Who should have contested the RWC final, on form shown?

Actually, I haven't read much about it in the UK press.

The original idea may have been from South Africa but, and this is the third time I have written this and it doesn't seem to have got through yet, it is the Australians who are pushing it. That doesn't mean they're going to ride roughshod over everyone else. It doesn't mean they say Yea and everyone else says Nay. It means they are pushing it. That's true. You can't possibly argue against that.

As for the scrums, you are missing the central point. If you repeat the Australia-England quarter final, then under the new rules Australia would be totally undeserving winners, because they have more talented backs than England. Yes, I quite like glorious running rugby too, but I think the game needs a balance. And if Australia in those circumstances could repeatedly crumble under forward pressure and never concede a penalty, then that is a fundamental re-writing of the laws, not a tweak to make the game better. A side so weak up front deserves to be punished. Not with free kicks, but with penalties. It isn't a minor infraction, it's a major flaw in the team. Learn to scrummage, and it's not a debate. But don't come bleating about penalties winning the game when it is the Australian team who keep conceding the penalties. Don't give them away then.


The idea that Australia getting mashed in the scrum is a negative game plan on the part of the opposition is precisely the problem with the attitude coming out of Australia. If you actually got some props worthy of the name, then the parity up front would allow you to unleash your backs and win the game. What is completely unacceptable is your apparent belief that being so comprehensively outmuscled in the scrum doesn't mean you should be penalised for it. You should.

Oh, and a bit of a history lesson for you. A try is so called because crossing the line earnt you a "try at goal". A kick. you got no points for a try. So don't come the "Webb Ellis wanted this" malarkey with me.

So it's basically like wrestling, then?

Shoeshine – thanks once more for considered response.

Allow me again to address a couple of comments;

“it is the Australians who are pushing it”

I indicated in earlier posts things to the effect that the general Australian Rugby community is in favour of further trialing of a revamp to a horrendous ad hoc, hodge podge of laws. Where I’m struggling with your statement is that, to me, it implies Australia is way out in front leading the charge as a means of winning a game against England. Firstly, I don’t believe they are way out in front. I’ve just come back from a couple of weeks in New Zealand and the general opinion in the papers and the pubs there is that the experimental laws deserve further testing. That is, they are very keen to see a full S14 comp played under those conditions. If I’ve read you right then it’s genuinely laughable to believe Australia want the “no penalty at scrum time” law in order to win against England. To the best of my recollection, England had never won a Test in Australia until a couple of years back – that would be over 100 years worth of failure. They don’t need a law change to win a game.

“If you repeat the Australia-England quarter final, then under the new rules Australia would be totally undeserving winners, because they have more talented backs than England.”

Did you really mean to write that? England deserved to win because their forwards are better but Australia don’t deserve to win because their backs are better?

Moving on but still on the RWC qf. Let me share a couple of things with you – (i) I agree that England deserved their win. (ii) England did not win the game via the scrum. England won the game because they smashed us at the breakdown. They were not afraid to take extra bodies out of the defensive line in order to turnover ball Australia took for granted.

“A side so weak up front deserves to be punished. Not with free kicks, but with penalties”

I fully agree that the scrum is a fundamental aspect of the game & that a team with a weak scrum deserves to suffer. I'll come back to how a little further on. We now get to the "how the game should be played" philosophical bit, a discussion that I’ve had with 50 blokes from the UK, so I’m not just taking it up with you on any personal basis. In general I believe that in say, 8 out of 10 games the team that scores the more tries deserves to win. I went to the trouble of saying in my last post that I don’t care if forwards or backs score the tries – I’m not advocating that a team with better backs should win. My problem is the belief that consistently employed 10 man rugby is OK and does no damage to the game. I’ll repeat something from my last post “doesn't seem to have got through yet” That is;

“Scrums/lineouts are and should always be hard-fought contests for possession, but they were only intended as a restart to the wider game that involves 15 players. They should never be the game in themselves.”

and

“for too long and as a direct result of current laws we’ve had teams selected with the objective of winning via the boot. That’s not the game.”

Teams with a crap scrum deserve to be punished with crap possession, loss of possession or a player in the bin for ongoing transgressions.

You spoke about liking a balanced & I presume a fair game – you seem to believe that it’s only the weaker scrum that infringes. Let me promise you that both teams are breaking the laws at virtually every scrum. These "experimental laws' are, in part aimed at the scrum and the breakdown where too often the direction of the ref’s arm is "best guess". The problem is compounded where the wrong team then profits with a penalty goal.

“Oh, and a bit of a history lesson for you. A try is so called because crossing the line earnt you a "try at goal". A kick. you got no points for a try. So don't come the "Webb Ellis wanted this" malarkey with me.”

In your haste to sink a boot in you overlooked the obvious. My Webb-Ellis malarkey was to say; “Webb-Ellis picked the ball up, he didn’t place it on a kicking tee” Where you’ve kicked your own toe is that in order to have a “try at goal” it was first necessary to cross the opponents line with ball in hand. As you've reminded us, placing the ball across some line at the opponents end was the original primary object of the game. Changes need to be made from time to time to exorcise the corruption of that original intent.

Oh, this addressing multiple points is a nightmare, isn't it?

OK...

implies Australia is way out in front leading the charge as a means of winning a game against England

No, let's get one thing clear here, the Australia-England game is an illustration of the problem, not the whole story. But it is a strong suspicion that Australia are leading the charge because it mitigates their undoubted weakness in world rugby. Put it this way, if Australia had the strongest pack in the world, would we be seeing such strong advocacy of these changes? Unlikely.

Did you really mean to write that? England deserved to win because their forwards are better but Australia don’t deserve to win because their backs are better?

Absolutely. This isn't basketball. As the old saying goes, the forwards win the game, the backs determine by how many. If Australia had managed to even hold their own in that game, they would have won. They got comprehensively mashed. Take away the penalty offences and Australia would have won an entirely undeserved victory.

This isn't basketball. Front five play is integral to the game, not just a bit of it. If people don't like that, go and watch rugby league.

I agree that England deserved their win.

Please understand, I'm only taking the example of this recent game because it is fresh in the memory for everyone. It applies to every match where one side's forwards dominate the other.

We now get to the "how the game should be played" philosophical bit

Quite right, because...

but[scrums/lineouts] were only intended as a restart to the wider game

Is absolutely not how it is seen up here. Once again, if you only want a re-start, then rugby league is the game, where that is all they are. Here, they are viewed as contests for the ball.

Teams with a crap scrum deserve to be punished with crap possession, loss of possession or a player in the bin for ongoing transgressions.

You see, this is the nub of it. If a team with a crap scrum gets genuinely punished, howseoever that transpires, then all fine and dandy. But this is where I use that quarter-final as the illustration, where you have one team getting murdered in the front row, collapsing again and again, and getting away with it. That's not a fair contest. If the backs get the ball, the team with the better backs should win. What these changes would do is to take the same opportunity away from the forwards and make it entirely a backs game. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Australia are intent on making it a game in their own image. They are quite free to hold certain views on what they like, what they are absolutely not entitled to do is to try to create the image that their way is the right way and everyone else's is wrong. It is arrogant in the extreme. This concept of how rugby should be completely a running game is something that many others around the world fundamentally disagree with. One style of play is unbelievably boring - the very problem with rugby league.

You spoke about liking a balanced & I presume a fair game – you seem to believe that it’s only the weaker scrum that infringes. Let me promise you that both teams are breaking the laws at virtually every scrum. These "experimental laws' are, in part aimed at the scrum and the breakdown where too often the direction of the ref’s arm is "best guess". The problem is compounded where the wrong team then profits with a penalty goal.

Oh far from it. And the concept of simplification is a valid one. But the team that generally struggles is the one that transgresses more, that's simply the way things are. And I don't agree that the "wrong" team profits in the scrum any more than the "wrong" team profiting from a missed forward pass or knock on. That's just the game.

Yet you think that the penalty goal is so wrong for such offences, but not that a fundamentally weaker pack can now get away with murder, knowing they won't give away points.

it was first necessary to cross the opponents line with ball in hand.

Yes, but you got no points for it.

Incidentally, it's noticeable that none of the ideas about this "running rugby" malarkey have remotely taken into account that this is simply impossible on a muddy day in England or Ireland. That's part of the reason why you have structured rugby as you do here. But then, why should we expect the likes of Rod McQueen to give a stuff about what happens up here?

There are much, much simpler ways of preventing suffocating defence from making the game a kicking-fest. Referees could be much, much quicker to make use of the yellow cards. As I'm sure you agree, sides these days kill the ball far too often. If the referee gave a penalty, AND yellow carded the offender, even if it was in the 2nd minute, then we'd see much quicker recycling of the ball and more tries.

Instead of weakening the punishments, make them much harsher. That would work without fundamentally altering the game.

And that's my fear. A fundamental altering of the game.

> Incidentally, it's noticeable that none of the ideas about this "running rugby" malarkey have remotely taken into account that this is simply impossible on a muddy day in England or Ireland.


Doesn't seem to hurt the Crusaders.

Thanks again Shoeshine - perhaps we'll take it up again over a cold one sometime. Cheers mate.

JGK wrote:> Incidentally, it's noticeable that none of the ideas about this "running rugby" malarkey have remotely taken into account that this is simply impossible on a muddy day in England or Ireland.


Doesn't seem to hurt the Crusaders.

Thanks for making the point - I clicked send on my last post just as the weather in nz was crossing my mind.

There's not much wrong with Rugby Union. The new rule changes do run the risk of devaluing forward play which is the element that most characterises the game IMO. I think that there is an argument for allowing kicks at goal from infringements only within the 22 (or maybe a bit further out). A team can win a game by taking potshots at goal from around the half way line without ever dominating the game.

The only radical change which i think it would be interesting to trial (in both League and Union) would be to scrap the knock-on rule. I can't think of anything that it adds to the game. So what if someone dops the ball and then picks it up, what advantage does this give them?

Of course, any rule change would have to make sure that a knock-on didn't turn into a forward pass.

"would be to scrap the knock-on rule."

I wouldn't scrap it - only enforce it as it was intended. From memory, the rule was introduced to negate a ploy by Dally Messenger who would deliberately bunt the ball forward with his hands, through & past the defensive line. Enforcement, particularly in leeeg has gone to a laughable extreme - it's now a "fumble" rule. Sadly, Rugby is tracking on the same path.

Once upon a time, there was no such thing as scrums. If a player "knocked on" everybody just fought for the ball amongst themselves.

Quite frequently this would get messy and the result would be inconclusive.

So the lawmakers decided to introduce a scrum where teams could fight for the ball in an orderly manner. They had to give the feed to someone and thought it was fairer to give it to the team that hadn't dropped the ball in the first place.

It didn't really matter because you still had a very good chance of winning the scrum without the loose head and feed.

A knock on was never supposed to result in an automatic turnover. But with scrums getting less competitive by the day that's what it has become.

Hass wrote:Once upon a time, there was no such thing as scrums. If a player "knocked on" everybody just fought for the ball amongst themselves.

Quite frequently this would get messy and the result would be inconclusive.

So the lawmakers decided to introduce a scrum where teams could fight for the ball in an orderly manner. They had to give the feed to someone and thought it was fairer to give it to the team that hadn't dropped the ball in the first place.

It didn't really matter because you still had a very good chance of winning the scrum without the loose head and feed.

A knock on was never supposed to result in an automatic turnover. But with scrums getting less competitive by the day that's what it has become.

That's quite different to the stories I've read Hass - journalists huh?