The History
If you delve back into the history of the laws (not something for the faint of heart), the laws around substitutes have changed many times. At first there were none, if you broke your leg, tough, the team played on down a player. Then they allowed substitutions for injuries. Then tactical substitutions. And, some would argue, the game has gone downhill ever since.
The Present
The current situation is that, at least at the top level, you must have a complete front row, and then five other players. This leads to situations like South Africa using the bomb squad, with two good front rows, and just completely replacing the first with a second at the first scrum in the second half. Arguably, at least before the injury to Cyril Baille, France were able to do something similar this year; they had the Toulouse (Top14 Champions) front row and they replaced with the La Rochelle (Heineken Cup Champions) front row. Arguably that’s a much more even quality than we’re seeing from South Africa. We also see debate about a 5-3 or 6-2 bench. How many forwards should you have? How many and which specialist back positions do you need to cover? You almost always have a specialist scrum half on the bench, so you need to have a system to juggle players to cover the whole of the rest of the backs. These days each position is becoming more specialised, and the utility back is a vital part of any team.
Why Should We Change?
We’ve reached the point where there is a tension between substitutes as injury cover, HIA cover and substitutes as tactical tools. You have coaches who refuse to call them subs, but call them finishers. They are planning to bring them onto the pitch. You can even look at the way their teams play and almost play a drinking game. Front row substitutes at 55 minutes? Take a drink. Scrum half at 60 minutes, take a drink. And so on. (Please drink responsibly!)
This leads to players who are “60 minutes fit”. Now, I am the last person to discuss time in a gym, but one of the truisms of strength and conditioning training is that you get the outcomes you train for. Human bodies aren’t infinitely adaptable, although if you look at the differences between a small winger, a big prop and a big, rangy flanker there’s clearly quite a lot of variety.
If you train for more strength, in general you cannot get as much endurance. There are exceptions, but that’s broadly true. Props used to be able to play 80 minutes, but they weren’t the monsters that they are now. Big, crash ball centres still play for 80 minutes. While they’re muscular, they’re not doing the pushing and carrying the muscle load that a prop is.
Big humans smashing into each other are more likely to hurt each other. If we removed the option for tactical substitutions, all the players would have to be fit to play the full 80, and we’d see some of these huge players become a bit smaller, a bit more endurance and a bit less strength, and the force in the collisions would fall.
We would also see more fatigue and that leads to more space. How many times have we looked at the All Blacks survive for 60 minutes and then pull away in the last 20? Arguably some of that is the quality of their bench being better and them slotting into their roles better. However, I would argue that some of it is that they exploit the fatigue in their opponents better than almost anyone else. Does denying them their replacements remove or lessen that advantage?
The Downsides
To pick a couple of obvious examples Samu Kerevi and Jonathan Danty are both big guys that play a full 80, albeit they’re not scrummaging. We’ve recently seen Angus Bell, albeit thanks to injury, play pretty close to 80 minutes in the front row. Although we commonly see a lock replaced, in most teams that is rotated so your three main locks play about 100-120 minutes over two games each. But they’re all capable of playing the full 80. (I expect a rant from Keith about Skeleton only being able play 50 minutes in the comments.) Even “slim” second rows are tall, strong, pretty bulky folk. So we’re not going to see a huge shrinking of the players. A few kilograms, a bit less muscle, a bit off the strength training and into more repetitions, better endurance.
More fatigue also means the potential for more high tackles, and that’s bad. I’m not sure how real this is. Fatigue is already a thing. We clearly see at least some sides perform less well for a period at the end of the first half for about 10 minutes and the second half for about 15-20. The eyeball test doesn’t seem to suggest there’s a concentration of cards for dangerous play in those periods. There may be more penalties and cards for repeated penalties during them, but not rolling away, not getting back onside etc – all possible fatigue penalties too – don’t injure players, so don’t matter in this context.
If there is evidence of a higher risk of injuries and head-high tackles due to fatigue, then pressing ahead becomes much harder. But assuming that doesn’t exist what might we do?
If props become a bit less strong, a bit more endurance focussed, what happens at the scrum? It used to work but there wasn’t the same focus on the hit and winning that initial collision. If you go back to look at amateur scrums, test match amateur scrums, they used to almost graceful fold into place, and then start pushing. I’m not naïve enough to believe we’ll go back to that. However, I think we might see a slight reduction in the emphasis on the hit, otherwise there’s a risk we’ll see an increase in injuries to props and hookers. And that, I believe, is the biggest real risk. I would just like to say, though, and I’d love to hear the thoughts of those still playing the community game, that the players in the community game are not these huge gym bunnies with 2% body fat and strength training for weeks. They still manage to scrummage safely despite that… an enforced change to the training so props are fit to play the full 80 and are a little less focussed on just strength shouldn’t be that risky.
A Proposal
I really doubt anyone from World Rugby or Rugby Australia is reading this. If they are, please get in touch to discuss these ideas!
I’m going to lay out what I think we must achieve with the new laws then what I think we should accomplish with them. Finally I’ll lay out some proposals for doing that, sometimes with options. This will be more like bullet points for discussion rather than formatted like laws of rugby.
One thing before we dive in, although we don’t see it at the top level, the substitutions laws (3.4, 3.5, 3.8 and 3.9) already have variations for different levels of rugby and numbers of substitutions available. So I’m going to suggest that, but this is an extension of something that already exists.
What MUST be covered.
- HIA replacements
- Injury replacements
- Keeping the front row specialists so we try to avoid uncontested scrums
What SHOULD be covered
- Match experience for young players
- Returning after injury
- The 20 minute Red Card variation.
- Tactical substitution (maybe)
How Do We Achieve All Of This?
- I think the HIA laws, in the round, are basically sound. Players with suspected concussions are removed temporarily while the HIA is conducted and replaced by a suitable sub. If they pass, they swap back, if they fail, the substitution becomes permanent. If a player is concussed there’s a return to play protocol, so even if a coach tries to game this, there’s a penalty. We have to think about how to define substitutes, but the HIA law is fine.
- While broadly injury substitutions are fine, clearly swapping a player who can’t play for one who can is a good thing, there is the potential for abuse.
- In most matches I think a minimum one match “recovery” is sufficient. It gives a penalty for making the substitution so you’re less likely to see coaches abusing it. Obviously, as with Baille, a lot of injuries will have long recovery periods. This just gives you an easy to administer system to stop the coach saying “X is injured” to try to make a tactical substitution – it’s not just the rest of this match, it’s the next one too.
- In a final or similar the one match might be considered to be worth it. However, it’s much easier at every level to have an independent medic to assess the injury and confirm it’s genuine. Something like an HIA-system where you can have up to 10 minutes of cover, and if the medic (and remember this could be someone like the local equivalent of St. John’s Ambulance, not necessarily a doctor) agrees, then the substitution becomes permanent, otherwise reverse the substitution.
- The current laws cover how many front row specialists you get based on the number of substitutions you have, so that doesn’t need to change.
- I think giving young players experience and rehabilitation after injury can be dealt with together. I think there are two good options and I don’t have a strong preference. They interact with potential tactical substitutions in interesting ways so think about that too.
- Bracketed names. We know Kerevi has an injured thumb and is probably going to miss the next game. But let’s say he’s ok and Eddie wants to give him some game time so he’s match fit for the World Cup. He would bracket him with whoever the alternate is, and then he can choose when to make the switch. This wouldn’t affect the subs bench directly because it’s declared in advance. Clearly this needs some limits. I think two or three maximum makes sense, depending on the choices made for tactical substitutions. If we take this option, and Kerevi is swapped in later, you can still use a tactical substitution to replace him if he can’t actually cope.
- Have a (small) number of tactical substitutions and just roll the substitutions for young players and returning players into this number. This is absolutely the simplest approach, but since organising substitutions is worked out before the game it doesn’t necessarily gain much. A ref who is managing everything alone in tier 9 rugby needs to be a bit more organised to have bracketed players plus tactical substitutions but it takes an extra minute or two before the game and that’s it.
- The 20 minute Red Card law variation can, I think, just work as it is. I’ve seen nothing that looks like people sending out a “headhunter” to injure the opposition’s best player, take the red card and the ban, put their team down by one for 20 minutes and bring a replacement on. I’m not saying it can’t happen, but it seems really unlikely. If the coach can’t manipulate it, I think we put this in the same category as HIA and injury, one of those things where you’re allowed to use a substitute to keep numbers up. That’s the whole point of the 20 minute red after all.
- I think there’s a case for a number of tactical substitutions. This should be kept small but pretty free. Exactly how you implement it depends on how you implement the young players and return after injury systems.
- If you have the bracketed players approach, then I think you keep tactical substitutions small. I’m thinking possibly two. This is enough that in most circumstances you can change the makeup of the team in response to circumstances. If you have a prop who is being owned at scrum time, then hook them and send on a new prop. If your kicker is having an awful day, send on a new kicker. But you can’t just plan for the bomb squad, to replace your scrum half after 60 minutes or similar.
- If all your substitutions, for whatever reason, have to come from the same pool. I think there’s a case for making it slightly bigger. Maybe three or four. Now, not every game has young players being exposed to the senior game, nor players returning after injury. Having more tactical options gives the coach more choices. But setting them up in an X+Y system, so there are, for example, two bracketed players plus two free subs makes for more choices as well as encouraging coaches to use their bracketed players for development of young talent.
- How many substitutes should there be? Because, at the moment, we have free tactical substitution, we essentially limit the number of substitutes available. At international level it must be eight. Under that, it can be up to eight. However, if you can only use, say, two, three or four of these does that upper limit matter? I would say no. In terms of squad management it might, you absolutely can’t promise everyone game time, but you can rotate players and cope with that. How about, for international teams, 11 named substitutes, plus your bracketed players? Five forwards, five backs and one extra – I’m going to assume most coaches will take an extra forward. THP, LHP, hooker required. Second row and some form of backrow player seem likely for your required other forwards. Backs are a bit more complex. You’d definitely have a 9, then it depends on how your players can cover other positions. If you’re playing a big 12 and defensive captain at 13 you might spend two subs to cover those. That leads two of your typical five to cover 10, 11, 14 and 15. There are enough players that can cover 10 and 15 that this isn’t unreasonable, so you’d take a winger too. But other countries might take different combinations. If you have someone who can play all of the back three positions well, you take them and a specialist 10 for example. This leaves an extra person, who could cover any position – it is most likely to free up your back row cover, but might give you some freedom with more specialist back three cover. Why do this? Playing more specialist players in their right positions forces the coaches to make harder choices about their tactical substitutions, but it also means when there is an HIA or injury you get someone who is more of a specialist in their position. Fewer adjustments and players playing out of position. I don’t have data to support this, but I strongly suspect this leads to safer play for everyone. It also, if you’re going to keep your players happy, leads to more squad rotation. I think that’s more fun too.
Closing remarks
So, have at it. What do you think RDUers?
Should we change the laws around substitutions? Do you agree with my list of ‘must keeps’ and ‘should keeps’? If you don’t, you’re definitely going to have a different list of suggestions than I’ve got, but that’s fine. Even if you do, there’s a good chance you won’t like all of my suggestions. That’s also fine. We’re not going to change the laws here (sadly). But thrashing out what we think they should look like and, more importantly, why gives us informed grounds to consider whatever World Rugby do. Even if that’s nothing and just say “the laws are great as they are.” Maybe they are, if you think they are, convince me!
