Simplify rugby laws.

First topic message reminder :

After watching the Wales vs Scotland match it was once again clear what an impossible task the referee has. The match itself was in my view the most entertaining match of the Six Nations thus far inspite of the glaring mistakes the referee made.

In this case I don't think the referee's errors cost Scotland the match as they took care of the loss themselves by going back onto the pitch in the second half half asleep. From the kick off Scotland didn't nominate who will recieve the kick off and immediately they put themsleves under pressure due to a schoolboy error. Only a minute later Laidlaw missed a one on one tackle on Cuthbert who needed no invitation to the try line. Within a few minutes they tackled a player chasing after a kick and recieved a yellow card and conceded a penalty.

This is the brain farts that cost them the game.

The problem is though that when a referee has a performance where he has made questionable decisions and in some areas there was a lack of officiating, there will always be contentious issues after the fact.

Firstly in the first ten minutes he penalised both teams at scrum time for reasons I can only assume he guessed. At the scrum where he penalised the Scottish tight head, it was a scrum that collapsed. Usually a scrum collapses because the loose head prop isn't holding up his end. that is effectively the logic of it. Most of the time when a loose head will go down legally is if the tight head didn't bind correctly. In this case there was nothing wrong with the bind.

During the first half Poite allowed numerous forward passes to be overlooked (wouldn't have minded him during our QF against Australia ) and he also appeared to have decided that he wasn't going to get involved in the rucks.

But then he did, and then again he didn't.

So he was not only inconsistent in the way he refereed the ruck, but also when he did and didn't.

In my opinion the simple fact is that rugby is too fast and the laws too complicated. The offside lines, the entry into the ruck, the scrums, whether a tackler has released the tackled player etc. are all up for interpretation. The first problem with these interpretations is it depends what colour your shirt you wearing, but even unbiased spectators can have differing views on interpretations.

Then you also have the TMO, when does he come in and when is play too far back.

It is time that the performance of the teams on the field get the attention post match and not the referees.

They have a difficult task where the speed of the game, the complications of the laws, the interpretation of these laws and the consistency of the referees are creating more post match debate than the actual performance of the teams. And then of course they influence the results of matches far too often these days.

And in my view that is wrong.

mystiroakey wrote:"The basic reason a breakdown exists is because a player has been tackled
with the ball. The aim of a breakdwon in it's simplest form is to
continue play when one team has won the ball."

what do suggest - basically stop play and use league rules

The difference between Union and League is that we contest for the ball, that should not change.

A simple suggestions - pick the best referees for the competition there is too much need for balance.

At the World Cup every major nations had a referee regardless of quality.
Thats nonsense - if 11 of the best referees are Saffers, Welsh or Rumania then those 11 referees should go to the World Cup.

Same with a league like the Pro 12. Forget balance and just get the best referees in. If that means 8 Welshmen, 2 Irishmen and no Scotsmen or Italians so be it.

Specifically with regard to England there are a number of referees in the Aviva just under the International level better than that clown Pearson.

He and Lawrence should be consigned to the International knackers yard

Geoff, I agree with you about the best referees. The problem is neutrality. You don't want to be at the back end of an England vs Australia match and there was an australian officiating and some dubious decisions were made.

But that is not where the problem ends. Look at Joubert who was touted the best referee in the RWC, when it came to the French vs all BLacks final, he copped falck afterwards.

You still have the laws that are open to too much interpretation and thus even the best referees come under the spotlight.

Simplified rules are most definitely the way to go.

Thats right biltong. Mitey listed Barnes as a an example of a top ref.

For us the worst ref performance in world cup history and from what Ive seen a few more since.

Sometimes you have to actually be on the end of an inept performamce to truly be qualified to list who is good and who is not. But if hes that good how was he able put out such an inept performance if its purely about the refs knowledge of the game.

If BL puts in perfect displays next 3 years are SA supporters as likely to rate him top 3 as quickly as oz supporters are?.

Never. Yet he would deserve the distinction.
Its because mud sticks and if the rules and their interpretations can result in such huge ranges in performance of the same ref you tend to think its not the refs, but the rules, th at are responsible.

Taylorman, you summed that up perfectly. No amount of training, number of officials will ever remove the interpretation and inconsistencies of interpretations unless you simplify the laws.

The problem for me in hands in the ruck being allowed,then it has degenerated into rugby League 4Th tackle law.It is no longer a Ruck,IF it ever was since Cavanaghs Brain child has been outlawed.Just another casualty of change like The Wheel,The Dribbling Rush,and Rush Stopping things of the past gone but for somehere not forgotten.
Calcutta Cup matches at Murrayfield ,mud,and the cries of the crowe"Feet Scotland ,Feet!!!"

Even if you simplify the Laws, if six players on each side are infringing the simplified Laws, we will still abuse the ref for getting it wrong.

We have to accept a culture change from amateur to pro.

I agree that the Laws being simplified would help enormously with this.

Cowshot, the biggest reason for penalties are what you do with your hands, did you release or not, were you first to arrive, when does the referee call no hands. Problem is due to varying degrees of interpretation sometimes a team reads a referee, and other times they don't, which causes inconsistencies and frustrations.

If it is a ”free for all” regarding hands it removes much of the contentious issues and therefor puts both teams on equal footing to compete and not worrying about ”out thihking” or ”out witting” the referee.

Makes for a much simpler law.

The benefit of course is that teams will want to avoid being caught in posession and will use the offload, passing etc into better effect which in turn will make the game more fluid

You are saying we need "do" or "don't" Laws? If so, agreed.

And I completely agree with your "free the log jam" approach.

But when all the players on either side are doing their best to muck up the process, what chance do the officials have? Perhaps a scrum law that says, if the scrum goes up, the attacking side wins the penalty? We would need (imo) some diagnostic symptom by which to identify the incriminating side...

I'm pretty sure that this has been discussed at international level in the last few years. From memory the concern was a free for all would just result in the ball being held in rucks, the game slowing down, and essentially becoming a set piece kicking game. I.e. the ball moves to a ruck, the opposition gets their hands on the ball, and play stops and a scrum is set, often behind the advantage line. Teams compensate by kciking for touch more. Teams kick for position more instead of counteracttacking, etc.

I'm not sure what teh answer is. We have the most complex and continuous game. Not only is the referee asked to make multiple calls every ruck on a number of players, who did what when, at pace, from various distances and angles whilst running himself into the ground.

Super rugby is going to publish real time indicators for refs this year They seem to being doing a lot with refs thisw year). It'll be interesting to see what the result is. From my experience transparent reviews, clear guidelines and realistic expectations often improve things over time.

Canelion, the Tri Nations and Super rugby tournamnets have been used as the experimental home for new laws, they are even trying a new points scoring system in the varsity cup in SA.

If they aren't going to trial simpler laws they will never know.

As for slowing the game down, that is one way it could go. It may just do the opposite where teams will commit more numbers to the ruck to clear quicker, which will open more gaps in defences and speed up the game.

Some teams will be faster and fitter than other teams...always. So the problem is always that those wanting to simplify the game always seem to be on the side of faster and fitter teams. Great. Great for the game and makes us all salivate when watching.

Problem is that doesn't negate the truth that there will always be sides that are faster and fitter than other sides. When two teams like that collide, one is always going to try to slow down the other. When the side or sides exist that like to use slowing-down as a tactic and when those sides have votes on what changes in the game, then there will always be champions of the muddled stuff that happens in games that allows slower sides to slow down the faster sides.

My point is it's not the rules or the refs that are slowing games down...it's tactics used by teams themselves. Fans want freeing up... certain teams love closing down.

Whaddup fly. Yes you are correct in saying teams use tactics. But that is only half right.

Teams are supposed to use tactics to beat each other in each area of the game. Be it useing physicality to run throgh a guy, or speed to run around a guy, or strength to out maul the opponent. Hence at the ruck the stronger or quicker team should win.

I find it sad and at the same time frustrating to see a team lose because a referee is inconsistent due to the complexities of the laws. Teams lose because they were the team struggling to play to the referee.

It is fine whe you do ballet, gymnastics, platform diving or ice skating where the performance is measured by the perception of judges.

But rugby is played on points, not who can outwit the referee. In all honesty if that is what rugby is coming to, then it is no longer a sport, but becoming a "lets see who can outwit the referee"

Not wanting to play the blame game again. but let's just quickly go back to our QF last year. If we weren't outwitted by Lawrence and Pocock and the game was about who can dominate who on the field and not between the ears of Lawrence, that game would have gone totally different.

But rugby is played on points, not who can outwit the referee. In all honesty if that is what rugby is coming to, then it is no longer a sport, but becoming a "lets see who can outwit the referee"

I think it's been going that way for some time. It's also why I find I keep coming back to the idea that the game culture has to change at the pro level. The officials need to be invisible and anonymous facilitators, not central characters and mugs.

HOW you do it though, I don't know.

It's when both sides break the laws that you have problems, who do you give the penalty to?

Say a player is tackled, his support dive over the top whilst the tackler fails to roll away. Who do you penalise? Do you just give a scrum to the side with the ball? Do you just let play continue?

Simplifying the rules still has this problem if both sides cheat at once. This is where many of the contentious calls come from.

If one offense is more dangerous than the other - the penalty goes against that team. If that is not the case the penalty goes to the team with the ball.

screamingaddabs wrote:It's when both sides break the laws that you have problems, who do you give the penalty to?

Say a player is tackled, his support dive over the top whilst the tackler fails to roll away. Who do you penalise? Do you just give a scrum to the side with the ball? Do you just let play continue?

Simplifying the rules still has this problem if both sides cheat at once. This is where many of the contentious calls come from.

True, but there will be less contentious issues. In your example the player committing the first offence is penalised.

Biltong, I think they did. I'm sure the original proposed ELV's allowed hands in the ruck.

biltongbek wrote:Canelion, the Tri Nations and Super rugby tournamnets have been used as the experimental home for new laws, they are even trying a new points scoring system in the varsity cup in SA.

If they aren't going to trial simpler laws they will never know.

blackcanelion wrote:Biltong, I think they did. I'm sure the original proposed ELV's allowed hands in the ruck.

biltongbek wrote:Canelion, the Tri Nations and Super rugby tournamnets have been used as the experimental home for new laws, they are even trying a new points scoring system in the varsity cup in SA.

If they aren't going to trial simpler laws they will never know.

the only thing i can remember as far as hands in the ruck was the tackler was allowed to play the ball from any position, I think he didn't have to release, but then the law changed as Brussow was pulverising the All Blacks and Aussies.

I'm worried about the "on report" thing being trialled this year. I'd personally hate to see that come into the professional international game. In my view we already have a citing commissioner, a review panel, a TMO and three on field referees and assistants.

All I can see hapenening is referees shirking the big decisions to red card/yellow card deserving players; or citings not hapening because an incident wasn't put on report. Would Warburton have been sent off if he could have been put on report? what about Davies?

We already see referees deferring unnecessarily to TMO's breaking the game up and I can't imagine this would be any different.

In my view this will just lead to more strategic professional fouls at strategic times of tournaments.

Yeah this will only add more contentious issues to an already increasing mockery of referees.