IN THE good old days a certain SRU president – I think it was Alf Wilson – said that the Union's response to any proposed innovation was to "say no, then think about it."
If reports that the Scottish members of the International Rugby Board were in favour of the Experimental Law Variations discussed in Dublin last Thursday are correct, the Union would seem to have resiled from its traditional and admirable stance. One
hopes not; perhaps the reports are mistaken.
The IRB meeting did not go as badly as one feared it might. Only a few of the ELVs – and these among the least contentious – are to be tried out worldwide next season. Some are to be given a trial in one "elite northern hemisphere competition," probably the Anglo-Welsh EDF Energy Cup. (that should leave Welsh sides a bit confused in their Magners League games).
Others, including two of the most ridiculous proposals – about the offside line at any tackle, and playing the ball with hands in a ruck – are going back to the drawing-board, and, with any luck, oblivion.
Regular readers of this column will know that I have my doubts about some of the present laws. The tackle one still seems to me unsatisfactory, partly because it unduly favours the side in possession at the tackle, partly because it makes, almost inevitably, for inconsistent refereeing. Again, I think legislation to limit the "pick and drive" desirable.
However neither of these matters was addressed in the batch of proposed ELVs.
The first objection to them is that there is nothing much wrong with the game as it is, and therefore with the laws as they are. Nobody who watched last weekend's terrific Heineken semi-finals can sensibly argue
with this assertion.
The pressure for change has come from the Southern Hemisphere, especially Australia, and is prompted in part by a desire to simplify the game for the benefit of television. The intention is to have the ball in play for a longer period, and so make the game more like Rugby League.
But those of us who prefer Union do so in part at least because it is more complicated, and offers more variation, than the League game. There's no great merit in having the ball in play if what is happening is predictable and lacking in variety.
The most contentious of the ELVs to be tried out worldwide is that which will permit a maul to be pulled down. Now admittedly there has always been an illogicality in the law which forbids you to tackle a player carrying the ball. So an amendment which permitted that might be acceptable. The danger is, that a law allowing you to bring down a maul by pulling down a player who is not carrying the ball will devalue the maul itself. In any case it introduces a new illogicality, for in no other part of the game are you allowed to tackle a player not in possession.
I don't see the point of the proposed new lineout law, according to which, numbers in the line-out will neither be determined by the side throwing in, nor be restricted.
In recent years the lineout has again become competitive. The present law works well. If it's not broke, don't fix it.
Nor do I see any merit in the ELV which will forbid kicking directly into touch if the ball has been passed back into the 22. I suspect this will lead to more aerial ping-pong, though good kickers from defence will doubtless master the art of bouncing the ball into touch, just as players do from other parts of the field.
At least the proposed ELVs, which would devalue the scrum by substituting a free kick for many scrum offences which now result in penalties, and for a squint throw-in to the lineout, will get only a limited trial next season, and may, one hopes, disappear altogether.
There are two reasons for this.
First, the scrum is an essential element in Rugby Union, and must remain so. Admittedly, it is rarely well refereed, since the requirement to put the ball in straight is generally ignored.
Second, except when a player (usually the scrum-half) is allowed to take a quick tap and make a break, most free kicks make for dull rugby. A player taps, lumbers into a tackle, and the ball is recycled. Meanwhile, the defence is strung across the field. With the set scrum there is space, with the free kick there is usually none.
Things might be different if teams had imaginative free-kick ploys, like that, for example, from which Scotland scored a try at Cardiff in 1984. But the fact that that try sticks in the mind shows just how rare such imaginative planning is.
It was a pity that the ELVs were not dismissed out of hand and in toto. But at least the damage they threatened to do the game has been limited. The proposed trials save the IRB's face. One hopes that those being experimented with in the northern hemisphere elite competition will be rejected, especially that relating to an unplayable ball at the breakdown, which will see the side not taking the ball into contact being given a free kick.
This looks like a cheat's charter, an incentive to prevent fair release. If it is indeed the Anglo-Welsh Cup which is to be the subject of this experiment, one may hope that some of the more worldly-wise forwards either side of the Severn will demonstrate by their mastery of the black arts just what a rotten idea it is.
The full article contains 953 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
