The Current State of Rugby
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@mariner4life I enjoyed a club final on Saturday much, much more than the ABs; game was played with heart, game was played with intent, some flash moves (one was very good and came off) but these guys played to thier level, and was thoroughly enjoyable...oh, zero cards handed out.
Know what you mean tanwha, I am going to test on Saturady, but disappointed to be missing club semi final of team I follow here in Taranaki. I follow Kaponga in 2nd division, and you bang on, these fellas play to their level (which is not bad at all) and the absolute enjoyment I got watching the game, in the showers and wind, is hard to describe. Has actually made me think this week how we are stuffing up top level rugby etc with TMOs and probaly the whole professional thing! Add to that standing on sideline with like minded people, and having a quiet beer with them afterwards, I think as I said again a wake up call. I go schoolboy rugby too following U15 team, and find same there. young buggers playing to the best of their ability and every but as enjoyable to watch!
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Winger said in The Current State of Rugby:
But then players will just deliberately knock the ball down to stop an attack.
will they though?
IMO the vast majority are genuine attempts, well, in the players mind he thinks he has a shot at it, but timing needs to be perfect.
It isnt like so many other aspects of the game come down to a split second decision or movement that can result in something spectacular, at both ends of the spectacular spectrum.
Doesnt mean something was cynical or malicious
actually I slightly disagree.. I believe in most cases the intent is to prevent the play in front of them first and foremost. Now, do they have belief that they can pull it off?, sure I agree with that, but it will always be impossible to know until the pass is thrown how close they will actually get. The intent first though is stop the attack whether they get it or not. So for me that is negative/cynical play if they fail, which they are always in a high risk of doing so. Its a low percentage play, but high reward if you succeed.
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@Billy-Tell said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Smuts said in The Current State of Rugby:
@gibbon-rib the weird thing is that reffing is so much better now than it was 30 or even 15 years ago.
What’s changed, I think, is that somehow we got this idea in our head that refs should be close to perfect and share the same interpretations and emphasize the same things.
That’s unrealistic but also less fun?
You don’t complain about the weather. Games played in the pissing rain where the wind changes end at half time are awesome. So are games played in dazzling sun on a crisp Joburg winter afternoon. The team that adapts the best tends to win.
You don’t complain about the wild bounce of the ball. You try not to let it bounce or position yourself so you can react as best you can to whatever insane direction it shoots off at.
Sure, games reffed by Nige or Barnes in their pomp are awesome. But how sweet is it to beat 16 men? Especially when the pedantic bastard has no clue at the scrum and is rewarding a piss weak Welsh frontrow for fucking around? And it’s only that sweet because sometimes you just can’t overcome it.
Are there dumb Laws and dumber interpretations and massive reffing blind spots? Fuck yes. Should I be allowed to ruck a yappy halfback whose within a yard of the ball when all his mates are off their feet? Fucking Fuck yes. But I’m gonna get pinged for it sure as he won’t get pinged for being offside when he walks past his three mates like some godawful human centipede to “ruck” the ball back to its anus.
Maybe my perversity is showing, but I get a sick joy from players and teams mastering all our game’s capricious absurdities and developing ways to turn them to their advantage.
Are you from SA? If so, Hard to take seriously after the ridiculous carryon from your coach during the lions series.
That's ridiculous comment, why is it hard to take seriously someone from SA because one person from there made a stupid decision and statement.
I think there is awful lot os sense in what gibbon says . -
knocking the ball on is not a penalty
for some reason deliberately knocking the ball on is
but i'm fucked if i can see how a ref can be sure he "deliberately knocked it on" and didn't just stuff up a catch.
This is just some bullshit rule brought in because some winger some time slapped a ball down to stop a try, a team lost because of it, someone whinged like fuck and we used a sledgehammer to "make sure it never happens again" (spoiler: it happened again).
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@Kiwiwomble said in The Current State of Rugby:
@dogmeat i feel the real rugby nerds enjoy seeing every mistake from player or ref picked up and punished/corrected....where as the casual fan or those of us that forget about most mistake pretty quickly (unless i read about them on here) enjoy rugby much less
I think maybe the opposite Kiwiw, I am a rugby nerd or nutter etc, and I think like most understnd you will get the odd things missed. I actually think the problem comes from the team fans/nerds who will search for any minor offence against their team etc (usually helped by commentators, replays etc) and while many claim to be fans etc, an awful lot are fans of winning teams not the teams themselves.
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@mariner4life ha, I've seen occasion when one team passes a ball, is clearly a skip pass, but the guy in the middle reaches for it and knocks it on, he should be carded too!
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@mariner4life ha, I've seen occasion when one team passes a ball, is clearly a skip pass, but the guy in the middle reaches for it and knocks it on, he should be carded too!
this very scenario played out in my head before
i bet he only used one hand too, a total give away.
yellow card fluffybunny!
oooh, even better, if he hadn't have stuck his stupid mitt in the way the winger would have scored. is that a penalty try AND one of your own players to the bin?
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@Dan54 said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Kiwiwomble said in The Current State of Rugby:
@dogmeat i feel the real rugby nerds enjoy seeing every mistake from player or ref picked up and punished/corrected....where as the casual fan or those of us that forget about most mistake pretty quickly (unless i read about them on here) enjoy rugby much less
I think maybe the opposite Kiwiw, I am a rugby nerd or nutter etc, and I think like most understnd you will get the odd things missed. I actually think the problem comes from the team fans/nerds who will search for any minor offence against their team etc (usually helped by commentators, replays etc) and while many claim to be fans etc, an awful lot are fans of winning teams not the teams themselves.
either way i think we're losing the casual fan
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I think further to the above, if you are throwing a pass that the opposition player can get a hand to, it's not a great pass and at best it's high risk. A game where players can't or are too scared to even try and intercept passes like that is just stupid.
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I have some memory of Justin Marshall wanking on about how every failed intercept should be a YC for negative play? Might be making that up, but I do remember comms going on about how refs need to punish players that get it wrong.
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@No-Quarter I think you are right, Marshall is in the all 'deliberate knocks' be a YC.
It is a risk reward situaiton, like you say, throwing a long cut out pass is risk reward; you have taken a risk on throwing a pass that might get taken, but if not, you should be in, if not, scrum or the opposition gets it or scores.
Why is it, the opposing team dont have the same risk/reward? If you take it, you should be in, if not, scrum or opposition gets it or scores.
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@No-Quarter he got justice boners about it for years. I think he has softened on his stance (ahem) now. At least in cases where you clearly see the player is making a genuine go at the ball. In most of those cases they almost get the ball and it was worth a crack. I agree that anyone making a super low % play and/or clearly knocking the ball down should get pinged.
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@Kiwiwomble said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Crucial really, right from first principles?
- 15 players per team
- these are the field dimensions
- pass the ball backwards
- scrums and lines outs
whats next?
I feel anything ive read about is a review of the existing laws which is very different
World Rugby launches new simplified law book
Making rugby's laws easier to understand for all is the objective behind the simplified law book, which will be introduced globally from 1 January, 2018. Approved at the November World Rugby Council meeting, the simplified law book is designed to make the laws easier to understand while not...
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@Crucial ....exactly....a review of the existing laws, anything from after this exercise as this was all about what was going to happen
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@Kiwiwomble said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Crucial ....exactly....a review of the existing laws, anything from after this exercise as this was all about what was going to happen
My comment was in reply to this statement..
@gibbon-rib said in The Current State of Rugby:
1 - The law book is a mess, poorly written - ambiguous, contradictory, vague - and should be re-written from the ground up even if they don't change any laws (and we all agree they need to change some of them).
I was pointing out that exactly this happened only a few years back. Almost 50% of text was cut out. Descriptions replaced with diagrams etc
I'm not arguing any quality of laws just that stating that it is a mess and poorly written appears based on the law bokk prior to this re-write.
eg: there is no deliberate knock-on. It clearly, and unambiguously, states that a player cannot intentionally knock the ball forward. I seem to remember that the old law book firstly defined a 'knock-on' then set laws around that definition.
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@Crucial @gibbon-rib said they should be re written form the ground up....and you said they had been before posting a story about a review of the existing laws...thats not the same
thats also an article about what they planned to do, i would like to see if they actually did it
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@Kiwiwomble we are mate, and almost getting to stage of losing incredibly rusted on fans like me. I never thought I would say the day would come when I going to a test, and thinking I not sure I wouldn't rather just be at Kaponga to watch them. Perhaps it just the frustration, but I am someone who would travel from Aus to here in NZ when I lived there to watch rugby, at moment I for first time in my 67 years am not as excited as once was at the thought.
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@taniwharugby said in The Current State of Rugby:
@No-Quarter I think you are right, Marshall is in the all 'deliberate knocks' be a YC.
100% Marshall banged on about it. I brought that up a couple of years ago when I was arguing against yellows for failed intercepts. Didn't get much traction at the time because a lot of people on here seemed in favour of yellows cards.
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@mariner4life said in The Current State of Rugby:
knocking the ball on is not a penalty
for some reason deliberately knocking the ball on is
Seriously? You think deliberately knocking the ball on should not be penalised?
What happens then is that players catching a pass but coming up to be tackled throw the ball up in the air, and then run past the player to catch it. Players holding the ball can't pass it forwards, but if it is on the ground can bat it forward, past the defence line, to let their own side run on to it. Chip kicks would be replaced by Aussie Rules style hand bats, with much more control.
And don't give me "that's throwing the ball in the air" because then we are right back where we started with definitions.
Deliberate knock-ons must be penalised, or the game turns to farce. It's been in the laws forever -- it is not some recent thing, just because you have started noticing.
The fact that you don't see players often very deliberately knocking the ball on is precisely because it is heavily penalised. If it were free for all, then players would do it all the time -- why would they not?
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but its different now. For one every big game is on TV. Professional rugby has meant needing a diff set of rules and has changed the game. More sport options in nz. Internet means we can all watch our fill of rugby
Add in boring super rugby with one team always winning and poor decisions like expansion .
