Is rugby turning into league?
GETTY IMAGES FORMER England rugby international Stuart Barnes believes rugby’s zero-tolerance approach to head contact will lead to the game becoming more like rugby league.
World Rugby’s new tackle rules came into effect on January 3 and sees a tackle or attempted tackle being deemed as reckless if the tackler knew or should have known there was a risk of making contact with the head and did so anyway.
It applies even if the tackle started below the shoulders. It includes neck rolls. The minimum sanction is a yellow card and the maximum a red.
A tackle or attempted tackle will be deemed accidental if a tackler made accidental contact with the head, even if the tackle started below the shoulders. It includes where the ball-carrier slips into the tackle. The minimum sanction is a penalty.
Writing in his column for The Times newspaper, Barnes said World Rugby’s the rules would have unintended consequences that could ‘‘transform the sport as a spectacle for the worse’’.
He was particularly pointed in his criticism of the line of the rules which said ‘‘in making contact, the player knew, or should have known, that there was a risk of making contact with the head of an opponent but did so anyway. This sort of contact also applies to grabbing and rolling or twisting around the head/neck area’’.
‘‘Here we have moved from the tackle to the breakdown and it is in this tangled area of the sport that the zero-tolerance approach threatens the appeal of the game,’’ Barnes wrote.
‘‘The neck rolls, only recently such an ugly part of the sport, did not arise from the spiteful minds of a few players with WWE aspirations. The act is one of the few ways in which the team second to the breakdown can compete for possession.
‘‘When the first man to the contact jams himself into the limpet position - legs wide apart, torso blocking the ball off from the other side with his head inevitably close to the ground - he is just about immovable, hence the growth of wrestling techniques.’’
Barnes said it was that first man to the breakdown who was putting his head into the dangerous situation, but the new rules would mean that such players were protected and would kill off the breakdown contest.
‘‘Tuesday’s edict is a charter GETTY IMAGES for him to be unchallenged at the point of tackle.
‘‘Without a contest at the breakdown, rugby union could become a variant of rugby league.
‘‘It will be well-nigh impossible to move the specialist (except perhaps at the highest international levels, where opposing players arrive at the tackle at pace and in numbers to knock him from his position before he settles into the groove), so defenders will span the width of the pitch without even thinking about competing. A scrap for possession happened with regularity before this week.’’
‘ Without a contest at the breakdown, rugby union could become a variant of rugby league.’ STUART BARNES
Barnes said the word turnover could now be removed from the rugby vernacular, replaced on the field by an ‘‘endless loop of recycled ball with support runners committed to being the first man over the ball and, therefore, too close to the carrier to receive the offload’’.
Barnes said a better move would be to bring in the trial laws from last season’s Mitre 10 Cup, which stopped players playing the ball on the ground and made counter-rucking more important.
New Zealand Rugby general manager rugby Neil Sorenson said in December they welcomed the new World Rugby measures to protect the head. ‘‘As a game, we have all committed to doing what we can to make the game as safe as possible and these are sensible adjustments.’’