Union must resist calls to follow League’s use of rolling substitutes
“Picture a 25 stone juggernaut brought off the bench for an NFL-style one minute ‘special play’ close to opposition line”
ROLLING substitutes would be a disaster for Rugby Union, and the siren call for their introduction along similar lines to Rugby League has to be resisted unless we want to see the game twisted out of shape permanently.
Those who have advocated rolling substitutions recently have done so because of the danger that, when a team uses all their replacements, and then lose a player to an HIA, they are reduced for the rest of the game to 14 men. This happened earlier this season to Bath when Sam Underhill was forced off after they had emptied their bench, and likewise Gloucester with Tom Savage.
My response is tough luck. If a coach is unable to manage his bench to the extent that he cannot keep a couple of utilities in hand – one back five forward and one back – out of eight replacements, then that is his problem.
Half a team is too many replacements as it is, and the super-sizing of players that it has encouraged has almost certainly contributed to the increase in concussion within our sport. A player who comes on for 20 minutes to make ‘an impact’ can afford to be bigger and heavier than one who has to last the full 80.
Logically, therefore, a rolling substitute who might be on for only five or ten minutes, could afford to carry even more muscle, and be more explosive for shorter periods.
Rolling substitutions have not met with universal approval in Rugby League, with Shaun Edwards – a respected voice in both rugby codes – describing the initial experiment in the 13-man code as ‘chaos’.
The current ruling in League is a four-man bench from which a coach can make ten interchanges in a match, and in yesterday’s energysapping narrow Australian victory over England in the Rugby League World Cup final in Brisbane, it worked well enough.
However, Union and League are very different animals, and, as we saw in that final, there are far fewer long breaks in play than in Union because the set-piece barely exists.
League is a very demanding aerobically, but much less heavy-duty than Union. On average League players are significantly smaller and lighter than their Union counterparts. In addition, with the defensive line a regulation ten metres back from the play-the-ball, the tackle collisions do not have the impact you often get in Union, where players might have a 20 metre runup, or more, before contact.
The eight-man bench introduced into Union has skewed the game already, taking it away from an aerobic contest between players built to play for 80 minutes into one where coaches can pick bigger, heavier, powerpacked part-timers.
This is because the bench covers half of their starting players, often requiring them to play only 50 minutes, and also ensures their replacement has to last for, say, only 30 minutes.
As outlined in previous columns, I believe that the Union bench should be reduced rather than expanded. Rolling substitutes may be a great insurance policy for coaches who are dodgy selectors, and whose players are not fit enough to play a full match – but by encouraging the growth of behemoth rugby it is doing much more harm than good.
Rolling substitutions would only make the replacement issue even more confused – and I do not buy the line being peddled that it would be beneficial from a health and safety aspect one iota. Picture a 25 stone human juggernaut, who can barely run more than five metres, brought off the bench for an American footballstyle one minute ‘special play’ close to the opposition line.
As things stand the last 30 minutes of elite matches often resemble Piccadilly Circus at rush-hour with players coming on and off the pitch. It leaves spectators scratching their heads trying to follow the script.
Many games also lose shape, including – crucially – that element that is so compelling to Rugby Union fans of who gets the upper hand in the oneon-one contests which influence the outcome of the overall battle.