The ELVs should have been introduced in 1895

 
Spiro Zavos Columnist

By , 9 Apr 2008 Spiro Zavos is a Roar Expert

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Force’s Tom Hockings dives over to score a try against the Highlander’s. AAP Image/NZPA/Tim Hales

The ELVs, the experimental law variations being trialled in the 2008 Super 14 tournament, should have been introduced in 1895.

The laws of rugby union were quickly evolving from 1871 to 1895 to turn the game from a predominately scrumming game to a passing game.

But when the Great Split in rugby occurred in England in 1895 with the Northern League (later to become the Rugby League) breaking away from the Rugby Football Union (the England rugby union), this progression in rugby came to a virtual stop.

From 1895 right up to the present day, the rugby union laws have been locked into the scrumming mentality of the diehards of 1895. This has prevented rugby from realising its full potential as a passing game.

This provocative and, in my opinion, essentially accurate argument, was made by Dr Tony Collins, professor of the social history of sport at Leeds Metropolitan University.

His important book, ‘A Social History of English Rugby Union,’ will be published by Routledge in March 2009.

At a Rugby Conference hosted by the Boston University Sydney Internship Program, Dr Collins presented a challenging paper titled ‘Kick Jonny, Kick: or why English rugby is still living in the 1880s.’

The gist of Dr Collins’ argument is that by 1871, a year after the first international between Scotland and England, and eleven years after the first laws of rugby had been drafted, the game was essentially a scrumming game. Teams were 20-a-side, with fifteen forwards and five backs. Forwards and backs played rather like a soccer formation, with three fullbacks.

The game was predominantly played with the foot. Handling was rare. Players could mark the ball on the full (as in Australian Rules) and run on with it. But they couldn’t run with the ball if it was caught on the bounce.

The game essentially was one long scrum. The purpose of the scrum was not to heel the ball out, but to propel the ball forward in a sort of driving wedge, as in gridiron.

Often, the central forward held the ball between his legs and was driven forward by his pack and hacked mercilessly by the opposition pack.

Successful goal kicks were the only way of scoring points, either from the field (the modern drop goal) or after a ‘try’ had been scored. The try allowed a side to kick for goal.

It became clear to the RFU, the governing body of rugby in England and worldwide through its control of the IRB up to 1949, that the 1861 laws were problematical.

Men were much stronger than schoolboys, and because of this, the laws written by schoolboys were distorting the rugby game into a srumming-only game, with scrums lasting up to ten minutes at a time.

The game was static and monotonous at the very time when it was spreading rapidly throughout England. The spread was at its most intense in Yorkshire and Lancashire, where the mining communities with their intense tribalism took to the game.

There were criticisms in these communities about the static nature of the game and the injuries the incessant scrumming was creating.

In 1875, rugby became a 15-a-side game. This change started the revolution to the modern rugby game.

The usual formation now was ten forwards and five backs. The reduced number of forwards meant that the long scrumming mauls became shorter as the ball spilled away from the melee more frequently.

Forwards began to put their heads down in the scrums, looking for the ball. Before this all the scrumming had been done with the heads up.

It was considered ‘not sporting,’ ‘ungentlemanly’, and a mark of cowardice to put your head down and look for the ball, and then try to hook it back to the backs. There was also the issue of whether hooking back or raking back was actually legal. The thought was that the forwards in the pack in front of the ball would be put off-side.

In 1871, hacking was outlawed. Hacking was the blatant kicking of an opponent’s shins to force him to back away from the scrumming contest.

But there was a conceptual and playing problem involved around the question of what should be done when the ball came loose from the rolling scrums and melees.

If you passed it out, you actually needed more backs to make this tactic effective. So the position of Wing Forward was created. This position played on the fringes of the scrums and melees. It was essentially a defensive ploy. The Wing Forward tried to disrupt the ball coming out from the forwards and being passed out to the outside backs by the half-backs.

By the 1880s, passing by the backs became a tactic that opened rugby up. Around the same time, the working classes in the north of England and in Wales became the dominant force in the game, over the Public School old boys living mainly in London.

Rugby had become a game for all the classes.

The working classes, now coming to dominate the game on and off the field, had a different perspective on what the rugby game should be from the PS old boys.

For them rugby was first and foremost a passing game, not a scrumming game.

So, in the north of England and in Wales, developments in playing style and the allocation of positions followed the logic of the passing game ideology.

Yorkshire created the wing forward position. Wales augmented the old three fullbacks alignment with a new four-quarters aligment – fullback, two wings and a centre three-quarter.

With these developments opening up play, there were calls for tries to be awarded points. The chairman of the RFU opposed these calls on the grounds that you only needed to be fast to score tries but kicking goal required all the rugby skills. (I interrupt Dr Collins’ argument as this point to note that this inane notion is eerily reminiscent of similar statements by RFU ‘old farts’ and some UK rugby writers to this day).

In 1892, England finally adopted the four-quarters back system pioneered by Wales, and crushed Wales in a memorable victory.

There was a lot of talk about turning rugby into a 13-a-side game. And in New Zealand, a 14-a-side game, seven forwards and seven backs, was proposed.

But all this talk about modernising rugby and continuing the process of turning it into a passing game rather than a scrumming game was curtailed by the 1895 Split, when the unions of Yorkshire and Lancashire, the strongest and most dynamic (in terms of thinking about the game) unions, were thrown out of the RFU.

The RFU became the dominant force in world rugby and its diehard scrumming ideals prevailed.

Arthur Budd, the chairman of the RFU at this time, said that “heeling out should be banned,” There was similar derogatory comments that the opening up of rugby was turning it into a ‘handball’ game.

Dr Collins then made the argument that the reform process of turning rugby into a passing game rather than a scrumming game, stopped by the RFU, was carried on by the rugby league officials.

In 1906, rugby league became a 13-a-side game. Tries are awarded three points, and goals two points. The lineout was abolished. “And so the evolutionary line in rugby from 20 to 15 players was continued by the rugby league clubs in the north of England.”

The 1905 All Blacks, who created the modern rugby game on their historic tour of the UK and France (losing only to Wales), played rugby that resembled the game played by the north of England rugby league clubs.

I would add a further gloss here. The 1905 All Blacks were assailed by English officials and reporters as being ‘cheats,’ an accusation that is still made over a century later by know-nothing officials and journalists.

In 1932, the RFU/IRB outlawed the Wing Forward, a position played by New Zealand sides with great success. The New Zealand scrum formation of 2-3-2 (the famous diamond scrum) was banned too.

With this decision, the calls from New Zealand for rugby to be a 14-a-side game were finally stopped.

My comment on this synopsis of Dr Collins’ argument is that, firstly, rugby union has down well to retain the lineout and the notion of the continual contest for the ball as being an unifying principle of the game.

The lineout and contested scrums provide contests where different body shapes have their advantages. With these contests, the notion that rugby union is democratic in terms of body shapes is reinforced.

But the main thrust of Dr Collins’ argument that the momentum towards a passing game was stopped in 1895 is well-made.

The arguments that were raised in favour of the drawn-out and monotonous, interminable scrumming in 1895 are still being made in England, predominantly, 113 years later.

In my view this historical survey of the laws of rugby destroys the argument that the ELVs are taking rugby to places that it should never be taken to.

On the contrary, as the history of the game reveals, the ELVs essentially pick up the modernising trend that was stupidly turned back in 1895.

The proponents of the ELVs are in the tradition of shaping the modern rugby game.

The opponents of the ELVs are linked with the old farts of 1895 who believed that scoring tries and passing the ball was not in the real DNA of the rugby game.

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