What could possibly place a check on the euphoria of Brian O’Driscoll, the
Ireland captain, in a season in which he led his country to a Grand Slam?
Only the way that the rugby itself has been played. O’Driscoll, like the
vast majority of European players, all the leading national and professional
coaches, national unions and, if all the surveys are accurate - and they
have huge sampling - rugby followers, has grown to hate the experimental law
variations (ELVs). “Some of the ELVs are among the worst things that have
ever happened to the game of rugby,” O’Driscoll says.
There are about 35 measures in all. Some are being trialled globally, some in
the southern hemisphere only, in a muddled, ad hoc charade that has rendered
this season the worst in memory for good rugby - and which has seen
spectators craning their creaking necks as a ping-pong of interminable
kicking goes back and forth above their heads. Other measures, the real
lunatic ones, are back with the Laws Project Group (LPG), an
unrepresentative gathering comprising many people with no day-to-day contact
with either the professional or the community game, who originated the whole
shambles.
The news is wonderfully cheering, however. Our rugby leaders at the European
unions, and many elsewhere, have seen enough. Our investigations show that
almost all the key ELVs will be dumped, forever, in the dustbin of history’s
boneheaded ideas. Our maths tells us that resistance is so powerful that
there is no way the International Rugby Board (IRB), for all its desperate
politicking, will come remotely close to achieving the two-thirds majority,
in its Council of 26, needed to make its key ELVs law.
Tomorrow and on Tuesday, the IRB is hosting a meeting of the rugby unions and
other stakeholders at the Lensbury Club in south London. This meeting will
discuss all the experimental laws, one by one, and deduce if they are
working well enough to formally refer to the IRB Council, where they will
need the majority. We have seen a full agenda for both days and it is
obvious the IRB is still desperate to push through as many as it can. Our
investigations show that if the Six Nations unions, including Italy, and
Argentina and Canada want to play hard ball, they can force the IRB to see
sense by threatening to vote down every single ELV. They have the voting
power.
It must be remembered that many ELVs are only procedural. One allows lineout
lifters to pregrip, which they always have done anyway. It is just the IRB
making legal something that it forgot to impose. But the IRB strategy this
week is clear – it will produce swathes of statistics and results of
surveys, which even an IRB insider feels are full of loaded questions.
Marcelo Toscano, of the Argentinian union, is dismayed: “It is true that
they are offering statistics, and it can be seen as the only true
information. But we believe that opinions should have the same weight as
statistics.”
Almost all the radical measures will still fall. For a start, the experiment
that allows teams to collapse the maul is dead. O’Dris-coll says: “They have
taken away one of the great skills and spectacles.” The field is now clogged
with defenders who have no need to commit to the maul. Edinburgh coach Andy
Robinson says: “The maul is a great weapon, a vehicle for creating space.
People who don’t understand it got rid of it.” The English, Irish, French
and Welsh unions agree. Real mauling, and therefore real rugby, will be back
in September.
Goodbye, too, to the most ghastly measure of them all, the “sanctions”
experiment being trialled in the southern hemisphere. Under this, the number
of full penalties in the game is drastically reduced, and even offences that
kill the ball at the breakdown become free kicks. The Australian and New
Zealand unions have set huge store by this measure.
Again, they will fail. Too many people hate it, too many unions will vote
against it. The experiment has produced a horrible saccharine quality and
false, tap-and-go pace to the action, leading the Sydney Morning Herald to
describe action in the Super 14 as “serial tedium”. It is open to abuse.
“This is a cheats’ charter,” says Roger Lewis of the Welsh Rugby Union, and
we could not find one of the Six Nations who will vote for it.
And good riddance, otherwise it means the death of the scrum. The IRB says
there are still as many scrums as in the pre-ELV days. Dangerous drivel. The
tap-and-go style will demand that coaches pick faster, smaller forwards.
Within two seasons, scrums will become a joke, a restart for the game as
fast men scrum in a parody of the real thing.
The third great radical experimental law is to allow teams to place any number
they wish in the lineout. Previously, the throwing team dictated numbers.
Owen Doyle, of the Irish Rugby Union, one of the most respected law
authorities in the sport, says: “The numbers in the line haven’t worked, and
we will be looking at that.” Part of the increase in aimless kicking has
come about because teams can kick into touch knowing that they can pack the
lineout and have a good chance of winning back the ball.
The IRB is sanguine that two of its measures - not allowing the ball to be
taken or passed back into the 22 to gain ground with a kick, and their
so-called crown jewel, the five-metre offside line at the scrum - will get
through. It should not be. It faces a major fight on both counts.
Chris Cuthbertson, who is leading the ELV assessment process for the Rugby
Football Union (RFU) and Premier Rugby Limited, says: “The five-metre
measure does create more space, but in our surveys we’ve found that the No 8
is attacking on a very narrow front. The measure was supposed to persuade
teams to attack out wide, but we don’t believe this has happened. It’s one
of several ELVs where we are not seeing the desired effect.”
Many unions to which we spoke believe that the five-metre space is being
filled by hulking No 8s charging straight at the opposition fly-half. One
senior South African coach told us: “We are totally ‘anti’ the five-metre
gap. It has taken away strike play and the skill of a back who can fix a man
and make the telling pass.”
If you feel that only the northern hemisphere is against the ELVs, the
southern façade is crumbling too. Todd Blackadder, coach of the Crusaders,
the Super 14’s most successful team, says: “The same issues that people are
talking about in the north are happening here. The mindless kicking. The
ELVs are supposed to encourage more running rugby, but everyone’s ended up
kicking it aimlessly. It’s something that needs addressing urgently. I don’t
see it as North v South, it’s a global rugby issue.”
Recent schisms in the TriNations grouping (normally a block vote) has seen
South Africa breaking ranks in the ELVs debate – another heavy blow to the
IRB, Australia and New Zealand. We spoke to several leading officials and
learnt that South Africa are now opposed to most of the radical ELVs. One of
South Africa’s most famous coaches, who has been advising the country’s
delegation for tomorrow, says: “We are under pressure from our Sanzar
partners and the IRB, but we want most of the ELVs out. What was intended to
simplify the game has done the reverse. Free kicks, especially, are too
easy.” Rod Macqueen, the Australian head of the LPG, was busy trying to
rally support last week.
What of the endless kicking, where two deep lines of players hoof it to each
other? There is time to make a cup of tea while they do it. “Kick-and-chase
ploys . . . are now the first fallback a lot of the time,” says Sean Lamont,
the Scotland wing. The kickfest is caused by the lack of mauls and therefore
the lack of a refuge to drive the ball up; it is caused by the lineout ELV.
But what else contributes to it? The terminal uncertainties about refereeing
at the breakdown, caused in turn by new refereeing protocols that mean there
is a high chance that the team in possession will lose it or concede a
penalty. So instead, they kick it. Ian McGeechan, the Lions coach, is one of
many in a fury of frustration that attacking teams cannot attack any more.
The IRB denies responsibility, saying these protocols are not an ELV. Many
people disagree strongly. Of course they are. Or rather, they are part of
the holistic shambles. The IRB introduced the protocols at the same time as
the ELVs; they exist together, they are interrelated. Many believe that
while the IRB has been otherwise engaged with its experiments, the rest of
the law book has become a disaster.
Cuthbertson is one of the most convincing and sober voices I have heard in the
whole debate. He has produced a gigantic research project, which canvassed
every corner of the sport and in which the effect of the ELVs has been
rigorously examined. The fact that the RFU decided that it had to conduct
its own survey is highly instructive. Everybody knew that the IRB would be
bringing its own statistics and conclusions. To many people, the fact that
the RFU and other parties are doing the same indicates a lack of trust in
the IRB’s approach to the whole question.
However, it is not the statistics that especially bother Cutherberson. He
believes, as do so many others to whom we spoke, that the ELVs, and the game
that the IRB is falling towards, betray rugby. “I find it all homogenous.
Teams are playing the same game, in the same style. It lacks variety, and it
is losing rugby’s special nature. Rugby is meant to be a game of chess.
Instead it is resembling a game of draughts.”
Additional reporting Nick Cain, Peter O’Reilly and Mark Palmer
‘They have ignored all of sporting history’
IF you ever catch Total Rugby, the magazine programme the International Rugby
Board (IRB) produce themselves and translate into umpteen languages, then
you see the IRB at their best - caring, pushing the game, celebrating
rugby’s goodness. It is only when they turn their attention to the way the
game is played that they become a disaster area. The last few years, and the
failure of their experimental law variations, have been a low point in their
history as the game’s governing body.
They have ignored all of sporting history and the lessons learned from their
own sport. No sport has ever been bonkers enough to try to bring in a vast
raft of new laws and rugby history shows that any attempt at radical change
always has the reverse effect in practice. And the IRB has abrogated its
responsibility to be fair-minded. Whatever they say, they have campaigned
vigorously and desperately for their law experiments, way before the end of
the trial period. They began early. In the first week that the experiments
were applied, an IRB spokesman pleaded with us to suspend judgement. Next
day, he said: ‘Obviously, the ELVs are already freeing up the game.’
The enforcers continued their work. Soon after Ian McGeechan had expressed
some reservations, he was descended upon by IRB heavies; when Victor
Matfield, the Springbok lock, was asked about the ELVs in a press
conference, he felt the need to ask his own team manager if he was allowed
to express an opinion, before he revealed how much he disliked the
experiments. Dick Marks, one of the most respected Australian coaches and
authorities, reflected in a report, which spectacularly savaged the whole
ELVs phenomenon, that most of the gushing praise for the laws was worthless,
since it came from paid employees - be they players, referees or officials –
of unions who were desperate to support the measures.
Last week I looked up my notes of a meeting with Paddy O’Brien, the IRB’s
referees manager and a stern proponent of the experiments. O’Brien was
outlining the philosophy behind them and yet in two hours he never once
mentioned that they were meant to make the game faster or better or more
spectacular - which shows how the original intentions have been hijacked.
He said that they were meant to take away the random element in refereeing so
that players decided matches. And what do we have, Paddy? We have the
‘sanctions’ experiment in which the referee has to decide if an offence by a
player was deliberate – in other words, the ultimate random question. We
have the five-yard rule at the scrum, which gives referees no fewer than
four moving offside lines (one for each set of backs, one for each
scrum-half). And that is making it easier for referees?
Just over a year ago, the Laws Project Group gave a media briefing. It was an
amazing occasion. The members came across as out of touch, divided, confused
and, in at least one case, they attacked the way that European teams liked
to play the game. At the end, one of my colleagues turned to the rest of us.
‘And you are telling me that it is that lot who are in charge of the future
of the game?’ It was both hilarious and terrifying. Rugby’s experimental law
variations (ELVs) were officially introduced in 2008, following the previous
year’s World Cup. The aim was to speed up the game, with the ball in play
more often. A meeting in London this week, attended by key stakeholders,
will probe their effectiveness in the trial period. The meeting will decide
which ELVs will be sent for formal voting by the IRB Council
ELVs WHICH WILL FALL
1. Mauls may be deliberately collapsed - provided the defender grasps the
opponent between the shoulders and hips to effect the collapse
2. A raft of offences which used to draw a full penalty draw only a tap
penalty unless the referee decides that the offence was deliberate
3. No restriction on the numbers in the lineout. Each team can decide its own
numbers
ELVs WHICH ARE IN DANGER
1. The new offside line at the scrum is five yards behind the hindmost foot,
not at the hindmost foot as it had been
2. If the ball has been carried or passed back into the 22 for a relieving
kick, the kick cannot gain ground - the lineout takes place level with the
kick
ELV LIKELY TO GO THROUGH
1. The corner posts are now in play. Players can strike them when in the air
and touch down legally, provided that they are not in touch or touch in goal
