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Earlier this year I attended a conference of sports historians talking about the history and future of rugby union.
The main speech was delivered by an English academic, Dr Tony Collins, an expert and passionate supporter of rugby league, and currently writing a history of rugby union in the 20th century.
Dr Collins’ main theme was that The Split from the Rugby Football Union by the northern leagues in 1895 diverted rugby union from evolving into a handling game (along the lines of rugby league) from the kicking game mentality from which it has emerged in the last 20 years.
There is something in this argument, especially on how rugby union is perceived (still) in the northern hemisphere.
No one, though, can predict with any certainty what sort of a game rugby union might have evolved into if there had been no rugby league.
What we do know is that rugby league has evolved into a man-against-man game, and that rugby union’s unifying principle is the notion of a continual contest for possession of the ball.
In its evolution into a man-against-man game, the lawmakers have taken out most of the messy ‘contests for the ball’ elements of the game. Probably the last such messy contest is the battle for the high ball near the defending team’s tryline.
Up to the 1960s, for instance, rugby league had contested scrums. This contest has gone.
So has the contest at the play-the-ball. Benny Elias was the last of the great practictioners in this area.
Unlimited tackles have gone.
So have gang-strips of the ball.
And sides have to stand back 10m from the ruck instead of the offside line being at the ruck as it was in the era of St George’s dominance in the 1950s and 1960s.
The Sydney Morning Herald ran an article written by Glenn Jackson on Friday 18 July headed: Pointed discussions to kick game along.
According to Jackson, the National Rugby League should be called the New Rules League “because amid a growing perception that rugby league has become more predictable, a host of radical changes have been foreshadowed as the game’s thinkers start to tinker.”
Jackson noted that an increasing number of tries (22 per cent in 2007 compared with 19 per cent in 2006) are being scored from kicks.
This call for a re-think sounds to me a bit like a demand for consideration of what rugby union has called the ‘experimental law variations’ (the ELVs).
Some of the ELVs-type ideas touted by rugby league experts for their game include fewer points allocated for tries scored from bombs.
Peter Sterling (“our game has predictability”) wants more points for tries scored from inside a team’s own half.
Gold Coast managing director Michael Searle says some penalties should be taps, not kicks into touch and a re-start.
Contested scrums will never be re-introduced to rugby league but players should be able to strike at the play-the-ball; stripping, with any number of tacklers, should be allowed; sets should be increased to eight tackles; and the number of replacements should be reduced.
What other adjustments or changes do the readers of The Roar think should be considered by the rugby league authorities?
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