Alleluia. Having endured a year when the most successful teams were the ones who kicked the ball away, it would appear that the Southern Hemisphere powers that be have felt the disillusionment of rugby lovers in the place the counts the most; the balance sheet, and decided to do something about it.
“Within Australia, we’re all on the same page,” O’Neill said at the unveiling of the Wallabies’ new strip yesterday. ”Reds, Waratahs, Brumbies, Force … we’ve all sat around the table and looked at the reality of where crowd figures have gone and where the game generally is at. I think we’ve hit the bottom and every one of the four teams is determined to deliver winning and entertaining rugby.
It’s not just the Australian unions that have got the hint. Last month coaches and referees from the across the Tri-Nations got together to nut out what could be done to take the boring as batshit out of rugby. The good news out of this process comes in two parts.
First is that two killers of the game – the tackler having carte blanche at the breakdown and endless scrum re-sets – have both been targeted for change. The second piece of good news is that no IRB law changes are required; not one old fart needs to be awoken from his cosy northern hemisphere club chair.
At the breakdown, the laws requiring the tackler to release the ball carrier before getting to his feet will actually be enforced. As Lyndon Bray, SANZAR’s referee manager said,
“We’ve agreed philosophically to change what the tackler can and can’t do. He is doing too much. We’ve allowed, in the evolution of the game, to let him remain in contact with the ball and ball carrier after he leaves his feet and he stays on the ball and jumps up and rips it away
“It looks great in the one-on-one scenario, but it’s actually against the law. It creates in the game a repetitive scenario where the ball carrier ends up with no rights because he can’t do anything with the ball.”
“The tackler inevitability gets the penalty which philosophically goes against what we are trying to achieve. We’ve agreed the tackler must release everything when he goes to ground and not hold on as he gets to his feet.”
So it’s official, Richie is a fucken cheat.
As for the scrum re-sets, SANZAR found themselves painted into a corner where penalising props for dropping scrums only served to disrupt the game further. Their innovative approach therefore is to apply pressure directly on the players through the national scrum coaches (Pato Noriega, Mike Cron, Balie Swart) and if necessary, to publicly name and shame.
“If the Hurricanes scrum for example have poor technique or use a poor tactical technique in week one to disrupt the scrum we will be going in privately and saying you have a problem and we will use Mike Cron to deliver the message, which gives it teeth. We will expect a change of behaviour from them. If they don’t deal with it then we have the right and permission from teams to go public.”
Sure, as a system it’s got holes in it, but if the Brick with Eyes told me to pull my head in, I think I would.
In the end of course, the greatest impact will be how well referees apply these interpretations. But it is good to see a wider base of participants – coaches, players, unions – taking a responsibility, rather than just pointing at the man in the middle. It might just mean fewer pools of dribble on the sofa arm, and a return of the game we all remember fondly.
