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The Crowd Says (37) | Page 2 of Comments

• April 30th 2008 @ 10:46am
  Andrew B said | April 30th 2008 @ 10:46am | Report comment

  G’day Bob,

  I must agree with you regarding rucking – NH games certainly allow a good deal more than what is accepted down here. I watch a fair bit of GP, ML and HC, and am constantly surprised with what players get away with. Pleasantly surprised.

  I think the IRB will have to accept that one of the main charters behind developing the ELV’s has failed – and that is to make the game easier to ref and to take him out of the game. The free kick sanction, and allowing hands in the ruck seem to have highlighted further the differences in interpretation from one referee to another. I like these particular ELV’s as a concept, but so far the implementation hasn’t impressed me.

  Reply

• April 30th 2008 @ 6:13pm
  Dublin Dave said | April 30th 2008 @ 6:13pm | Report comment

  Sound post Mark, but first off I would say that many in the NH, including myself, have said on many occasions that some of the ELVs are worth looking at.

  In particular I like the idea of a simplified offside law so that the off side line is at the tackle, regardless of whether a ruck or maul has been formed. AT the moment, if a player is tackled and the ball knocked backwards, a retreating defender can pick it up and hare off downfield with it, whereas if a ruck or maul was deemed to have been formed, he would be offside. Confusing.

  I am not religious about the “no direct kicking to touch from a pass back into the 22″ law. I think that is a mountain out of a molehill. The fashion at the moment, from what I can see, is that people seldom kick directly to touch anymore anyway unless they are in dire defensive straits. They more usually kick deep to space and hope to force an error. We get a lot of aerial ping pong with the ball being booted backwards and forwards from full back to full back. This law change would be an irrelevance. And I think it’s a bad idea to changer the laws based on fashion anyway. Fashions change, and usually get repeated after a few years anyway.

  But the devaluation of lineout ruck and maul, and indirectly the scrum. for the supposed sake of encouraging “more ball in hand” is to be resisted to the death. This amounts to a complete transformation of the game. We (those of like mind on both sides of the equator) are not going to let you (disgruntled types – for whatever reason) who so hate our game that they want to turn it into something else get away with that.

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• April 30th 2008 @ 6:32pm
  mcxd said | April 30th 2008 @ 6:32pm | Report comment

  Bob, I too live in the NH (Scotland to be more specific) and are at the mercy of Sky to see which S14 games I watch. Im not that naive to generalise that all NH rugby fans havent seen a game played under ELVs, i was referring to some of the nonsense put out by some people in the press or powers at be within the different six nation unions. It just seems some of the reasons against theyre offering makes no sense at all, i can only conclude that theyve made their decision based on what theyve read or heard about rather than on fact. For example, the excuse that the ELVs devalue or take away the scrums and some SH nations (read Australia) are weak in that area therefore want to erradicate them ?? Im sure some S14 games this year ive seen just as many if not more scrums in a game. Sharks v Brumbies a few weeks ago is an example. Brumbies had a weak scrum and anytime they could the Sharks took a scrum instead of a quick tap to take advantage of that.

  I would really like to see some statistics (anyone know where that can be found?) regarding amount of scrums, ball in play etc. under ELV’s ?

  Reply

• April 30th 2008 @ 7:17pm
  Ian Noble said | April 30th 2008 @ 7:17pm | Report comment

  I have just read an article by Phil Wilkins castigating Paul Ackford article on ELV’s regrettably he repeated the same mantra as other SH columnists.

  “Declining crowd attendances, loss of revenue and criticism of the game for the perception it was boring were the overwhelming forces behind the IRB’s decision to install a 10-man panel ”

  It is only in OZ and NZ that rugby has declining crowds and loss of revenue, elsewhere the game is flourishing and growing not only in terms of TV audiences but also crowds at games, but more importantly increasinging numbers of both male and female playing the game.

  Whether rugby is boring is a matter of opinion and the debate on the Roar has been very interesting with postings from both the NH and SH on the potential impact of the ELV’s. As Ackford said in his article some of the ELV’s will be positive others he has doubts about, but what many are concerned about is outside OZ and NZ is that rugby is a succesful product at the elite/professional level and too much tinkering may be detrimental to the continuing growth. Grassroots level is another matter and they must bought into the discussion as the underlying strength of the game is at that level, hence the RFU survey on http://www.rfu.com

  Perhaps Phil should read some of the postings on the Roar, as he might produce an article that is better researched.

  Reply

• April 30th 2008 @ 7:46pm
  Dublin Dave said | April 30th 2008 @ 7:46pm | Report comment

  Ian

  I saw that Wilkins article and wish that somebody would tell him, as I have been told here , to “change the record”.

  You touch on a vital point: the health and popularity of the sub professional sector. (I was going to say sub prime but that would be giving hostages to fortune)

  It is my belief, unsubstantiated by any statistical evidence at the moment but I will see what I can dig up when I get some time, that any successful professional sport is overwhelmingly amateur.

  I bet that the more successful a professional sport is, the greater the ratio of amateur regular players to professionals is. If the game is only for a small professional elite, it will crawl into a niche activity, supported only by highly specialised sponsors and largely ignored. I am thinking of “sports” such as fencing, power boat racing, paragliding etc.

  Take soccer, perhaps the world’s most widespread and popular game. The top players in the English premiership, currently the strongest and richest league in the world, earn something like a quarter of a million Ozzie dollars a WEEK!

  This is not an exaggeration. The premiership wants to put a cap of £100k a week on salaries and the curent rate of exchange is 2.11 ozzie dollars to the pound. Yet how many million amateur players are registered around the world to play soccer regularly? And this does not include fat old gits like me who occasionally tog out for a game of five a side after work.

  I am sure a much greater proportion of rugby’s regular players are professional or semi professional That’s all well and good but the lilfeblood of any game is those that participate in playing it. There is no greater fun in life than the delights of “Coarse” rugby where a gang of untalented slobs bet the crap out of each other for an hour or so just to work up a thirst which can be slaked in each other’s company.

  Of course this is alien to the conscientious professional with his vitamin supplements and his bleep tests to which he is extremely welcome. But if he is to go on having a living, or if there are to be greater numbers of professional players then we have to have even greater numbers of amateurs continuing to play the game.

  That’s my theory.

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• May 1st 2008 @ 1:44am
  Ian Noble said | May 1st 2008 @ 1:44am | Report comment

  Dublin Dave

  Having contributed to many blogs on ELV’s and NH v SH, one of the overriding features of the discussion has been the emphasis of our SH colleagues on the elite/professional game as the main driving force of the union game. Whilst the elite/professional game is the showpiece in the NH overwhelmingly the strength and the investment in support by all the NH unions is that the grassroots underpins the union game.

  How you may ask, quite simply if I was to take a snap shot of say the Quins crowd, I would say the majority of the male part of the crowd are over 35+ and I bet most of them have played rugby not for Quins but for local clubs, I know a couple of guys travel 100 miles to Quins games and in their younger days played rugby for their local club in Wiltshire. Having retired from playing they want to enjoy watching top quality rugby and Quins and other GP clubs provide that outlet. It doesn’t mean they ignore their own local club as they will support their own clubs on weekend days Quins are not playing, but these guys have the spending power to buy the beers, season tickets, shirts etc.

  Also these guys are not your casual observer they understand the game, love it nuances and want to see free flowing rugby with a good forward battle. They want a high standard of play and increasingly the NH game provides them with that opportunity. Judging from the postings on the Roar ARU seems to have neglected the grassroots in its drive to focus on the elite game. It is not surprising that when the elite game (super 14) loses it appeal there is no underlying strength in its grassroots structure to underpin its spectator base, whether through TV or watching live.

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• May 1st 2008 @ 1:47pm
  Mart said | May 1st 2008 @ 1:47pm | Report comment

  Another view from the north (Independent newspaper) today………..

  The meaning of rugby: Battle for the soul of the oval ball game

  Rugby union in the northern hemisphere is thriving, but if proposed rule changes are approved today they could destroy the sport as we know it. Rucks will all but disappear, and so will props. Chris Hewett fears the worst

  A proposed new rule allowing teams to collapse mauls could mean the end of the maul as a feature of rugby.

  At a riverside conference centre in south-west London less than two years ago, England’s leading referees agreed to address the spreading cancer of scrummaging sharp practice in Premiership rugby by implementing a measure under which teams responsible for causing uncontested set-pieces would forfeit a player. The International Rugby Board decided, in its eternal wisdom, to block this wholly positive initiative. “You can’t have one law here and a different law somewhere else,” a board spokesman spluttered at the time. “It’s a recipe for chaos.”

  Today, three months or so into a southern hemisphere season in which the elite Super 14 teams are, at the IRB’s behest, operating under a set of laws entirely different to those currently in force in the British Isles and France, the governing body’s council meets in Dublin to decide whether to impose the new dog’s dinner arrangement on the European game – not just at the professional end, but right the way down to the Old Rubberduckians Sunday Pub XV. If 20 of the 26 voting members back the changes, thousands upon thousands of people will quickly find themselves involved in a sport they no longer recognise, still less understand.

  While the IRB insists the changes will be introduced on a trial basis, no one in the English game seriously believes the new laws – even the most radical of them – will be voted out once they have been voted in. This initiative is about reshaping the union game ahead of the next World Cup in New Zealand, hence the urgency. Its supporters – and there are many of them in the first-class carriage of the IRB gravy train – want everyone playing to the same rules for at least two years leading into the 2011 tournament.

  Those who have watched this season’s Super 14 and found it miserable fare compared to the high-intensity rugby common to the Guinness Premiership – not to mention the sheer grandeur of last weekend’s Heineken Cup semi-finals – will be alarmed to know that the Not-So Beautiful South is still in thin-end-of-the-wedge territory. Their game may already look like a messy amalgam of rugby league, seven-a-side and touch rugby, but the really damaging experimental laws affecting the tackle area, the line-out and the maul have yet to be trialled in the competition. The first you see of these could be on a pitch down the road, as early as this coming August.

  Should the full raft of new measures be sanctioned, the effect could be catastrophic. To a man, Premiership coaches fear the maul will disappear, the scrum will wither on the vine, the line-out will cease to be a contest in any meaningful sense. More fundamentally, union’s cherished position among the world’s major sports as a pursuit for all shapes and sizes will be threatened. Teams will be full of identikit individuals playing identikit rugby devoid of the complexity and specialisation, the light and shade, that underpins the game’s claim to greatness.

  England, one of eight nations with two council votes, are leading the fight against the more mind-boggling notions dreamed up by the IRB’s “laws project group”, although it took a fractious meeting with leading directors of rugby for the penny to drop. Richard Hill, the brilliant head coach at Bristol, attended that meeting, and made his views known. He made them known again this week.

  “Nowhere on my travels have I met anyone who agrees with the more extreme law alterations currently being proposed, or shown the slightest appetite for change on this scale,” he said. “One or two of the more minor adaptations make sense – if we have to refer to a touch judge as an assistant referee, I’m sure we can live with it – but when we get to things that affect the fundamentals of the game, I’m very sceptical indeed.

  “I have two big problems, the first of which concerns the process. For one thing, these changes are being fast-tracked in a way I find deeply questionable; for another, I find the idea of introducing so many major law changes en bloc completely ridiculous. It’s difficult enough to get a single change working effectively: for instance, the latest rule covering engagement at the scrum should have been easy enough to implement, but it took a long time to get right and caused a serious fuss. I’d have a hell of a job getting to grips with so many new laws, and I do this for a living. How can anyone expect people in the community game to get their heads round it?

  “My other problem is the overall effect this threatens to have on the game. Rugby up here in the north is moving in the right direction: it’s intense, exciting and increasingly popular with the public. If the scrum and line-out are to be depowered and devalued, we will cease to have a game for all shapes and sizes. Under the proposed laws, I would have to think very carefully about recruitment and selection. Certain people – specialist scrummagers who might not be the most mobile around the field, or people over the age of, say, 32 – probably wouldn’t be suited to the new sport. To my mind, it was never the point of rugby to produce identikit players.”

  How did it come to this? The Australians, who have not produced a top-class international prop forward in almost a decade and have been smashed into submission by more powerful and cohesive packs of English forwards at successive World Cups, are the most determined supporters of the law changes. Senior Wallaby officials have been heard to say that the only way union can compete with rugby league in their country is to become more like … rugby league. “I don’t think anyone’s surprised at the Australian agenda,” Hill commented, wryly. “We all know where they’re coming from.”

  But there are deeper, darker forces at work here. There is a view in the higher reaches of the IRB, frequently articulated by the likes of the chief executive, Mike Miller, that television is king and that it must have what it wants. And what does modern television crave? Simplicity rather than complexity, dumbed-down entertainment rather than demanding subject matter, mass audiences of occasional enthusiasts rather than medium-sized pockets of dedicated purists.

  Last Saturday, in the very same room in which England’s referees attempted to do their bit for the common good in the summer of 2006, an IRB official said of last year’s wonderfully competitive World Cup: “Yes, it was good commercially, and we saw some of the smaller nations doing better than ever before. But how many of the matches were actually memorable?” Roughly translated, he meant this: “There weren’t enough tries in the knock-out stage, and people like tries.”

  It is the kind of thinking that true aficionados fear, in the same way cricket lovers fear the first-class form of the game being slaughtered before the false god of Twenty20. In this respect, rugby union and cricket share the same soul and are subject to the same internal conflicts. One of the battlefields is Dublin, and the battle takes place today.

  Impossible to predict the outcome as rugby’s council of elders gathers

  The International Rugby Board Council – the union game’s supreme decision-making body – is, numerically speaking, less than half as unwieldy as the Rugby Football Union’s “old fart” version famously lampooned by Will Carling, but a membership of 26, plus a non-voting chairman and vice-chairman, is more than ample to ensure a long, complex, politically-loaded debate in Dublin today.

  Eight countries – the so-called “foundation” unions – have two votes apiece: England, France, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, plus the major southern hemisphere powers of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. In addition, four nations – Argentina, Canada, Italy and Japan – have a single vote to themselves. The other six votes are shared among the regional associations representing Africa, Asia, Europe, NAWIRA (North America and the West Indies), Oceania (the Pacific Islands powers of Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, plus smaller fry such as the Cook Islands) and South America.

  Bernard Lapasset of France is the new chairman, with the former England captain Bill Beaumont in his first year as vice-chairman. Some of the council members are well known to all rugby followers: Graham Mourie, the great All Black flanker of the late 1970s and early ’80s, is one of the New Zealand delegates; Hugo Porta, still regarded by many as the finest ever outside-half, is Argentina’s man on the council; Gerald Davies, a revered member of the 1971 British and Irish Lions, speaks for Wales together with the former international flanker David Pickering.

  Under council rules governing the imposition of law changes, even those of the experimental variety, 75 per cent of the delegates must be in favour. With England and Wales already declaring their opposition to the new laws package and Ireland giving every indication they will vote against, only one more vote would be required to kill the bill, so to speak. Twickenham would expect this to come from Canada, who benefit from regular international-class exposure against England’s second-string Saxons team in the annual Churchill Cup tournament. (Canada were the only nation to back the RFU’s bid to stage the 2007 World Cup).

  However, there is no guarantee that delegates will vote the way others expect – or even in the way their national unions mandate them to vote. The Irish contingent had a late change of mind during the discussion over who should host the 2011 World Cup, and as a consequence, New Zealand won the day despite being behind Japan and South Africa in the betting.

  In addition, the IRB can exert enormous financial pressure on the smaller unions, some of whom are entirely dependent on the governing body for their fixture lists and development programmes. There is also a complex network of friendships and alliances, both between individual council members and between unions: the Italians, for instance, generally follow the French lead when voting on major issues. All this makes second-guessing an IRB meeting something of a mug’s game.

  Chris Hewett

  Killing the ball? Rugby’s proposed rule changes and what they might mean for the game

  * Players may handle the ball in the ruck provided they are on their feet. If the ball becomes unplayable, a free kick is awarded against the team taking the ball into the breakdown. An offside line will be created immediately a tackle occurs, so defenders will not be permitted to make the next tackle “running back”.

  Potential effect: Negative. A fundamental change leading to a ball-killer’s paradise.

  * Defenders will be permitted to collapse an opposition maul. The “truck and trailer” technique, where the ball-carrier is not properly bound to the “guards” in front of him, will be legalised. An unplayable ball means a free kick to the opposition.

  Potential effect: Negative. The death of the maul.

  * The only offences deemed worthy of a full penalty will be offside – rigidly applied by referees – and foul play. Everything else? A free kick.

  Potential effect: Negative. Union mutates into league as tight-forward play withers.

  * The line-out must have a minimum of two players but no maximum – all 15 can participate if they so wish. Neither team determines the numbers.

  Potential effect: Negative. The end of the line-out as a specialist activity.

  * At a scrum, players of both sides must stand five metres behind the hindmost foot.

  Potential effect: Positive. More space for back-line attacks off first-phase ball.

  * If a defending player passes the ball back into the 22-metre zone for a colleague to kick to touch, the line-out will take place where the kick was made, rather than where the ball crossed the touch-line.

  Potential effect: Positive. Defending players will be denied a safety net.

  * Corner flags will no longer be considered out of

  play unless the ball is grounded against them.

  Potential effect: Neutral. It is neither here nor there.

  * Touch judges to be renamed as assistant referees.

  Potential effect: None. Who cares?

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• May 1st 2008 @ 2:47pm
  Andrew B said | May 1st 2008 @ 2:47pm | Report comment

  North versus South on the ELVs: is there a solution?

  I don’t know if it is a complete solution, but a good start would be for rugby loving people from the Northern hemisphere to stop listening to their own press, and we Southerners need to stop listening to our administrators. I’m sick of it all.

  From the NH all we get is a pile of steaming excrement poorly disguised as sports journalism, solely designed to insight and sell copy at the expense of the truth or fact. The sad thing is, in some of these writings, like in the article Mart has kindly posted, there is actually some good information buried deep in there if you have the stomach to dig through it.

  And from the SH we have drama queens in positions of power telling us our game is dangerously and horribly ill, and nothing, absolutely nothing will save us except for the mythical ELV gods and television gurus. Basically, it’s an opinion I have not seen shared by any club people, referee’s, or other people I know working in rugby.

  I have been told that here in Queensland, junior participation numbers are up this year. A few weeks ago I read that in Australia the TV ratings for the S14 were up, and now there are plans drawn up to bring Agrentina into the Tri-Nations. That’s grassroots, provincial and international level rugby, all with a positive signal. It doesn’t sound to sick to me.

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• May 1st 2008 @ 8:29pm
  Chris Ash, syd - Aust said | May 1st 2008 @ 8:29pm | Report comment

  catastrophic HAHAHAHAHA

  it sounds like the world is coming to an end for that NH reporter….

  so the result will come out 2mrw some time maybe ?

  Reply

• May 1st 2008 @ 11:28pm
  Sledgeandhammer said | May 1st 2008 @ 11:28pm | Report comment

  Aaaah please! Reading the anti ELV brigade is akin to reading Kafka or Orwell – they seem to believe that if you repeat the same lie enough times people will eventually believe you. Or if you misrepresent your opponents view, you will discredit them! Paul Ackford’s article was pure emotive, unsubstantiated garbage. The article posted above is even worse – these guys should really give up journalism and get involved in the Chinese Olympics committee – I believe they value propagandists over there.

  So for the last friggin time, let me state the bloody obvious for our bloody minded, stick in the mud, pig headed planks up North:
  1) The ELVs are not being driven by Australia, they are being driven by the IRB – by the way, most Australian fans care more about the quality of the contest, not the winner – believe it or not we do not share your English, St George cross, national action style nationalism and therefore would not attempt to change the whole fabric of the game so that we could be more competitive – especially given the fact that all things sporting are cyclical and in a few years time we may have a dominant scrum anyway!
  3) The ELVs do not devalue the scrum in any way shape or form.
  4) The ELVs are being trialled (repeat TRIAL). No one is asking they be implemented at this point.
  5) The ELVs are not turning rugby into league – the fabric of the game is not under threat!

  As I said in my previous ELVs blog, rugby is under threat at the moment, but not from the ELVs. The ELVs are in fact an opportunity to evolve the sport. Rugby’s biggest threat comes from the recalcitrant, conservative, stick to bayonets old boys brigade, who represent the established home nations of England, Wales and Ireland, not France, Italy, not the IRB, and certainly not FIRA. Let’s hope they fall on their swords, so to speak.

  Personally I would like to see all the ELVs trialled, and from what I have seen believe the hands in the ruck law works pretty well. After all rugby is supposed to be a contest for possession. Under the current laws it is not, as the defending team rarely has the opportunity to pilfer the ball at the breakdown. Watching the club rugby in Sydney on the weekend it was great seeing the team which arrived at the breakdown first being able to reach in and rip the ball back to their side.

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