, ice and field hockey, lacrosse, hurling/shinty, Tai Kwan Do, to name but a few, have an element of protective equipment involved in play. Amateur boxing involves the use of head guards, while in both amateur and professional boxing, the gloves are padded.

Might rugby in a decade's time involve players wearing a great deal more padding than we see today?

I have recently seen suggestions that helmets, akin to those used in American Football, could be introduced into rugby. It might work, however, American Football is even further down the road towards litigation in respect of former players suffering brain injuries than rugby is. So, helmets may not be the answer, while there are also suggestions that some players, being helmeted, believe they cannot be hurt and use their helmets as weapons, by leading with them.

It's not garlic bread - but it might be the future

However, helmets are expensive, and when you add-on the other items of padding: shoulder and back pads, girdles, etc. the cost of equipping a team becomes astronomical. The cheapest helmet will cost at least £75 – that's a minimum of £1725 to kit-out a 23-man squad, add body padding and suddenly, the game has got an awful lot more-expensive – with no guarantee of an increase in player safety to offset the increased costs.

So, we are then looking at either – a much-more expensive game to play, or, making the game safer by taking away much of its physicality.

World Rugby could make a start by grasping the nettle and making changes to the Laws. They could start by lowering the tackle height from the current nipple line to the waist – however, this will not eliminate injuries from poor technique. Even at international level, we occasionally see full-time professionals, getting their head in the wrong place when making an otherwise text-book below the waist tackle.

I would also hope to see better officiating at the breakdown. Let's outlaw what I call the Munster torpedo take-out – when a player launches himself horizontally to take-out an opponent at the breakdown.

It is also way past time something was done about the scrum. Might there be, as I have ruminated on in past blog posts, a case for bringing-in more match officials? American Football at the elite level calls for seven match officials, when there is a maximum of 22 players on the park at any one time – might more officials on the pitch catch more of the nefarious actions of the 30 rugby players on the field?

How about specialist scrum officials – or, the cheap option at elite level which I have highlighted before: place that aerial camera directly over the two hookers at a scrum, lense pointing downwards and the TMO would instantly be able to notice when a prop or props wasn't pushing straight.

And FFS, finally, make the scrum-halves put the ball in straight down the middle of the tunnel, and have the hookers striking for the ball. Or even, the ultimate answer, do what they do in other games such as basketball and ice hockey, and have the match official feed the ball in to re-start play.

A good start might be to properly enforce and police the existing Laws. I appreciate, in the short term, this would make for staccato, broken-up games in which the referee's whistle would be the constant sound track. However, assuming the powers-that-be refused to go easy and stuck to their guns, the players and coaches would quickly adapt.

Let's start with strict enforcement of the existing Laws, then, if it was clear that wasn't working properly, perhaps World Rugby might embark on the wholesale overhaul of the Laws some of us feel is necessary.

Another thought which I had as regards high tackles: might there be a case for enforcing an offside zone either side of the breakdown. As things stand, defenders are right up at the back of each pile of bodies, so, when we get the near-inevitable first option of the pick and go, the first contacts will almost certainly be at least chest to chest.

Make the offside line a metre back and the defenders will have the time to set themselves for a proper below the waist tackle – much safer.

And, while we are at it, sort out the driving maul, which seems to me to be an excuse for blatant obstruction. By all means allow it from a line-out, but, bar the catcher from transferring the ball back to the hooker; make it that the ball-carrier has to be “on point”. This will make for a much-fairer aspect of the game.

Saturday Wasn't Disaster For Scotland, It Was Normal Service

A POINT I have repeatedly made in these ravings is: when it comes to sport, no nation has greater triumphs, or suffers greater disasters than Scotland. Just one of the many crosses we have to bear in being what Sir Alex Ferguson calls: “The Master Race” is, we prefer Burns to Kipling – just compare 'To a Moose' with 'If.' We cannot look at the twin imposters, triumph and disaster and treat them both the same – particularly when it comes to sports results.

Take Saturday's loss to the French. The “Disaster for Scotland” headlines were being writ large. Frankie Howard's Scottish cousin was strolling around going: “Woe, woe and thrice woe.” OK, we were disappointed, but, we were turned over by arguably the top side in the world at the moment, so, it's not as if losing to France was a shock.

OK, the two best players we've produced this century were both below their best, and, had everyone been fit, the team which took the field have been considerably different from the one which did. We made far too-many mistakes and didn't do ourselves justice. But, while I cannot argue that a six tries to two loss wasn't a right good gubbin' – was anyone really surprised that France won.

Scottish expectations are always great, the reality is too-often somewhat different.

I had a look at our performances in the Five and Six Nations since hostilities resumed, post WWII, in 1947, exactly my life time. ur record does not make encouraging reading. Take the 53 Five Nations' campaigns between 1947 and 1999, here our final position was

• Winners – Three times

• Second – Nine times

• Third – 15 times

• Fourth – 13 times

• Fifth – 13 times

Then I looked at the 22 Six Nations campaigns since Italy joined-in in 2000, here our final position has been:

• Champions – Never

• Second – Never

• Third – Four times

• Fourth – Six times

• Fifth – Eight times

• Sixth – Four times

In fact, over the 53 Five Nations' campaigns, we had a 39.8% winning record – 84 wins from 211 games. Not very good, however, better than our winning record in the Six Nations.

Here, we have won just 35 of 113 matches up to Saturday, a winning record of 30.9%.

And there's more, in those 75 post-war seasons, we have managed just the two Grand Slams, in 1984 and 1990. But, in the same period we have managed only ten times, to win three games in a single campaign – but, four of them have been in the last five seasons. So, maybe we are finally turning the corner and, a decade from now, things might look a lot more encouarging.

Let's be honest with ourselves, we're shite and some of us know we are. We seldom have been any good and, I for one wonder what we are going to do to change this long run of being also-rans. I feel, if international rugby was run like international football – where form rather than the Old Boys Club dictated who the top nations were – we'd maybe have been playing in the Rugby Europe Championship, rather than the Six Nations, lang syne.

We accept the then SRU high heid yins made a right Horlicks of the switch from Amateur to Open rugbuy. We've been playing catch-up ever since, but, we are in our 27^th season of Open Rugby, surely we should have better sorted ourselves out by now?

But, as I see it, Scottish Rugby is a wee bit like Scottish Football. “It's aye been, and aye will be” still rules the roost.

I DO NOT pay a great deal of attention to Women's Rugby. However, as the father of four daughters and with one grand-daughter, I have every respect for women's right to play a game which, let's face it, can bring-out most unlady-like emotions.

But, being Scottish, I am absolutely delighted that we will be going to the Women's World Cup, which takes place, In New Zealand, in October.

The Scottish girls will be based in Whangarei, in Northland; the most-northerly city in New Zealand and one which was founded by a Scot. So, a warm welcome is certain.

We begin our campaign with a match against Wales, on 9 October; we then take-on the Australians on 15 October, while our final pool game is against the hosts, New Zealand on 22 October.

Coach Bryan Easson and the girls have done bloody well to get there. What impressed me was, they absolutely hammered Colombia in the qualifying final – I am sorry, but, I always worry about Scottish teams going into “must-win” games, against opponents considered inferior, we Scotsmen have a long and undistinguished record of messing-up on such occasions.

I trust the SRU will now throw sufficient resources at the campaign to give the girls every chance of qualifying for the later stages, from a group in which their expectations are not great. The lift they have given women's rugby up here, just by qualifying, is immense, everything from here on is a possible bonus.

THAT WAS an interesting wee announcement that came out on Tuesday, about the necessary criteria for a place in England's Gallagher Premiership – a minimum ground capacity of 10,001.

I have my doubts if any of the current English Championship clubs could meet that need, without spending several £ million on ground improvements, or striking a deal with a friendly local football team. So, to me it looks as if, while they might allow one other team in, to even-up the numbers, the existing clubs just might be seeking to ring fence their league.

That 10,001 ground capacity rule just might help bring about the cross-border British Isles League which has been spoken off as the final destination of Super6. Watch this space with interest.

FINALLY, given the school's reputation for probity and its ethos of “muscular christianity” I am certain it was an innocent mistake which caused Loretto to field an over-age player, and thus be flung out of the Scottish Schools Under-16 Shield.

But, the less-charitable among us will surely enjoy the Musselburgh school's discomfort and embarrassment and perhaps ask: “Who do they think they are – everyone knows it's only Etonians and Fettesians that get to believe rules don't apply to them.”

Who'd Be A Referee Today.

I HAVE had a go at referees in the past. I have also tried officiating on two or three occasions, and, believe you me, it's a lot harder than playing. So, on-balance, I've got a lot of time for match officials. To state the obvious, we wouldn't have had a game without them.

Back in the Jurassic Age, when I was playing, every club seemed to have its tame Greek official: Homer, who gave his team everything. But, that was at the Coarse end of the rugby spectrum, at the very top, even back in the days of Peter West and black and white BBC television broadcasts, the leading officials were scrupulously fair and even-handed.

In Scotland, I have to admit, however, if you weren't from an Establishment Club, you might find an ambitious referee, seeking advancement, favouring the “big” club. Or if you were a non-Borders side playing down there, well, you were getting nothing from the local match official.

However, since the game turned professional, I can honestly say, I have only ever encountered one referee I knew immediately was “bent.” Sadly this was a Scottish official of the – if I'm nice to the Edinburgh Establishment side, I might get promoted – type. Thankfully, in Scotland, talent trumps favouritism every time.

I am getting a wee bit annoyed at the constant carping which oor-ain Mikey Adamson has had to endure of late, particularly from the Red-Top Rotweiller school of English, Irish and Welsh rugby commentators.

Some of the pish which has appeared on some sites – which I shall not encourage with the oxygen of publicity – has been beyond the pale. Now, I know Mikey is only Scotland's second-best referee, behind wee Hollie Davidson, but, he's a damned sight better referee than some of the English, irish and Welsh officials we have had to tolerate over the past few seasons.

Then there is the criticism Georgian referee Nika Amashukeh has had directed at him, for doing nothing more than his job, correctly interpreting and enforcing the Laws of the Game. OK, in this instance, the Law appears to be an ass, but, maybe some criticism should be directed at hooker Epalahame Faiva, who was the guy daft enough to get himself sent off for a high tackle.

There is a current fashion in some fields of sports writing to blame everyone but the player for rushes of shite to the brain such as that which hit Faiva on Sunday. Once again, I quote the wise words of the late, great Jock Stein to his players: “Never give the referee a chance to make a decision which could hurt us.”

Stein saw his great Lions side lose the World Club Championship, because they allowed the Argentinians of Racing Club to get to them and then cynically push a weak referee into sending-off Celtic players – who didn't help themselves by rising to the bait. Thereafter his advice was hammered home before potentially explosive games.

Again, I repeat a well-worn theme on this blog – rugby's problem isn't the quality of the referees. They are being asked to interpret and apply Laws which do not work at the elite level of the modern game. The caveat here is also a familiar one – it might help if they under direction from their referee managers, started applying the Law book correctly.

I return to Mikey Adamson and his travails at Twickenham on Saturday. One running sore in the England v Wales game was the scrum. OK, I judge the scrum performances of today's props by those of the top men of my era: Hughie McLeod and Dave Rollo, Wee Fud and Big Sandy, Ray McLaughlin, Fran Cotton, The Pontypool Front Row. These guys lived to scrum, it was built into their DNA.

In today's game, at international level, the handling, even of the tight five forwards, is now so-good, you don't get the same number of knocks-on, and nowhere like the number of scrums in a game which you used to. So, it stands to reason, today's props, while they are probably more-mobile (although the likes of Fud, Sandy and Cotton could rampage around the park to good effect); they don't have the same back catalogue of scrumming – the “ten thousand hours effect”.

The likes of Ellis Genge and Kyle Sinckler couldn't scrum if their lives depended on it, so, you get all the re-sets and nonsense such as Mikey Adamson had to deal with on Saturday.

This is a blog full of repetition, so, here's another. I long for another referee taking a leaf out of the Nigel Owens book of refereeing. I still smile at the night he quickly got fed-up with Ryan Grant and Adam Jones messing about and spoiling a match at Scotstoun, so, he yellow-carded both. On came the replacement props, and every scrum, even after Grant and Jones returned, went by the book.

I would like to think, had Mikey copied Nigel on Saturday and got the replacements on early, we might have seen that game too descend into unopposed scrums – think of the media stink that would have caused.

Maybe the 75-year-old memory is playing tricks, but, I seem to recall, back half a century ago, when the Law book was being tweaked, there was a suggestion, which wasn't taken-up, whereby there would be a: “Three strikes and you're off” policy as regards “technical infringements” such as squint feeds at a scrum. Imagine that being enforced today, every match-day 23 would need to include about three replacement nines.

FINALLY – I appreciate he's been edging towards a media career for a number of years, but, Nigel Owens remains a working referee. He may have retired from international rugby refereeing, but, he is still listed on the United Rugby Championship panel, and as such, he should maybe shut up when it comes to commenting on controversial incidents.

By all means, have your say – once you have hung-up your whistle and are no longer front and centre Nigel. Until then, a wee bit of silence would be appreciated. You were and are a great referee, but, you were never perfect – nobody has been.

Will We Ever Sort-Out The Scrum?

THIS IS an easy week for we bloggers, commentators and opinion-formers in the international rugby media – we don't need to sweat blood to come up with the big talking point – that was provided by events in Dublin on Sunday.

I just wonder, however, if the “suits” who man the desks at Rugby House, a short distance away from the Aviva Stadium, will have arrived at work on Monday morning and thought: “Jaysus, but dat was embarrassing – what are we going to do to prevent a recurrence?”

(Pardon my descent into cod WoganIrish there, couldn't help it).

Any way, while the adherence to the Laws of the Game which saw Sir Bill Beaumont & Co with what we Scots call: “A big reddy,” ought to have a high-level meeting convened with the sole aim of preventing such an embarrassing moment ever happening again – Ah hae ma doots.

The World Rugby way of dealing with such a PR disaster has always been: kick the matter into the long grass, keep the head down and hope the storm passes; then, several months later, do as little as they can get away with to stir things up further.

I can understand the reasoning behind the need to – when a side is forced to resort to unopposed scrums – mitigate against any fiddling of the laws to gain an advantage, but, as I said in my last blog – the protocol which World Rugby came up with is a classic case of The Law of Unintended Consequences. It was never meant to leave the game with egg on its face.

For my part, I honestly believe unopposed scrums, which are fine on safety grounds, only really come into play at the elite level of the game. Down at the grass-roots, with dear old Michael Green's Extra B XV playing Coarse Rugby, if a scrum goes down, it's more-likely to be because none of the four props has enough puff to hold themselves up, rather than nefarious practising of the black arts by one or more props.

We have discussed, long and often, what is to be done about the almost unrefereeable abomination which the scrum has become. How do we beautify this plook on the face of the game?

Well, here's Aristotle's flash of left-field thinking – let's go back to the future.

Read the Laws of the Game, Law 19 – The Scrum:

In Principle: The purpose of a scrum is to restart play with a contest for possession after a minor infringement or stoppage.

It couldn't be any simpler. The scrum is not a means of milking cheap penalties, it's not an ultra-macho posturing competition between the front fives – it's a means of re-starting the game.

Up until some point (I have been unable to find-out exactly when) between the two World Wars, when a scrum was called, the protocol was basically, last men up were the first men down. There weren't specialist props. Indeed, up until the late 1920s, you didn't really need to have three men in the front row – the All Blacks got bye with two.

With no specialist props, or hookers, while the faces in each team remained constant, the positions they filled could vary from scrum to scrum. Even when specialisation began, players could still be selected in different positions. Indeed that weel-kent man of Gordonians, Bob Bruce, used to joke that in 1948 his Scotland career was: “First game – front row; second game – second row; third game – back row – dropped.”

So why don't we go back to the old Laws. The three players from each side closest to the point where a scrum is to take place, form the front row – the rest fill-in behind them. I bet you would finally see scrums formed, indeed completed, within the 30 seconds allowed in the Law book.

OK, it might be the death knell of the wee, fat prop, but, I am sure the greetin-faced hooker would survive and eventually, at the top level, every pack would consist of eight x six foot five or six clones. But, it just might cure one of the biggest curses in the game today – the ten minute scrum.

IT IS such a pity Ian McColl (pictured below) is no longer with us. Who he, you might ask? McColl was a member of the legendary Rangers' Iron Curtain defence of the late 1940s and early 1950s – the first squad to complete a domestic Scottish Treble. He later went on to become Scotland's International Team Manager, from 1961 until 1965. He also was, like many of the rugby internationalists of his day, a professional man - a chartered civil engineer by day, who trained for his sport at night.

Statistically, he is the most-successful of the many men to have held this impossible job, and what makes his record all the more illustrious is – he never got to pick the team. Back when he was Manager, selecting the actual side was considered too-important to be left to the Manager, no, that task went to the greater brains of the butchers, bakers and candle-stick makers who had clawed their way onto the SFA Selection Committee.

Now, of all the posts at HQ which the blazers battled over, getting onto the Selection Committee was the plum job, since it guaranteed you got an annual European holiday at the SFA's expense. And, you got trips to England over the season, to check-out the Anglo-Scottish talent, justifying this by occasionally, like an old-time variety conjourer, by pulling a rabbit from a hat – or capping some Scot, playing in England, who wasn't even a house-hold name in their own household.

I presume McColl could suggest players he would like to use, but, at the end of the day, he had to play the players the selectors gave him. He was perhaps fortunate in that, at that time, we had some terrific players: Dave Mackay, Jim Baxter, John White and Denis Law, to name just four. But, while it's one thing to have a talented squad, it's quite another to get them playing well together, yet somehow, McColl managed to get the best out of his squads.

If he was still around, perhaps he could help Gregor Townsend get the best out of Stuart Hogg and Finn Russell, who are our 21^st century rugby-playing equivalents of Law and Baxter.