Weird rules, and how to improve them
Some were to make sports more exciting, some to help the games flow better – others were just plain bizarre. David Long digs up some of the rules and laws that failed to fire and cooks up new options that might just work.
Hands up who can remember rugby’s experimental law variations (ELVs)? What about kick-ins for football? Or the Super Sub in cricket?
Every now and then, sporting bodies like to tinker with their rules, in an attempt to speed things up or increase the entertainment value.
Sometimes they work, such as the tiebreak in tennis or the 40/20 in rugby league, but others, like those mentioned above, were quickly abandoned, once common sense prevailed.
There have also been some curious, long-forgotten rules that have disappeared over the passage of time.
Let’s take a look at some of these curiosities, while coming up with some recommendations on rule changes.
So what better way to recover from the excesses of the holiday period than to peruse the good, the bad and the downright daft rules there have been in sport?
RUGBY
Failed rule: The ELVs
Heading into the 2008 Super Rugby season all anyone could talk about was the ELVs. It was as if a whole new game had been invented and the biggest change in sport was about to happen since William Webb Ellis picked up a football and started running. Which he never actually did.
In all, there were 23 ELVs. Some of the more radical ones were players being allowed to put their hands in a ruck, penalties only being given for offside or foul play with everything else was a free kick, defending teams being allowed to collapse mauls, teams having as many players as they wanted in a lineout and the ball being passed forward. OK, that last one was made up.
Thirteen ELVs were trialled in the 2008 Super Rugby season and subsequently globally.
To be fair, they did speed up the game. There were fewer penalty kicks attempted and the ball was in play more.
However, there was criticism that the maul was no longer an attacking option and there was too much mindless kicking.
In March 2009, the IRB held a big review of the ELVs and most of them were dumped. Those that did survive were the corner flags no longer being touch in goal, lifting in the lineout was allowed and a quick lineout throw was permitted in any direction except forward.
Long forgotten rule: No points for a try
Up until the late 1880 teams didn’t get any points for scoring a try. All they achieved by doing this was to ‘try’ to kick a conversion.
Suggested rule change: Goal line drop outs
Yes, it’s stealing another rule from league. But it kills momentum when a defending team are able to take a dropout from their 22m line after grounding the ball in goal.
CRICKET
Failed rule: The Super Sub
In 2005, the ICC brought in the Super Sub, which was supposed to bring a tactical element to oneday cricket, but all it did was give an advantage to the team that won the toss and matches turned into a 12 v 11 contest.
If a team intended on batting first, they would name an extra batsman and have a bowler as the Super Sub. If the toss was won, the extra batsman would be subbed out for the bowler at the end of the teams’ innings. But if the team lost the toss and were put into bowl, they’d have to replace the batsman straight away, making the Super Sub redundant.
The Super Sub lasted nine months and then was scrapped.
Long forgotten rule: Underarm bowling
Apparently bowlers were once allowed to underarm a delivery, rather than above the head. Not that there’s much written about it, but there was some sort of incident in 1981. It hardly ever gets mentioned any more – especially on the anniversary of it each year. (Warning: sarcasm alert).
Suggested rule change: Runs from an overthrow
If the ball hits a batsman’s bat and then goes to the boundary, those shouldn’t count during a world cup final. This law should be retroactive.
FOOTBALL
Failed rule: Kick-in
Back in 1994, Fifa president Sepp Blatter wanted to introduce kickins, rather than throw-ins, believing that it would make the game quicker. So trials were launched in lower leagues in Belgium, Hungary and England.
It didn’t make the game quicker, or more entertaining and just resulted in teams punting the ball down the field. It was such a disaster that the idea was quickly dropped.
Long forgotten rule: Scoring in extra time counts as two goals
This one takes a bit of explaining, but is a cracker. It goes back to the 1994 Caribbean Cup qualification game between Barbados and Grenada.
Organisers decided no qualifying game could finish a draw and inexplicably that the first goal in extra time would not only decide the winner, but be worth two goals.
The Barbados v Grenada game was the final fixture in the qualifying pool. Barbados required a win by two goals to advance, otherwise Grenada would go through and they looked on track to achieve that, going up 2-0.
However, in the 83rd minute a Grenadian player scored to make it 2-1 to Barbados. With time running out to get a two-goal lead again, the Barbados players realised their best option was to concede an own goal, then try to score a winning goal in extra time, which would be worth two goals. This they did, making the score 2-2.
Grenada then tried to score a goal in either net, as a score of 3-2 or 2-3 would be good enough. So the Barbados players had to defend both goals at the same time. Somehow they managed to do that and the game went to extra time, where Trevor Thorne scored the winning goal for Barbados, giving them a ‘4-2’ win.
The Grenadian manager James Clarkson was less than impressed with the bizarre rule.
‘‘ The person who came up with these rules must be a candidate for a madhouse,’’ he said in the post-match press conference.
‘‘The game should never be played with so many players run
ning around the field confused. Our players did not even know which direction to attack, our goal or their goal.
‘‘In football, you are supposed to score against the opponents to win, not for them.’’
Suggested rule change: Sin bins for yellow cards
Teams don’t get much of a benefit when an opposition player does something bad enough to be shown a yellow card. He or she may get a ban for the following game, which is of little consolation to the team that’s been offended against.
A short stint in the bin works in other codes, so why not football?
LEAGUE
Failed rule: Four tackle rule
Up until 1966 there weren’t any limits on the number of tackles an attacking team could have racked up against them.
So sides were obsessed with keeping possession and waiting for the opposing defence to finally crack.
In 1951 when Workington Town were defending an 8-5 lead against Wigan, their captain Gus Risman ordered his players not to pass or kick the ball for the last 15 minutes of the game, just have the dummy half run.
But the catalyst for change was a game between Huddersfield and Hull KR, where Huddersfield only touched the ball twice during the entire first half.
So the four- tackle rule was brought in, mirroring the four downs in American Football and it transformed the game.
In 1972, this was extended to six tackles, on the belief it this would allow more structured attacking play to develop.
Long forgotten rule: The punt out
The punt out was brought into league in 1897, just two years after the split from rugby union. Lineouts were scrapped and replaced with the option for teams to either have a scrum, or a punt out. The name ‘punt out’ is confusing, as it entailed a player standing on the sidelines and kicking the ball into play in any direction. By 1902 the law was abolished.
Suggested rule change: Complete the final set at the end of each half
League games often fizzle out, with play concluding after the last tackle once the hooter has sounded and if there are only a few seconds to go, the defender holds his opponent in a tackle for a bit longer.
So allowing a team to complete their set of six tackles would add some real drama to the end of matches.
BASKETBALL Failed rule: Height restriction
In 2018 the Korean Basketball league introduced a height restriction on import players. Each team was allowed two imports, one couldn’t be taller than 1.98m and the other no more than 1.85m.
The rule was brought in to help the local players, who were usually shorter, as well as the belief that shorter players make the game more exciting. However, the rule was scrapped after less than a year after widespread protests.
Long forgotten rule: No dribbling
When Doctor James Naismith published the rules for a game he’d invented called ‘basket ball’ on January 15, 1892, there were 13 rules.
Rule three was: ‘‘A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man who catches the ball when running at a good speed if he tries to stop.’’
So the game was more akin to netball back then than modern basketball. But that changed in 1901 when players were allowed to bounce the ball once before passing to another player.
However, they weren’t allowed to shoot after bouncing the ball, until that rule was eventually changed too.
Suggested rule change: A fourpoint shot
The three- point field goal happens so often these days, that it’s become ho-hum in the NBA.
So what about a four- point field goal? A player would need to shoot from within their own half, so the chance of it being successful are slim. However, it would be an incredible way to finish a game.
TENNIS Failed rule: The Van Alen Streamlined Scoring System
Tennis matches can last an awfully long time, particularly when the men play best-of-five set battles at the grand slams.
So an American called Jimmy Van Alen came up with the Van Alen Streamlined Scoring System (VASSS).
Under VASSS tennis matches were played under the same scoring system as table tennis, so sets played to 21 points, with players alternating five serves each and no second serves.
In 1955 and 1956 the US Pro Championships were played under these rules, but the idea faded away.
However, while that didn’t take hold, Van Alen dabbled with other ways to shorten the game, like the removal of deuce. Eventually he did come up with something that stuck and is credited as the person who invented the tiebreak in 1965.
Long forgotten rule: Blue clay courts
Tennis has hardly changed since the Marylebone Cricket Club’s Rules of Lawn Tennis were written in 1875. Just before then the game was sometimes played on hourglass shaped courts, but this novelty soon wore off.
The Madrid Open in 2012 was played on blue clay instead of the usual red and the players hated it.
It was done so that the ball could be seen more easily on TV as it can be trickier to spot on red clay.
Being able to see the ball is clearly important for tennis spectators, which is why the ball changed from being white to yellow and hard courts migrated from green to blue.
‘So why not change the clay to blue?’ thought Madrid Open tournament director Michael Santana. And to be fair to him, it was much easier to watch on TV. But the players were against it from the beginning.
‘‘I don’t see red grass, so I don’t like blue clay,’’ Rafael Nadal said.
During the tournament players said it was too slippery and threatened to boycott the tournament in future years. So the red clay was back in 2013.
Suggested rule change: Scrapping the let rule
It has been trialled at lower level men’s tennis and is at all junior ITF tournaments these days and it works.
There’s nothing more boring in tennis than when someone serves a let and the point has to be restarted. It’s a stroke of luck when a server clips the net with the ball and it lands in and while it’s frustrating for the receiver when this happens under the no let rule, it balances out for all players in the end.