Maids coach hopes rugby will resume in the new year
Maidenhead RFC: Community rugby leagues cancelled but Mobbs-Smith hopes adapted play will be possible
David Mobbs-Smith is hopeful the RFU and Government will find solutions in the coming weeks which will enable clubs like Maidenhead RFC to play competitive rugby in the new year.
Hopes of the side playing league rugby in the London and South East Premier Division have been all but extinguished, but it’s still possible Maids could play some form of adapted, fullcontact rugby in a league format against local rivals.
Mobbs-Smith acknowledges it would be difficult to have promotion and relegation in such a truncated season, but he believes solutions will be found to ensure that the 2020-21 season is not a complete washout.
“Yeah, I think rugby are trying to find solutions,” he said.
“They’re looking to see how the game could start again in January with some sort of adaptive form of the game. That’s what we’re putting our hopes in now from a rugby point of view.
“Hopefully, we’ll have some adaptive form of the game which might be like what we’ve had with the ready for rugby touch tournaments.
“Obviously, they’ve made the announcement that the leagues are cancelled, so it’s more likely to be localised matches, just to reduce travel both from a COVID point of view but also from a cost factor. They (the RFU) made an announcement that there is no rugby going to be played this season in a league format.
“That’s below Championship level. It would be difficult to have promotion and relegation after playing for such a short period of the season.”
It’s likely that tackles and rucks would still be allowed in this adapted form of the game, but scrums and mauls would be banned.
Mobbs-Smith doesn’t think the rules will be universally popular, particularly with the forward packs, but he believes the game will develop their skillset and make them better players for when they eventually get back to league matches.
It’s now up to the RFU to convince the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that this adapted form of the game can be played safely, and, if they get the green light from Government, the sport could return early in the new year.
“Look we’ve missed our start date now and playing the season becomes quite difficult,” he said. “I believe they’re looking at trying to play some localised, competitive rugby but it will be adapted. It won’t be as competitive as a full-blooded game I don’t think.
“We’ll have to wait and see what it looks like.
“We won’t be able to scrum on certain penalties; you can’t scrum on knock-ons. It takes out handling errors as a scrum start and you can only catch and drive in the opposition’s 22.
“At our level they may even take that out too. You can play a line out, but only off the top for example. It’s something the RFU has to convince the DCMS about.
“They must convince them it’s safe enough to play COVID wise. But, when other sports go back after this break, hopefully rugby will be very close to joining them in some form.”
When competitive games do start back up Maids won’t be lining up against new rivals from the London League, it’s more likely they’ll be locking horns once more with some of their local rivals, perhaps Bracknell, Newbury, Windsor or Marlow.
“I think that information will be given to us rather than us going out and organising it ourselves,” he said. “In our region there are quite a few clubs who would be rivals historically. I’m guessing we would play most of those, but we’ll have to wait and see.
“It will be a smaller, compact league, because we don’t have much time left. You couldn’t have a 12-team league for example. I’m sure teams that play through the winter would love to carry on into the summer, but I think there will be political pressure to stop the winter sports when they normally stop so the summer sports can resume.
“If it is going to be localised then we’d have to play teams at a similar level. We might train at the same ground as London Scottish, but we couldn’t play them because the gap is too big to play them at full-contact rugby. In football you have non-league teams that get through a few rounds in the FA Cup and they might get to play Liverpool, but you can’t do that in rugby. A team couldn’t play against Exeter because people would end up in hospital. Players don’t have the physical condition to compete, they would get hurt.”
He added: “But I’m looking forward to playing these matches. I was quite impressed with the ready for rugby game they came up with. If they can find another adaptive form of the game that we can play that would be good. People will probably criticise it, but if we’re playing a match in February that has some meaning to it that will be good. The players will feel like they’re playing rugby and it will help them get even fitter. In these matches the ball gets back into play very quickly and players lose those natural rest periods. Scrums give players time to recover. Some of the players might not like it initially, but they’ll be developing their skills for the following season. 100 per cent this is going to improve players’ skillsets for when they get into that South East league where they are going to come up against some very skilful sides.”