Incidentally I am also in favour of the defensive line retreating 5m behind the tackle (but not the scrumhalf), with the players immediately left & right to the breakdown allowed to breach this for the purposes of join the breakdown.

At least the point that it was England, Wales & Ireland who didn’t trial the free-kick sanctions at all seems to have got through. Not the entire Northern Hemisphere.

the above article sounds like a eulogy to the ELVs from a British rugby writer to me. Don’t see any “insightful and hard hitting analysis of the British (and clearly from this blog Irish) opposition to the ELVs” in it at all. It’s a comment on the game at the time.

You didn’t honestly think the ELVs were an “Australian plot” did you?? I thought that had been debunked ages ago…

Just out of interest, as someone who watched a LOT of the ARC (in fact I bought a digital receiver especially for it!) I seem to recall that the hands in the ruck rule initially meant that the ball was slowed down at the ruck a lot (not as effectively as NZ managed on Saturday granted), but that as the competition progressed the pendulum swung the other way and attacking teams were getting quick ball out to the back OR there was a very rapid turnover and counter attack. Hence why the comp was so GOOD!

BTW- I wonder if the ABC might replay the ARC some time… I’m sure it would garner a captivated audience!

Interestingly prior to this Sanzar conducted a survey with 264 players from South Africa, NZ and Australia. Of the 264 players surveyed, 85% believe the free kick variation has had an overall positive impact on the game. This is of note given the refusal of the English, Welsh and Irish Union’s to trial the free kick option, and the fact it was not included in the world wide trials which started in August 2008.

Furthermore, 83% of Players surveyed believed the ELVs had either a very or somewhat positive impact of the game of rugby overall.

An insightful and hard hitting analysis of the British (and clearly from this blog Irish) opposition to the ELVs was given by Simon Roberts, of the Western Mail in Wales. It makes fascinating reading, particularly as it is not written by a lowly southern hemisphere colonial. Enjoy:

Simon Roberts Western Mail
A conference held in Auckland, after the 2003 World Cup, decreed rugby’s laws had to be looked at, tidied up and simplified to make the game more attractive to a wider audience.

The experimental law variations, as they are known, have been a long time in the making but they have finally arrived and will be seen, in all their glory, across Europe this season.
But why the change? Isn’t rugby union fine as it is and why do we need all this tinkering?
To put it simply, the changes are designed to clear up some grey areas, dilute the influence of referees, and, more importantly, widen the appeal of the game.

Rugby union has been professional for only 13 years but, like all professional sports, it needs cold, hard cash to survive and flourish.

So how do you attract more revenue? You have to have a product that attracts a wider audience and is attractive to sponsors and broadcasters.

Rugby is now in the entertainment business and has to fight for every pound, euro, dollar and rand.
Rugby’s powerbrokers, especially those in the southern hemisphere, are aware of this than more anybody else.
That is why we have these current law changes have been introduced, but it is not the only reason.

The worrying trend of the last few Rugby World Cups has certainly had a bearing.
The last three World Cups, to your average sports fan, may have been full of drama and great sporting theatre, but great entertainment?
Hardly.

In 1999, the Wallabies won thanks to a rock solid defence.
England did the same in 2003 and South Africa did the same in 2007.

In fact, the trend for success is now so obvious and conservative that the four countries – England, South Africa, France and Argentina – could have swapped jerseys and you wouldn’t have noticed the difference.

All four delivered a perfect rugby prototype – giant pack, big defence and a big kicker – and were startlingly similar in approach and style.

The ELVs are designed to open the game up and deliver greater entertainment.

That is why England’s beloved rolling maul, or the tortoise as it’s called in France, can now be pulled down.
The sight of eight men in white, with their backsides in the air, trundling up field may be one for the rugby purist but it ain’t going to sell the game in the United States.

Quite a few Welsh forwards, who have been on the end of the English steamroller, will certainly be glad to know they can now collapse a maul legally.

The introduction of a new offside line, five metres from the back of a scrum, is another law designed to encourage sides to attack and limit the all enveloping defence.

Why? Because for the rugby purists here, the game is developing quite nicely.
The argument in the north is that winning is everything and it doesn’t matter how you achieve it.
Entertainment always comes a distant second.

The south knows that winning isn’t everything and selling the game to a wider audience will be rugby’s real success.
The biggest irony of all, though, is that for all the northern hemisphere’s obsession with winning, only England have won the World Cup.
The five other winners have all come from the southern hemisphere.
Some things never change.

Not true at all. The genesis of the ELVs lay in a meeting which included lots of top coaches.

Let me retract the word ‘greats’ and instead specify: a test coach, captain, and player representatives (a forward and a back) from every top IRB nation, and also club/province/franchise/league representatives.

Rugby moves quickly. If you’re out of the game for any lengthy period then you’re a dinosaur. Have a look at the people in the LPG. A woeful collection of dinosaurs. If you have regular meetings with all the top coaches and players then you have regular dialogue with those who have their finger on the rugby pulse. Regular dialogue should also be stablished with fans and the appropriate representatives from that side of the game. Once it has been established what is considered problematic with the game then any new rules established should be trialled at a low level and for a period of two seasons. However, any trialling is fraught with problems simply because no low level rugby has similarities with test rugby, and so game outcomes would be different at different levels. That problem is hard to avoid but with constant dialogue with the aforementioned coaches, pros and analysts their opinion could be sought on the data and trends collected.

Spiro said: “After 2007 (RWC) the IRB decided to have a total look at the laws instead of adopting the piecemeal approach. Experts from the major rugby power bloc, including northern hemisphere officials, worked out a coherent re-writing of the laws to provide for an easier game to referee and to play, one that kept all the main features of rugby union with the constant struggle for possession and a game for all physical shapes. They trialled their ideas at Stellenbosch Univeristy and took videos of all the matches played and analysed them and worked out refinements to their original reforms. ”

As I acknowledged earlier, if Spiro wrote about Stellenbosch at the time and came up with a moniker for the ELVs, I figured he must know his onions.

I don’t claim to be an expert, so from what I’ve researched and read about the chronology, the genesis of the ELV programme occurred at the Conference on the ‘Playing of the Game’ in Auckland in January 2004, when national coaches and administrators gathered following Rugby World Cup 2003 to debate the state of the game.

The participants requested that the IRB look into the Laws of the game and mandated it to undertake a major review in areas such as the lineout, maul and sanctions, including turning penalties for technical offences into free kicks.

The Laws Project Group was subsequently conceived in 2006, as were the Experimental Law Variations with initial trials starting in 2006. This is over a year before the RWC 2007 that Spiro refers to.

The Stellenbosch trials occurred over a 6-month period during 2006. There was a review of the ELVS following this.

Rugby Writer in his article above asserts:
“The next stage was to take the trial out of the University to higher level competitions around the world. So what happened? When the Project Group asked for permission, an ELV ambush happened. Jones and his fellow media cronies and the union blazers in the Northern Unions choked on their warm beer at the thought of such trials and decried the ELVs as a southern conspiracy. The continuing ELV program was cherry-picked: no breakdown ELVs were allowed to be trialled and what we ended up with was a watered down bunch of new Laws that have not really solved anything.”

Except if you check the facts as laid out by the IRB, what actually happened was that when the LPG went to trial them at a more senior level, the Scottish RFU signed up enthusiastically to trial all of the ELVs in the Scottish Super Cup trials which occurred directly afterwards in January – March 2007. 30 ELVs in total. No cherry-picking.

That was Phase Two. As a little addendum to that about negative reporting in British newspapers, The Scotsman carried an article on the Super Cup and its coach, Welshman, Eamonn John, who coached Boroughmuir in the Scotland Super Cup and won the final with the full ELVs. He had this to say at the start of the following season in 2008:

“The ELVs were certainly a big thing for us. In my first year we just missed relegation and then at the start of 2007 we had the ‘Super Cup’ and ELVs, and that was a real launchpad for us. The squad took to the open, quicker game, and turned the year around. But people shouldn’t get carried away with the ELVs. They will take a bit of getting used to and definitely have the potential to change our game for the better, but it’s still a game of rugby – you’ve still got to be able to win the ball, keep it and use it.
What they (the ELVs] are attempting to do is open up more space and if coaches want to be creative there are more opportunities there. One particular aspect that has intrigued me watching the Tri-Nations is the kicking. There will be a lot more kicking this season, more responsibility on players knowing where they’re kicking to and why, so you need a good kicking strategy.
As with any change there will be some who embrace it straight away and others who are cautious, but over the piece I welcome them and hope they improve the game.”

Phase Three of the Trials in 2007 involved a number of countries. However, according to the IRB, “not all the ELVs will be trialled in the various competitions around the world which will allow the Law Project Group to analyse the ELVs in isolation of each other to see what impact they have on the Game.”

Thus, Australia trialled some of the ELVs in the Shute Shield in April to June 2007. They tested the Flag judges; Inside 22; scrum offside; lineout; and sanctions.

At the same time, England agreed to trial some of the ELVs in their English County Championship. Interestingly they trialled the ELVs on Inside 22, scrum offside; breakdown; and the Maul.

Ireland and France followed suit and trialled some of the ELVS in their Federation Cup and the U19/U20s cups/competitions. Interestingly, these two unions trialled the least of the ELVs including the maul, corner post and scrum offside rules.

The last big union to sign up was New Zealand in May 2007 who trialled a lot of the ELVs (Flag judges; corner post; inside 22; lineout; scrum offside; breakdown; maul; sanctions) in Div B of their NPC.

The Australia Rugby Championship trialled more of the ELVs later that year.

So Scotland trialled them first in full professional status, and trialled all of them. England trialled some of them as well, including the breakdown ELVs. And the IRB says that the piecemeal trialling by various nations was done purposely to see some of the ELVs in isolation, during 2007.

The accusation was made that senior British Rugby writers did their best to denigrate the ELVs project. There’s no doubt that some writers were against them in articles they wrote during 2008 and 2009. However, it’s interesting to read the views of the Chief Rugby Writer of Scotland’s main newspaper, The Scotsman in this regard. He wrote a piece following the RWC 2007, when the ELV experiment was already underway. http://sport.scotsman.com/rugbyworldcup2007/Rugby-missed-a-chance-to.3473162.jp

So by end of 2007, after the World Cup, there was general clamour for improving the game. A request was made to have the ELVs trialled in the Super 14 competition and it was agreed to trial them.

I presume this is the point where Stephen Jones and the entire British media must have really set to work, rather than supposedly after the Stellenbosch trials in 2006, as RugbyWriter avers.

On 1st May 2008 the IRB Council decided to trial a number of Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) in the Northern Hemisphere in the 2008/2009 season. The ELVs relating to the playing of the game cover the corner flags, taking the ball into your own 22, pulling down the maul and the offside lines at the scrum were to be included. The sanctions at the breakdown were not included for test level – 13 of the proposed 23 ELVs were put forward for Global Trial.

With Scotland having already trialled all the ELVs, Ireland, England and Wales said they would find comps to trial the sanctions law. They didn’t – the Anglo-Welsh Cup refused to trial the sanctions law during the Global Trial. Ireland didn’t have a comp either to run at the same time.

The French ran an extended 6-month trial of the Super 14 variations of the ELVs in their Espoir Championships in Sept 2008. John O’Neill was happy about the package of ELVs being adopted for trial in the Northern Hemisphere: “The ARU has made it clear we consider the sanctions a key element in the ELVs package, so we applaud this breakthrough for the IRB in the northern hemisphere,” O’Neill said. “We have no hesitation saying we believe the sanctions deliver a better game. We were disappointed when northern hemisphere unions failed to offer up competitions where the sanctions could be trialled. Let us hope others will now follow the lead of the French.”

The Global Trial began on 1 August 2008 and ended in June of this year.

What rules that the North ‘rejected’ helped the contact area in particular?

Yes, I know that. But we have a TMO who could monitor that graphic to inform the ref. So no need to have the marker’s at the elite level.

Since 2005 the LPG has embarked on a journey that has entailed an extensive, unprecedented practical programme of trials of the ELVs in a number of competitions around the world. ELV trials have taken place in France, Scotland, South Africa, Ireland, England, New Zealand and Australia at various levels of the Game.

ELV Trial Programme:
South Africa – Stellenbosch University hostel competition
Scotland – Scottish Super Cup
England – County Championship
France – Regional competition
Ireland – Under 20 Provincial competition
Australia – Sydney and Brisbane Club Championships
Australia – Australian Rugby Championship
New Zealand – Division B of the NZ provincial Championship
SANZAR – Super 14 Tournament
South Africa – Currie Cup, Vodacom Cup

“Phase Two – Scottish Super Cup
The Scottish Rugby Union approved the implementation of the full ELVs in the new Scottish senior club Super Cup. The competition involved the top 10 Scottish clubs playing in two pools in the months of January to March 2007. The top two teams from the pools met in the final with Watsonians beating Boroughmuir 35-29.

Following a review of the Stellenbosch competition the Laws Project Group acknowledged that the ELVs in the tackle area – with no specific Laws to govern the contest – had not been wholly successful in that the tackler found it too easy to kill the ball legally and win a free kick as possession was not forthcoming for the team with the ball. Therefore there was a major difference in application of ELVs at the tackle and post-tackle environment. A lineout adjustment was also made.”

Further, define “great”? Does that mean former “greats” (in your opinion) weren’t involved. Or that former “greats” are good enough, only current “greats”.

Once retired, is everyone a “has been”.

This seems to be “I don’t like them therefore they are has beens”. As with any large organisation, you have to be able to delegate it out, which is what occurred. They then trialled it, etc.

I was asking what process for developing the rules you proposed as an alternative, not the actual rules. So that we don’t have people questioning the process as well as the rules.

Regular change and review sessions is a bit broad. Further, it also needs a process of bringing it all together from the different countries to work out what the feedback is.

I am a SH lad born and bred, who has been watching as much [ alas, not enough ] NH rugby and reading a few blogs from the Big Wet. It has given me a respect for NH rugby and its fans, most of whom are articulate, informed and care deeply about the future of the game. Just as the proposition that the ELV’s were some monstrous conspiracy by the SH to emasculate the NH game is preposterous, so too is the notion that the NH is hell bent on a ‘heads in the sand’ policy, or that Stephen ‘Taffy’ Jones represents anything but the lunatic fringe of British rugby opinion.

I actually agree with most of what the Viscount has to say, except of course for the more fanciful claims of English penchant for reform, but his point about gradual rather than sweeping change is a valid one. All our bleating about the state of the game, one change is needed. Bring back the ruck. In a recent survey, 95% of NZ rugby players polled said that was the one change they would like to see. Plus, in a recent Guardian interview, the Aussie great Chris Latham gives a great description of the differences in approach between the old ruck laws and the new.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2009/oct/31/chris-latham-australia-england

I see your football prediction came through today. Good grief.

I wouldn’t agree about the English appetite for reform, and the need to do it in a way that precludes violent revolution, but I won’t upset the Viscount’s dinner by delving into this thorny subject at this point, suffice to say that pragmatism sometimes occurs only after some violent revolution has brought it home to someone that sitting endlessly on the fence in the hope that the status quo prevails won’t actually work.

Very good.

This was precisely the problem, Spiro. The chaps behind the ELVs were too ambitious – some would say too arrogant – from the outset. If you look around the sporting world, you will see that the most effective rule changes have nearly always been piece meal and pragmatic – e.g. the change to the back pass rule in soccer, the addition of one point for a try in rugger, etc.

And there is a very good reason for this modest approach- namely, the law of unintended consequences. Most reforms, whether in politics or in sport, bring about changes that nobody could have foreseen or predicted. For instance, in rugby, the directive against sealing at the ruck – intended to free up the contest for possession – has had the unintended consequence of making teams less keen to run the ball back, since they fear losing possession in their own half. Likewise, the five metre scrum rule often just led to the Number 8 bashing it up the middle and taking the easy territorial gain rather than spinning it wide.

To go bonkers and seek to redraw the face of rugger in one fell swoop was simply asking for trouble. There is certainly a need for reform – you are quite right about that – but it needs sober-minded northern administrators to implement it. You chaps in the south are admirably ambitious and optimistic, but your relative youth breeds a brand of optimism that too often strays into the fantastic realm of Don Quixote – tilting at windmills and trying to change everything at once instead of opting for a calm, rational, measured approach.

Do not despair. I have confidence that the chaps at HQ recognise the need for reform and are prepared to show some good faith. Do not mistake the RFU’s inherent English scepticism – the successful product of hundreds of years of moderation and pragmatism – for stubborn conservatism. A brief glance at English history would tell you that the English are perfectly happy to reform, but they do so calmly and at their own pace and in such a way that precludes violent revolution and utopian fantasy. Twickers will intervene soon enough, but in a way that builds on the best traditions of English empiricism. Better to do it modestly and to do it right than to blunder down colonial blind alleys.

A lucid and intelligent response, btw.

In a number of articles earlier this year, Spiro’s view was that the adopted ELVs would create a new rugby era. That the NH unions had seen the benefits of the ELVs – as they were trialling them (even without the sanctions ELV), and that the game in the NH had improved as a result. He cited the Ireland v Wales 6 Nations decider as a classic example of how the retained ELVs worked. Here’s two quotes from March and April this year:

“The good news is that despite the rantings and predictions of all the ELVs possibly going under from The Usual Suspect, the IRB looks set to retain the bulk of 10 of them, dish 3 and review the two most contentious ELVs, the sanctions and free kicks ELVs and the matter of infringements at the tackle/ruck area. The review will surely work out a simplified and effective system to be applied by referees at the tackle/ruck area which was the intention of the ELVs requirements. So, presuming that in May the full board of the IRB will ratify the conference recommendations and also the clarifications to the tackle/ruck and the further examination and results of the sanctions and free kicks ELVs, we can claim that most of the best ELVs, one way or another, will become part of a new era of rugby.

The enthralling and thrilling Wales – Ireland Six Nations match, which was played with the retained ELVs (aside from the maul variation) showed how vibrant rugby can be if teams are allowed by the laws to play rugby. The comparison between this fateful match, certainly Ireland’s most important since its last Grand Slam in 1948, and the dire and dreary 2007 World Cup final under the old laws, is very invidious to the case of those who have ranted against the ELVs as somehow taking ‘our game’ away from them. With minutes to play and having drop-kicked his team into the lead, Stephen Jones, under Irish pressure kicked out on the full a ball that was passed back to him inside his 22. Ireland had a lineout inside the Welsh 22 and converted their lineout possession into a match-winning Ronan O’Gara dropped goal.”
The retained ELVs will create the new rugby era – Spiro 2 April 2009.

“It’s my contention that if the ELVs had been in force at Paris in 2007 we would have seen a final as robust, challenging, unrelenting and free-flowing as the Six Nations decider. The sanction against kicking out with impunity if the ball is brought back into the 22 enables sides to keep pressure on their opponents when they have established a strong field position. There was no way that Ireland could have got themselves in position to drop kick the winning goal from 50m out. The other aspect of the ELVs is that with the ball in play for much longer than in the past, you get what I call the ‘running of the bulls‘ syndrome coming into play. The big forwards tire, and if quick backs can get match-ups on them late in the match, as Tommy Bowe did in the lead-up to Ireland’s first try, there are gaps in the defensive line for the attacking side to exploit.” Ireland, Ireland, together standing tall. Spiro, March 24 2009

When the IRB adopted 10 of the 13 ELVs, and a new ruling was brought it around the breakdown, Spiro commented in an article on the Australian squad:

“When the IRB endorsed 10 out of the 13 ELVs into the laws of the game, they also announced a “new law ruling that could help clean up the breakdown. Under the ruling, if the tackler or first person arriving to the breakdown has their hands on the ball, they are now entitled to keep their hands on the ball AFTER the ruck has been formed. This new ruling will reward players like Smith, Pocock, Hodgson, Waugh (is this why he is in the squad?), who make a lot of tackles and are fast to the rucks. They won’t have to release if the ruck is formed if they are on their feet.”

In another article commenting on the SA squad prior to the 3N, he said:

“Also, a new ruling at the tackle (which allows a tackler to keep his hands on the ball from the time of the tackle, if he stays on his feet) is going to reward players like George Smith and Richie McCaw, who get their hands first on the ball a lot and, in the past, when a ruck is formed are told to “release it.”

My issue with the article above by Rugby Writer, is that it started out with its premise that SJ represents the entire view of the NH rugby unions, and he and his colleagues in the British press are responsible for the non-adoption or failure of the ELVs, particularly at the breakdown area. It seems to me that the argument or point of attack keeps changing every time this topic comes up, but the end outcome on where to lay the blame remains the same – Stephen Jones and the British media helping to ensure that the conservative die-hards in the British rugby unions get their way. And senior British writers are constantly cited to support this view – for the most part in the person that Spiro dubs the Usual Suspect, Stephen Jones.
(It’s interesting that if you do a search on the Roar, practically the only NH journalist that seems to generate discussion on this forum is Stephen Jones, and mainly on the basis of holding up his views for scorn, derision and detraction. He obviously does his job very well.)

Leaving aside that this blithely ignores opinion formers or commentators in other rugby countries such as Scotland, Ireland, France and Italy, the notion that one writer in particular exercises Rugbywriter and Spiro so much is worth scrutiny and commentary.

Secondly, if people care to search the very good archive facility that the Roar provides, they’ll find plenty of commentary on the success or otherwise of the ELVs from SH and NH contributors. And they’ll find that it doesn’t split neatly along hemispheric lines with the NH being painted in the bad boys corner as the nay-sayers of the entire project – as this article attempts to claim.

Thirdly, Spiro’s comment that ‘in the meantime’ we’ll have to look to the SH for “the exciting and expansive rugby we want to see and play” is not borne out by the facts – certainly not in the season just gone, or in 2009 so far. And it would appear to contradict his earlier comments on the exemplar NH game cited above.

Attacking team gets benefit of doubt. Regular ‘change and review’ sessions held with test coaches, captains and analysts. Referees have more thorough training in technical aspects = perhaps introduction of NRL 2nd ref. Drop goals worth 2 points.

They do get repetitive especially when they begin to recycle the same argument and methods from previous articles. The only thing it does say is that it seems to be what the Rugby public wants. Expect many more yet. I think its about time the Rugby Roarer’s start looking to post article’s about the game on the international scene. Those stories tend to be more interesting. I enjoy writing and reading them.

Good point about the TMO. Perhaps at the lower levels the ‘assistant ref’s’ could move forward 5m of the penalty to set the advantage line with some sort of marker. But at the professional level they should use the TMO to inform the ref of whether or not advantage has been achieved.

Rugby has evolved greatly in the past 14 years thanks to professionalism in terms of player conditioning and tactical analysis. The game itself hasn’t so much. The only noticable changes in my memory were the introduction of lifting in the lineout (which made them far more of a spectacle whilst remaining competitive) and the kick off. And that the major issue. Defense lines at times resemble brick wall with defenders often not committing to the breakdown in order to set up. By removing say the 2 flankers and the fullback or half back and regulating the number’s in the ruck in theory more space would be opened up for the attacking team. This doesn’t mean defence will go out the window. But a levelling of the playing field would hopefully occur.

The advantage rule really irritates me with its inconsistency. We should be using the tech available to us to define beyond interpretation when it is played and what its exactly is.