The Current State of Rugby
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@Kiwiwomble said in The Current State of Rugby:
@Rapido im on another forum that is predominantly NH people and they were all calling for blood for deliberate KNOCK ONS (you know who you are)...there is a growing divide between between north and south on what the game should look like
This is everything.
There are a bunch of different problems plaguing rugby under the general banner of refereeing.
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).
2 - Referees make too many blatantly incorrect decisions (AWJ's absurd yellow for example) that could be forgiven in real time before we had TMO, but there's no excuse for now. And there's way too much inconsistency in how the laws are applied - between countries, individual refs, from one game to the next, and worst of all between two teams in the same game (how many times do we see breakdown and scrum pens given to the team that "should" be stronger regardless of what's actually going on?).
3 - But those are relatively easy problems to fix. The toughest one is the perception that referring is appalling and is ruining the game. This is one of the rare things that NH and SH fans can agree on. But to fix it we need to deal with not just the previous two things, but also the gulf in about what rugby should look like.
Lots of people here were unhappy about the cards for the intentional knock-ons, and Ta'avao's red for the accidental tĆŖte-Ć -tĆŖte with Ringrose, while the people up north thought Faingaāanuku was damn lucky not to see red, and similarly Genge for pinning a guy down and smacking him about the head.
SH fans think that Northerners want to turn the game into tiddlywinks, with cards every 5 minutes and no tackling above the waist. NH fans think Southerners are in total denial about the seriousness of CTE and they want to dumb the rules down until it's just league XVs.
Who's right? It doesn't matter. At all. Not one chuffing iota. What matters is that we're poles apart, and you can't fix the law book or the refereeing if nobody can agree what 'fixed' means. And as far as I can see there's no plan for that at all.
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@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
100%. If you start, you should be able to play for 80 minutes. Get rid of the starter/finisher rubbish. Players will have to lose bulk, or the more aerobic ones will have more chances at the end of games as players tire.
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@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
Define injury
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@gibbon-rib said in The Current State of Rugby:
@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
Define injury
Therein lies the rub.
No win bonus if you leave the field
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@gibbon-rib said in The Current State of Rugby:
@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
Define injury
You don't have to define it, you just have to limit the number of subs allowed. full size bench, but only 3 subs allowed for the game, nominally for injury. Then you can't rort the system that much.
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@reprobate said in The Current State of Rugby:
@gibbon-rib said in The Current State of Rugby:
@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
Define injury
You don't have to define it, you just have to limit the number of subs allowed. full size bench, but only 3 subs allowed for the game, nominally for injury. Then you can't rort the system that much.
You're a smarter man than me
Well played
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@reprobate said in The Current State of Rugby:
@gibbon-rib said in The Current State of Rugby:
@MiketheSnow said in The Current State of Rugby:
I'm a big fan of bringing back substitutions for injuries only
Define injury
You don't have to define it, you just have to limit the number of subs allowed. full size bench, but only 3 subs allowed for the game, nominally for injury. Then you can't rort the system that much.
Yeah, that's the only way it could work. Of course it wouldn't be that unusual to get more than 3 injuries in a game. And it gives the opposing team a big incentive to help find a 4th injury...
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@gibbon-rib the weird thing is that reffing is so much better now than it was 30 or even 15 years ago.
Whatās 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.
Thatās unrealistic but also less fun?
You donāt 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 donāt 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 itās only that sweet because sometimes you just canāt 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 Iām gonna get pinged for it sure as he wonāt get pinged for being offside when he walks past his three mates like some godawful human centipede to āruckā the ball back to its anus.
Maybe my perversity is showing, but I get a sick joy from players and teams mastering all our gameās capricious absurdities and developing ways to turn them to their advantage.
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@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.
Whatās 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.
Thatās unrealistic but also less fun?
You donāt 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 donāt 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 itās only that sweet because sometimes you just canāt 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 Iām gonna get pinged for it sure as he wonāt get pinged for being offside when he walks past his three mates like some godawful human centipede to āruckā the ball back to its anus.
Maybe my perversity is showing, but I get a sick joy from players and teams mastering all our gameās 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.
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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.
Whatās 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.
Thatās unrealistic but also less fun?
You donāt 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 donāt 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 itās only that sweet because sometimes you just canāt 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 Iām gonna get pinged for it sure as he wonāt get pinged for being offside when he walks past his three mates like some godawful human centipede to āruckā the ball back to its anus.
Maybe my perversity is showing, but I get a sick joy from players and teams mastering all our gameās 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.
Unless @Smuts is actually Rassie incognito, that's not really a fair comment.
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@NTA said in The Current State of Rugby:
My boss at work is a leaguie, and his comment was "If you send a guy off for an attempted intercept, your game is fucked"
Maybe remove the yellow card. But then players will just deliberately knock the ball down to stop an attack.
And is it a law or refing issue It's a question not a statement
I never had an issue with the cards btw. One was a card and maybe one could have been just a penalty . But not an expert on this
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@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; the fact they got a finger to it, means there was a chance, however small.
I'd say a very small number go out and intentionally knock a pass down purely to prevent the pass being made, I think if its in the 22, they need to look more at PT rather than YC.
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
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@Winger said in The Current State of Rugby:
@NTA said in The Current State of Rugby:
My boss at work is a leaguie, and his comment was "If you send a guy off for an attempted intercept, your game is fucked"
Maybe remove the yellow card. But then players will just deliberately knock the ball down to stop an attack.
And is it a law or refing issue It's a question not a statement
I never had an issue with the cards btw. One was a card and maybe one could have been just a penalty . But not an expert on this
as @taniwharugby said i believe the vast majority of them are legitimate...if ambitious...attempts, whats more likely for a winger coming up into the line...wants to see a scrum....or wants to run 80m and pout it down under the posts winning the game
BUT...if they do...so?...attacking team gets the ball, can launch an attack from a scrum
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The game is truly fucked when a half of rugby takes 60 minutes to complete. Mainly because of TMO interventions.
I haven't watched more than a handful of (non test) games of rugby live in a decade. I used to watch every S12 game even the ones between two Saffa sides. was a season ticket holder at Harbour and used to travel to 3-4 away games a season.
the last two Saturday's I haven't even watched the game live as I wanted to watch with my partner and she was ill so saw it on the Sunday. We will be at an event in Napier for the decider and travelling back on Sunday so it's unlikely I'll even watch the game as I'm not going to try and avoid the media for a full 24 hours.
Only second time I will have missed an AB Test in over 30 years. This year was first time I haven't watched live.
The changes to the game have driven out much of my enjoyment of the game. It really started with the referring of the 17 Lions series and has only got worse.
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@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
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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 people want to see the other team punished. If their team benefits from cards and penalties they often don't give a shit and can be quite supportive of the sanctions. This seems to be the case in all the Rugby I watch (Super and ABs).
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@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).
That has been done already, not long ago
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@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
