The Laws Of The Game Are Rapidly Being Tweaked

IAIN MORRISON'S desperate effort, in Sunday's Scotland on Sunday, not to talk about the real issues – S6, where the core teams play, league formats, etc. - in Scottish Rugby actually, for once, produced an interesting wee piece, about Rapid Rugby.

Andrew Forrest - shaking-up Australian rugby

That's the new format dreamed up by Australian mining billionaire Andrew Forrest, after Rugby Australia dropped his Western Force team from Super Rugby last season. He has come up with an eight team competition, running in tandem with, but a level below Super Rugby.

Forrest is putting up a one million Australian dollars prize for the winner of the competition, which is definitely pan-Pacific. There are plans for eight teams in all, with sides from Singapore, the South China Tigers from Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, Fiji, Samoa and Perth’s Western Force. One other entry – rumours suggest it might be Hawaii, is being touted.

What is really interesting, however, is that the Laws of the Game have been tweaked a bit. The suggestions are:

• matches will last 70 minutes with two 35-minute halves
  
  
• A restricted number of rolling substitutions will be allowed
  
  
• Teams cannot kick straight into touch, even from within their own 22-metre line
  
  
• Tries scored from inside 
the attackers’ own 22 will count for nine points with no conversion
  
  
• Penalties will be worth just two, rather than three points

I am not so sure about the cut in game time. I would like to see more emphasis on “ball in play time”; decide how long a match should last in actual playing time: 60, 70 or 80, maybe even 90 minutes – but, that ought to be the time the ball is actually in-play.

I appreciate, received wisdom is that today the ball is actually in-play for longer than in the past, but, we could do better. Bring in a dedicated time-keeper, the clock stops when the ball goes dead, and doesn't re-start until the referee says: “play.” This would cut out those lengthy pre-line-out huddles, time lost to scrum re-sets and so on.

I am quite sanguine abut substitutions, while restricting kicking directly into touch might well be a good thing. The innovation which does grab me, however, is the one about the nine-point value of a long-range try. Just imagine how this would help Glasgow Warriors, the absolute masters of the coast-to-coast score?

Allan Hosie - wanted tougher sanctions against cynical fouls

As regards the reduction in value of the penalty. No, that would be a cheat's charter. Many moons ago, the great Allan Hosie was proposing an increase in the value of the penalty, to ten points for really bad or cynical fouls. I would never argue with Mr Hosie – I tried it and it doesn't work.

Perhaps a reduction to two points for “technical” infringements, but, the cynical ones must be jumped on. Things such as a horizontal dive into a breakdown to “clear-out” an opponent, blatantly collapsing an advancing maul, deliberate knock-ons to prevent tries. Maybe not a ten-point penalty, but, what's wrong with punishing such blatant law-breaking with a Penalty Try?

Mind you, before we go that far, how about a zero tolerance approach to the really annoying things in rugby (other than Austin Healey):

• The blatant crooked feeding of scrums
  
  
• The increasing prevalence of crooked line-out feeds
  
  
• The way hookers increasingly throw-in from one metre into the pitch – what happened to feet behind the touchline?
  
  
• The way the penalty mark, instead of being the point through which a penalty
   kicked to touch must be kicked, has become the starting point for the kicker's run-up
  
  
• And, I woul do something about the rolling maul – to me there is something unfair about the ball being at the back, where no opponent has a chance of legally competing for it
  
  
• My hardy annual – bring back real rucking; nothing else would do more to speed up play and possession
  
  

I will be an interested spectator when Rapid Rugby gets going, we need to keep innovating to take the game forward. Good luck to it.

IN THE 16 months since TCD sprang S6 on a SRU AGM at a point when the delegates were struggling to remain awake, I have frequently likened the events, on and off-script to Brexit.

Mind you, S6A3 might well be a moger, but, compared with Brexit, it is all going swimmingly. There is still a degree of doubt around Brexit – there could well be, hard though this is to envisage, a mass outbreak of common sense within the Palace of Westminster, and Brexit will not happen – whereas S6 WILL HAPPEN.

There are still a few tidying up procedures to be got through, but, it will happen, and, like the 27 other EU nations, the six franchise clubs are united against an opposition which has several different aims and route maps towards those aims in mind.

All is not well within Scottish Rugby, but, we are in a damned-sight better place than the British Government, and the UK.

AUGUSTIN PICHOT certainly likes to wind-up the Establishment countries within World Rugby; which is no bad thing. He certainly is saying the right things in getting the smaller nations to unite behind him and threaten the in-built advantages which accrue to the Tier One nations.

Augustin Pichot

I have seen this movie before, when Sir Stanley Rous retired as FIFA President, to be replaced by Brazil's Joao Havalange it marked the start of a process whereby control of the organisation slipped from the hands of Europe, with the rest of the world using their overwhelming numbers to push their concerns.

Pichot is playing the same game, and, while they will fight a strong rearguard action, the days of the old “Empire” nations ruling the roost will end.

Pichot is suggesting a 36-country “League of Nations” competition, these countries divided into three x 12-nation leagues, with promotion and relegation. As things stand, the format of these leagues would be:

• Division One: New Zealand, Ireland, Wales, England, South Africa, Australia, Scotland, Fiji, France, Argentina, Japan, USA
  
  
• Division Two: Georgia, Tonga, Italy, Samoa, Uruguay, Romania, Russia, Canada, Spain, Namibia, Netherlands, Hong Kong
  
  
• Division Three: Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Brazil, Chile, South Korea, Switzerland, Kenya, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Colombia

There will, naturally, be a lot of fighting before, if ever, this League of Nations comes into being. A 22-game league season is a no-no; Can you honestly see the RFU clubs giving up their best players to be full-time England men? At the moment, between the Autumn Internationals, the 6Nations and a Summer Tour, the northern hemisphere nations play a maximum of 12 international in an average season.

The League of Nations will double these games, that's not going to happen.

So, we could well be looking at each league campaign lasting two seasons, or the leagues being organised in conference format.

This could get very interesting.