JD
2006-03-10 01:21:20 UTC
On the rugbyheaven website, a poll is currently being conducted whereby
people can nominate one of five ideas to improve rugby. Unfortunately,
it simply shows that almost three quarters of the respondents are
clueless morons. Evidence of this is cut and pasted below:
Allow hands in the ruck - 16%
Allow vigorous rucking - 29%
Eliminate rolling mauls - 7%
Eliminate scrums - 2%
Reduce penalties to two and increase conversions to three points - 46%
Total Votes: 3841
I'll deal with the three main points;
Allowing hands in the ruck will do absolutely nothing to improve the
speed of the game and will drastically impact on the spectacle of
running rugby as players will be hanging on to the ball in the bottom
of a ruck for dear life, giving defence all the time in the world to
realign.
Reducing the penalties and increasing conversions will have the obvious
contrarian effect of more penalties, simply as you are only giving up
two points rather than facing the possibility of eight.
The simplest method for increasing the spectacle and reducing the
complexity is to allow rucking. Reasonably adjudicated by a referee,
this will promote faster recycling of the ball. Most of the current
laws can stay for safety (not rucking the head of an opponent, only
rucking a player preventing release of the ball). Simply put, if you're
on the wrong side of the ruck and don't make an expeditious exit,
players should be able to drive over and remove you. A ref only has to
ensure that the rucking is done safely and that the offending player
can actually remove himself. I realise this is actually the law as it
stands, but the IRB needs to communicate to refs that this is how they
should be interpreting the breakdown, rather than the pathetic current
state of affairs which lead to the suspension of So'oialo and Tito.
people can nominate one of five ideas to improve rugby. Unfortunately,
it simply shows that almost three quarters of the respondents are
clueless morons. Evidence of this is cut and pasted below:
Allow hands in the ruck - 16%
Allow vigorous rucking - 29%
Eliminate rolling mauls - 7%
Eliminate scrums - 2%
Reduce penalties to two and increase conversions to three points - 46%
Total Votes: 3841
I'll deal with the three main points;
Allowing hands in the ruck will do absolutely nothing to improve the
speed of the game and will drastically impact on the spectacle of
running rugby as players will be hanging on to the ball in the bottom
of a ruck for dear life, giving defence all the time in the world to
realign.
Reducing the penalties and increasing conversions will have the obvious
contrarian effect of more penalties, simply as you are only giving up
two points rather than facing the possibility of eight.
The simplest method for increasing the spectacle and reducing the
complexity is to allow rucking. Reasonably adjudicated by a referee,
this will promote faster recycling of the ball. Most of the current
laws can stay for safety (not rucking the head of an opponent, only
rucking a player preventing release of the ball). Simply put, if you're
on the wrong side of the ruck and don't make an expeditious exit,
players should be able to drive over and remove you. A ref only has to
ensure that the rucking is done safely and that the offending player
can actually remove himself. I realise this is actually the law as it
stands, but the IRB needs to communicate to refs that this is how they
should be interpreting the breakdown, rather than the pathetic current
state of affairs which lead to the suspension of So'oialo and Tito.