The ELVs: The sound of one hand clapping

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 5 Dec 2007 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

34 Have your say



Richard McCaw of the Canterbury Crusaders - AAP Image/Stefan Postles
The decision by SANZAR and the IRB to play some but not all of the Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) in the 2008 Super 14 tournament deserves some applause, the sound of one hand clapping.

The problem is that two of the most interesting and radical ELVs have been discarded.

These two ELVs are: first, defending teams still have to number up in the lineouts: and second, the maul still cannot legally be pulled down.

Under the ELV experiment the defending side did not have to number up in the lineout and either side could put as many players in the lineout as it wanted to, as long as the players were inside the 15m mark.

Rugby is a clever game. It is possible to imagine all sorts of clever options available to both sides with the proposed lineout variation. On attack, for instance, you have 12 men in the lineout with a halfback, five-eighth and winger who could, if he got the ball, have the width of the field to run across to get to the tryline. Of course, the defending side could take players out of the lineout to cover the exposed field. But then this would leave them exposed to a drive from the 12-man lineout …

The right to pull down the maul legally would have forced teams that have used the slow-plod maul to quicken it up. I liken the modern maul to a tank-like and boring drive forward. If teams could undermine the slow maul by pulling it down teams could still maul but they would have to be exciting and unpredicatable cavalry charges.

At the media conference to explain the changes, Matt Carroll, the deputy CEO of the ARU, pointed out that rugby in Australia faced competition from AFL, football and rugby league, in NZ from rugby league and football and in South Africa intense competition from football. The SANZAR rugby product, therefore, had to provide an exciting spectacle for viewers.

I challenged him that on this premise SANZAR should have allowed the maul to be dragged down, as watching a group of forwards slowly move forward with the ball hidden somewhere among them was hardly a rivetting spectacle. Carroll said that the IRB was still investigating the maul but safety reasons were involved in maintaining the present no-pulling down law.

My response to this is that ‘safety’ is often given as the main reason why the maul should not be allowed to be pulled down. But I have never seen a player injured when mauls have been pulled down illegally. Why should legal pulling down, with the players expecting a collapse, result in injuries when unexpected collapses don’t?

Pat Howard, the impressive high performance expert for the ARU, said that research indicated that there would be four to five minutes extra play with the new variations. As most Super 14 matches have about 37 minutes or so of actual playing time (a higher figure than the rugby league statistic if uncontested play-the-balls are regarded as dead time), there will be over 10 per cent more play.

The extra play, Howard said, came from fewer shots at goal from penalties. There will now be only three full penalty offences: foul play, offside and not ‘coming through the gate’ for rucks and mauls. As offside play is the bane of open rugby, along with killing the ball at the ruck and mauls, these reforms are welcome.

With the short arm penalties, teams will have the option of playing on, or having a scrum. Good scrumming sides therefore might get more scrums with their own feed than usual, and poor scrumming sides (the Wallabies) can avoid having to defend many scrums with their own feed.

Pat Howard also insisted that fit and skilful sides would score plenty of tries in the last quarter of the Super 14 games when their opponents ran out of puff. The side scoring most tries, too, would generally win their matches even against strong goal-kicking sides.

His point that the reduction of the full penalty to only three offences would liberate open rugby is well made. This opening up of the game will be further enhanced by the new variation that the offside rule comes into effect as soon as a tackle is made.

He explained what might happen with this variation in this way. Say a player made a long break and was tackled by the fullback. All the defenders streaming back are offside until they get behind the last feet of the fullback who made the tackle. At present, the players streaming back are in general play and can get into the play without coming all the way back to the tackle.

Explained like this, the simple change does open up big advantages for the attacking side. As Howard said, the attacking side will be in a position to get full advantage of the break.

Rugby authorities aren’t noted for their boldness in making changes, as the recent IRB conference on the One Rugby Season has revealed. But although I am disappointed about the lineout and maul reforms, what changes have been made have the potential at least to re-invigorate the way rugby is played around the world.

Roll on the 2008 Super 14 tournament!

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Listen to Rod Macqueen, one of the key players in the ELVs, discuss the new Laws with The Roar.

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