We need laws for the ages, not for a season
AFEW weeks back, the first round of the European Champions Cup to be precise, Irish ref Frank Murphy made me smile when he was taking charge of Exeter’s game against Castres down in Stade Pierre Fabre. The Exeter pack were marching their French opponents back at scrum time and were predictably screaming and hollering demanding the penalty they have become accustomed to getting in such situations.
Murphy, the old silver fox, was having none of it. “This isn’t the Premiership”, was his quip if I overheard the ref mic correctly and I cheered inwardly. Initially anyway.
Just because you are pushing opponents back three or four yards you don’t automatically get a penalty. When exactly did that become a thing? Castres weren’t wheeling, they hadn’t splintered in the front row or gone to ground, they were simply being outmuscled. And that’s not illegal. Coming second is not a penalty offence.
But then I started ruminating. How ridiculous nearing the third decade of professional rugby, that rugby’s laws are refereed differently from league to league, hemisphere to hemisphere, official to official.
Murphy, below, plies his trade in the URC which manifestly takes a different view on scrums and much else besides. And, of course, French refs taking charge of Top 14 games have their own foibles and interpretations to those in the Premiership and the URC – they tend to crack down on front row nonsense instantly and distribute yellow cards like confetti but are very laissez-faire, to put it politely, at the breakdown. Nor does there seem universal agreement as to what constitutes a dangerous tackle or contact to the head.
Then, every so often, the top refs from these three strands come together to officiate at matches involving all three rugby cultures in the European tournaments and we get a sometimes confusing amalgam of interpretations and decisions.
And now the Six Nations is underway and, as well as refs from the three great European leagues, seven of the 15 games will be whistled by refs from Australia, South Africa and New Zealand who again have their own little takes and interpretations on the laws. And just this week all 15 and their assistants gathered from around the planet for a three-day minicamp to try and harmonise while they were also issued instructions about getting hot on pinging overlong pre lineout huddles, demanding fewer TMO interventions and tightening up on the waterboys.
I agree with all three initiatives by the way but it gets bewildering trying to follow all the little tickles, polishing rugby’s laws has become like painting the Forth Bridge. One year I remember the hot topic was pinging those teams “blocking off ” on their lineout throw, another time it was exactly what the jackal has to do to earn a penalty while last year we had something about the ball emerging from the breakdown and allowing a yard of space or some such before playing it. I didn’t understand it then and don’t now but it doesn’t matter because it died a death and isn’t pinged any more. Or just occasionally. Which really confuses the players.
All this revising, redrafting and reinterpreting of laws on the hoof is rugby’s biggest Achilles’ heel, there is no worldwide understanding of what the bloody hell is going on. The sheer Rubik’s Cube complexity of rugby’s 21 laws is mind-boggling. The best part of 100 pages of dense legal verbiage if you download the World Rugby version which includes age group adaptations – and how their implication differs from ref to ref, week to week. There is no way you can grow properly and become a truly global sport while that is happening. And that’s before you throw in the complications of language difficulties.
And bear in mind that this is NOT the kind of rugby played by 99.9 per cent of the rugby playing population. They play to other interpretations of the laws.
We are seeing the dangers of this now over-the-tackle issue with the assumption that the problems confronting the professional game are comparable with those in the amateur game. They aren’t.
High shots are unquestionably still an issue in the elite game, although I believe the incidence is coming down markedly and what we actually need is a tad more patience. Don’t be deceived by the deluge of red cards, that’s because shots to the head are being more vigorously reffed. It reminds me of when cycling got heavy with the drug cheats and hounded them from dawn to dusk. There was a flurry of high-profile cases but actually the incidents of doping were declining rapidly, it was just that more wrongdoers were getting caught.
In the community game, the grassroots sport, I’m not sure high hits have ever been a massive problem, it’s certainly not systemic although there have always been a few ill-disciplined cowboys. That must always be jumped on and miscreants banned for long periods or chucked out of the game.
What I see is a sport that has evolved over 150 years or so and is founded on the premise that everybody has to go to work the following day. The overwhelming majority of tackling takes place between the hips and armpit, with the ribcage or sternum the sweet spot. It can bloody well hurt on occasions, but you wear your bruises with pride and there are also lots of softer bits. Generally speaking, this is the safety zone.
Importantly it is infinitely safer than the waist and below where there are flying knees and ankles to wreak havoc with the tackler who must achieve a high level of fitness, flexibility and technique to pull off such tackles that is alien to many who play rugby just for fun.
That was the biggest madness of the recent RFU nonsense. Even professionals struggle with such textbook low tackling. Its best proponent is probably Sam Underhill and, alas, Sam seems to spend a lot of time injured. Danny Hearn was the great low sideways-on tackler of his generation for England in the 1960s and, alas, it was just such a tackle that resulted in his broken neck and a lifetime bravely fighting the disabling effects of that injury.
Yes in an ideal world, when used at the correct time, it is unquestionably the most effective way to bring down a charging player – no bugger can run without his legs goes the coaching mantra – but it is also one of the quickest ways known to break a cheekbone or jaw, split a lip, lose a few teeth, damage a shoulder or get a head knock and a bad concussion. To even hint that such a high degree of difficulty tackling going forward should be compulsory was and is clearly for the fairies. It’s not what the grassroots game want and ultimately it’s their game.
The contrast with football remains stark. Football’s laws appear ageless and timeless. Our mythical martian invader arriving on planet earth would pick up football in two minutes. Rugby? Two years minimum, if ever.
Now that those hacking tackles from behind of the 70s and 80s have been outlawed and VAR, after a few hiccoughs, is highlighting how many past goals were probably way offside, one of the few points of controversy or interpretation seems to be what constitutes a penalty.
It was almost a relief to hear a bit of additional friction and argument break out during the recent World Cup over what constituted a ball going out of play. Apparently a ball can clearly be a yard out of play these days but if its shadow or overhang or some such theoretically kisses the outer extremity of the thick white law it can be called in. Errant nonsense in my book and I suspect the lawmakers only brought it in to kick up a little controversy.
The pertinent point though is that you can watch a football game – any game, at any level – in the sure knowledge that apart from whether VAR is in operation, it will be reffed in pretty much the same way as any other football game in the world on that given day.
Rugby will never achieve that but it badly needs to rationalise and simplify its law book. My advice would be firstly to keep the lawyers out of it, they get paid by the word and have contributed to much of the mess we are currently dealing with. Trust those who have played, coached and reffed the game and draft in a few people who write clear concise English. Give us a set of laws for the ages, not just for this month or this season.