So far, the Wallabies have received a total of 290 submissions for law changes. Some of them are great ideas. Some, utterly ridiculous, and others that are not entirely thought through.
NRC committee, Wayne Erickson, Bob Dwyer, Ewen McKenzie, Rod Kafer.
The problem living in a country where most rugby fans are also league fans, is they don’t fully understand what would happen if you introduce some league rules into the 15-man game.
So I thought I’d take this opportunity to help some fans understand what would happen if some of the suggestions, that many see as reasonable, were implemented.
Things such as removing the straight throw law for line-outs if the opposition doesn’t contest is a fantastic idea. I’m also a fan of some kind of limit to defensive kicking if the match descends into an aerial ping-pong battle. Whether it be through a defensive kick to phase ratio or an overall kick quota. Although, there must be a definite distinction between defensive kicking and attacking kicking.
However, I’ve seen suggestions that are absolutely crazy. From reducing distance between the goal posts, to a penalty limit, similar to the foul limit in basketball. I’ve taken some samples of the ideas that are going around, and I’m taking some time out to respond.
Mr Weir, if a three strike law was implemented, it would completely stop teams contesting at the breakdown. When it comes to forwards, Australia’s biggest strength is in their lose forwards, by making this kind of change, it would render the lose forwards useless.
If anything, we should be encouraging breakdown work, not trying to phase it out of the game.
While I encourage contesting the breakdown, I also enjoy watching running rugby. If you remove the option for kicking for goal on a penalty, it’s only going to encourage players to infringe at the breakdown.
By lessening the repercussions of giving away a penalty, you will therefore have in increase in cynical play in an attempt to slow down the ball. And, don’t think that “the players would want to play within the spirit of the game”…it doesn’t always happen. Look at the Brumbies, they don’t care if they win ugly, they only care if they win.
If there’s something that can be exploited, it will be exploited. Same goes with lowering the points value of a penalty goal from three to two. While it may not have the same impact as removing shots at goal all together, it will still have an impact on attempted cynical play.
That experimental law is already in affect in South Africa’s Varsity Cup. While it makes the closing stages of the game more interesting, it hasn’t entirely had the desired effect. Perhaps make both the try conversion and the penalty goal worth three points?
While we all can be frustrated by the scrum at times. Making drastic changes to the scrum law is not the way to go about it. Traditionally, Australia struggles at the scrum, reducing the forwards exposure scrummaging will only hurt Australian teams even further, in the future.
We should have more emphasis on getting the scrums right rather than reducing the amount of scrums altogether.
What if the defending team has the clearly dominant scrum? All the attacking team has to do is go down and they get a tap, and a free, uncontested ball.
What if the attacking team has the dominant scrum, and want to go for a push-over try? All the defending team has to do is go down, and that threat is lost.
Scrums allow an opportunity for the backs by taking eight defenders out of the line and providing more room out wide. Changing scrums to a tap would only remove the opportunity.
When it comes to scrums, most people get frustrated over the time lost to scrum collapses and resets. So, how about we stop the match clock instead of getting rid of scrums all together?
If the referee calls for a reset, the match clock stops, and doesn’t restart until the referee calls for the ball to be fed? That way we won’t see situations where four or five minutes of the game is lost to front rowers having a pissing contest.
These are just some of the more ‘popular’ ideas that has been expressed. There are many, many more out there, some brilliant, some not so. I just thought I’d point out what would most likely happen is some of these suggestions were taken up.
If you have any suggestions you’d like to submit, click here
What are your thoughts?
As an ex No 10/ full back I can’t claim to understand why props and second rows love to expend so much energy during a scrum that usually only gains a meter of ground then are penalised in life by developing cauliflower ears. That is their choice. However the great thing about rugby union is that at every age level there is a position for every size. Making the scrum a specialist contest with technique that few can master means there are some fatties on the field. These boys smash you if you get too close but they are the weakness in defence wide out as they will often leave gaps for the faster guys to get through. If you devalue the scrum in any way we will end up with a more homogenous group of players more and more like league. Me? I like diversity!