By AFP
May 1st 2009 @ 1:04am
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IRB rugby committee ratifies rule changes
The International Rugby Board’s rugby committee has endorsed proposals for the permanent incorporation of 10 out of 13 of the Experimental Law Variations into the sport’s rule-book.
Wednesday’s announcement by the global governing body came as little surprise following a two-day conference in London last month where some 60 of the sport’s leading figures examined the impact of the trial rules.
ELVs which got the green light from the rugby committee, after winning support at the conference, included the pass-back rule, which prevents teams making ground with a kick directly into touch from the 22 if the ball has first been played back by their own side into that zone and the five-metre offside line at a scrum.
But in what was seen as a victory for the northern hemisphere and English rugby union in particular, the conference advised the ELV allowing a maul to be pulled down not become a permanent feature of the game, a view endorsed by the rugby committee which met in Dublin earlier this week.
The committee also backed the conference’s conclusion that the sanctions experiment, currently being trialled in the southern hemisphere, which sees most offences punished with a free-kick rather than a penalty, be subjected to further review.
That effectively kicked the issue into touch until after the 2011 World Cup.
But the final decision on which, if any, of the ELVs, become part of a revised set of rules will be taken at a full IRB Council meeting on May 13.
However, it is unlikely they will go against the rugby committee’s advice.
Many within English rugby union have long been dubious about the whole ELV project, seeing an Australia-inspired plot to compensate for what were the Wallabies‘ forward weaknesses by trying to turn rugby union into “basketball“.
There was also a view in Europe, where crowds for major club matches and Tests have held up well, that the rules did not need a rewrite simply because the Australian game was competing for fans with Australian Rules football and rugby league.
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© 2008 AFP
