The Current State of Rugby
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For me. It is all about the lawmaking and officiating. I don't want to say "refereeing". In fact I would like there to be 'more refereeing'.
When I started watching the game and fell in love with it. It was 'a controlled mess of a game' interrupted by shedloads of referring decisions and stoppages. But the stoppages were quick and the decisions of less consequence with the chances of them evening up in-game anyway.
Now is refereed / or law-makered on the ‘cool dad’ scale for some things:
- forward passes
- passing off the ground
- releasing ball on the ground
- scrum feeds
- goal kicking time taken
To make things flow, be neat and tidy.
But they are refereed on the Nazi scale on other things:
- scrum ‘legality’
- maul defence
- ‘deliberate’ knock-ons
- head contact
- ‘persistant’ infringements (e.g. 3 in a row …)
Safety changes:
- no rucking
- scrum engagements and from-rower heights
- head contact
- complete front-row on the bench
Some ‘good idea at the time’ changes:
- get lineout throw from penalties
- allow lifting in lineouts
These ‘changes in refereeing’ don’t remain in isolation. Some compound on others making formerly good changes, now bad. Or making stupid changes even stupider.
E.g. around the scrum rules:
- allow crooked feeds: get enormous hookers
- Prescribe having a complete front-row on the bench: get even more enormous (40-minuter) front-rowers.
- complete front-row on the bench: decimate amateur rugby team numbers
- Make rule changes that rewards having aerobically unfit players: get deliberate time-wasting
E.g. The many headed hydra trying to address safety and head contact:
- remove rucking: get cleanouts and head contacts
- Clamp down on cleanouts: get 14 man rugby and TMO interventions
- allow passing off the ground: encourage high tackling that wraps up the ball.
- allow offloads that only pass a ‘cool dad’ forward pass sniff-test: encourage high tackling.
- The combined cool dad non-referring that encourages high tackling: more head contact, TMO interventions, 14 or 13 man rugby.
E.g. The ‘let if flow’ changes:
- already mentioned that being lenient on forward passes (or changing forward pass interpretations based on co-commentators whining during slow motion replays) means the offload is a lethal attacking option. But … encourages high tackling
- already mentioned passing off the ground discourages the classic low tackle that lowers the players but leaves them in control of what they do with the ball.
- ditto allowing them to ‘place it’ after a tackle.
- Allowing them to ‘place it’ after a tackle. Presumable to remove dangerous rucking: Discourages the mobile ruck-chasing loose forwards. Encourages big unit loosies. Bigger players, worse collisions, more time wasting, terrible for grass roots numbers participation.
E.g. The was a good idea at the time:
- Get lineout throw from penalties. Changed in 1992. Only had a 60% chance of winning your own line out pre-lifting. And wasn’t as neat a base from which to set up from either. Good idea at the time,
- in 1996. Go ‘cool dad’ on line out lifting. Removes countless annoying line out penalties. But wind forward 10 years time and teams have perfected the 5m lineout maul try into a 70% play.
- The make scrum engagement perfect changes, combined with the 1992 line out penalty changes, combined with the allow lifting changes: Results in a minor scrum technical infringements 50m from your line being a 70% chance for a try if your line kicker is decent.
- Allow mounds, then sand, then tees. For goal-kicking. Saves the turf. But makes the now 'too few' infringements that referees rule too easy to score points from. Plus the time taken. Make a small divot, place ball, address it and kick it, immediately. This is not me harking back to my youth. I started watching when we were in the 'make a mound' phase.
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I’m not seriously advocating WR make changes that I am listing above.
I don’t think that is realistic.
Too radical, or too much back-tracking (Heck they haven’t removed the now redundant ‘outside arm’ lineout rule after they allowed lifting, a rule designed to stop jumping off your opponents shoulder, so they aren’t going to role back the number of rule changes I am suggesting).Just a record of how the compounding changes have turned the best sport in the world into something I wouldn’t watch even if it was in my back yard.
I honestly think it is a lame duck going forward. At an amateur level and a professional level. So, I have emotionally dis-engaged. It is a different sport now anyway from the one I got hooked on.
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@stodders said in The Current State of Rugby:
Any tackle above the sternum will become illegal. Can’t see how they can hold it off for much longer. The subjectivity of what constitutes a red or not is just too great. If you tackle above the sternum, you get sent off. Players have the choice to go low or have an early bath.
K.I.S.S.
Makes everything easier. Case in point is the forward pass rule (and I’m not saying it was better, just easier), if it is adjudged to go forward, end of story. No momentum, no backwards out of the hands. Simple to enforce. Still prone to errors of course.
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@Catogrande thats the thing, any head contact should be ruled the same way, whether that is a YC or a RC with/without a time restriction.
Shit, they give the TMO crew (whoever it is) <10 mins to make the decision, and given the inconstancies in the judicial process who have days to review it, <10 mins is not long enough to make a decision that will most likely affect the outcome of a match.
Set a black and white standard on head contact.
Was there head contact - Yes, then card
Its from here we have decisions to make.
Does that player get to come back on, can they be replaced?Let the judiciary then argue mitigation, change of angles etc.
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@Catogrande said in The Current State of Rugby:
@stodders said in The Current State of Rugby:
Any tackle above the sternum will become illegal. Can’t see how they can hold it off for much longer. The subjectivity of what constitutes a red or not is just too great. If you tackle above the sternum, you get sent off. Players have the choice to go low or have an early bath.
K.I.S.S.
Makes everything easier. Case in point is the forward pass rule (and I’m not saying it was better, just easier), if it is adjudged to go forward, end of story. No momentum, no backwards out of the hands. Simple to enforce. Still prone to errors of course.
I'm with this. Except maybe on the momentum part.
I'd like to see tried a must 'pass it behind yourself'. So it must go behind the plane of your own shoulders. This I think should pass the "eye test".
It would seriously limit the Sonny_bill offload. But as I mention above in my veeeeery long post. The offload encourages high tackling response. So, no loss.
It needs to be easy for a referee to judge reasonable accurately in real time with no TMO replays.
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@mooshld said in The Current State of Rugby:
@canefan said in The Current State of Rugby:
This might have already been posted, but here goes. Shag telling it like it is
He's not wrong but his timing sucks. Say this just after you've won because of a favourable ruling people may listen. But say it now it'll be seen as sour grapes.
The only way this will change is if TMO interventions are clearly in favour of the All Blacks. Right now the rugby world still seems to watch us have our comeuppance.
For me, I'm happy to have the TMO, but it needs to be applied to everything or nothing at all. And RCs need (outside of egregious foul play) need to go to judiciary. Right now cards are defining outcomes and ruining the game.
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Catogrande thats the thing, any head contact should be ruled the same way, whether that is a YC or a RC with/without a time restriction.
Shit, they give the TMO crew (whoever it is) <10 mins to make the decision, and given the inconstancies in the judicial process who have days to review it, <10 mins is not long enough to make a decision that will most likely affect the outcome of a match.
Set a black and white standard on head contact.
Was there head contact - Yes, then card
Its from here we have decisions to make.
Does that player get to come back on, can they be replaced?Let the judiciary then argue mitigation, change of angles etc.
But what constitutes head contact for a card? That will be the grey area. There are multiple head contacts in every single game. We can't card them all otherwise it'll end up sevens. I have been saying it for years. Cards are ruining the game. We need less not more.
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@Crazy-Horse but thats the point, remove the grey area, a head contact is a head contact at tackle or ruck, let the judiciary look at mitigation, change of height direction etc without a half a dozen minute time constraint.
You know I'm in the camp of less cards too, but I cant see any easy way around it, and as has been talked about for the past couple of years, cards are ruining the game, last weekend, was the biggest game a card has had an influence on the outcome, from the outside as a spectator you want a fair contest, cards suck as they alter this.
I would also argue, if you are sending anyone off due to a head contact, then the person on the receiving end should have a mandatory HIA, seems ridiculous to send someone off for a head contact, yet the guy they supposedly contacted dangerously, isn't impacted (while this is the hope, surely isnt always the case)
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@stodders said in The Current State of Rugby:
Any tackle above the sternum will become illegal. Can’t see how they can hold it off for much longer. The subjectivity of what constitutes a red or not is just too great. If you tackle above the sternum, you get sent off. Players have the choice to go low or have an early bath.
That's an excellent way to kill the game if WR went down that path. Imagine watching a Test to see some lock lumbering across in cover defence only to have a Kolbe or DMac step back inside. With no time to get low enough, you clip them in the jaw and the game is over for spectators with 70mins still left on the clock.
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@antipodean said in The Current State of Rugby:
And RCs need (outside of egregious foul play) need to go to judiciary. Right now cards are defining outcomes and ruining the game.
As I've said before - Cyril Brownlie got a red card in 1925. Pinetree got the next one (for us) in 1967.
Now you have eight dished out in this RWC.
They've fundamentally changed the nature of the game, but not the penalty.
Instead of being called "red cards" maybe they should be called "the shit-coloured snitch".
As a brief re-cap, in JK Rowling's Quidditch - if you catch the snitch you win the game - regardless of whatever all the other players have been up to in regards to scoring goals and points.
It is a shit game (that would never be played as she envisages it).
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The obsession that WR has with cards is really insane. Thinking they can fix head knocks by ruining as many games as possible by carding players making errors of judgement in a fast paced game. Just madness.
Honestly, if I was taking WR to court over head knocks and early dementia etc, my angle wouldn't be that the refs didn't crack down enough, my angle would 100% be that all of the changes to the laws recently have been geared towards slowing the game down that massively benefits larger players. The larger the players, the larger the collisions, the larger the chance of serious head injury (among a host of other serious injuries). I know it's all been said before, but if they are actually concerned about head knocks they'd look to speed the game up big time, and there's some pretty obvious and easy changes they could make to the rules around the bench alone that would help.
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@No-Quarter said in The Current State of Rugby:
The obsession that WR has with cards is really insane.
Look at Ireland, 1 card this year I think, and a handful this cycle. It is not WR obsession only, it is the player's being shit and not accurate enough. You can talk dynamic game etc, but the world No1/2 most successful team this RWC cycle(*) did it with fuck all cards. Especially ABs and Oz, who play with refs who are lenient and rules that are lenient.
(*)until we smashed 'em in the quarters haha
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Problems with world rugby - well 2 for me.
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The TMO in their God-box minutely reviewing the game and over-ruling the ref - the technology should be there to help the ref make a decision or for the players to challenge a refs decision.
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Having a squad of 23 effectively means you can sub over half the team, this can take the "fatigue factor" almost completely out of the game (something to their credit SA have recognized and exploited better than everyone else) . We should do something like football where there's a large number of available subs on the bench - but only allowed to use 4 or 5 tactical subs in the game.
This would help the game flow more (less interruptions) and also allow a freer, more expansive game (especially in the second half when fatigue sets in).
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@Windows97 said in The Current State of Rugby:
Problems with world rugby - well 2 for me.
- The TMO in their God-box minutely reviewing the game and over-ruling the ref - the technology should be there to help the ref make a decision or for the players to challenge a refs decision.
The Ref should be able to over rule the TMO also, pretty sure he can. Case in point would be Smiths disallowed try where TMO went back several phases of play earlier
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@Nevorian yes he could, but imagine the uproar then too..."I agree, there was a knock on, but you arent actually meant to go back that far, so try stands"
Which is why they need to tighten the rules about what and when they can look at things, then there isnt the awkward situation when the TMO provides something to the ref to ignore.
Right now, seems a free for all with TMO pretty much having free reign to call what they want, when they want, choosing when to call things or not.
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This may sound absurd but could it be possible that attacking players could intentionally go into a situation where a defender is likely to make a head high tackle to milk a card. For instance, the Sam Cane example, could Kriel have seen that Cane is standing upright and had no chance of tackling low and would most likely receive a penalty or card? Kriel knows the impact is going to be high because he uses his arm to minimise the impact.
This is pure speculation but the frequency of cards being dished out could actually increase head knocks
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Nevorian yes he could, but imagine the uproar then too..."I agree, there was a knock on, but you arent actually meant to go back that far, so try stands"
Which is why they need to tighten the rules about what and when they can look at things, then there isnt the awkward situation when the TMO provides something to the ref to ignore.
Right now, seems a free for all with TMO pretty much having free reign to call what they want, when they want, choosing when to call things or not.
It's also just guidance, not law. So the ref team can ignore guidance
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Nevorian yes he could, but imagine the uproar then too..."I agree, there was a knock on, but you arent actually meant to go back that far, so try stands"
Which is why they need to tighten the rules about what and when they can look at things, then there isnt the awkward situation when the TMO provides something to the ref to ignore.
If the rule about two phases still exists, then a competent TMO shouldn't be raising it with the ref to begin with.
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@Machpants said in The Current State of Rugby:
@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Nevorian yes he could, but imagine the uproar then too..."I agree, there was a knock on, but you arent actually meant to go back that far, so try stands"
Which is why they need to tighten the rules about what and when they can look at things, then there isnt the awkward situation when the TMO provides something to the ref to ignore.
Right now, seems a free for all with TMO pretty much having free reign to call what they want, when they want, choosing when to call things or not.
It's also just guidance, not law. So the ref team can ignore guidance
That's not what the protocol says.
