Is rugby now a 22 man team game?

TT - as Lauaki once said to McCaw - 'Don't Argue!' http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovk28alB30c Seriously though, Sione Lauaki is a complete bloody mystery to me, he defintely played that match like he was underwater. We've all seen him do brilliant things - the same match as the one in the clip above he put in a cross field kick that was finished by Sivivatu in the corner. Thankfully those kind of extreme form fluctuations are pretty rare among the other professionals in the ABs.

Jerry, Pinetrees might be a dinosaur in your eyes, but Ill tell you one thing, when he was playing he would have not have been slowly trotting past watching gold jerseys whizz past him to score as a certain NZ loose forward did last year in Sydney.

Jerry, the way its related to substitution is that players when players fake injury and get a rest, they avoid their coaches having to make the decision to either sub them or keep them on the field tired. Agree that the Ellis Cowan incident was a storm in a teacup. The bigger scandal is that Weepu isn't our number one halfback.

Yeah, but that's not really related to substitution - there's really no way to stop people pretending to be injured. The only incident I can think of where people may have gotten around the substitution rules was the Cowan/Ellis incident in the first Bledisloe test of the year but even that was actually more people misunderstanding what happened (Cowan did have a cut which made Ellis legally a blood bin sub - though Cowan wouldn't have come back on if Ellis hadn't gotten injured I'm sure).

Jerry - can't speak for Melon, but I don't like when a front rower goes "down" when a scrum is called and receives medical attention. He knows the scrum can't be set without him, so the ref lets him receive his "treatment" on the field at the end of which he miraculously stands and is ready to pack down. In the meantime everyone has taken a breather. It's not as bad as faking an injury to receive a penalty, but it's still faking and shouldn't be tolerated. But there is no easy solution to it. You could make it so that there is no on-field medical attention allowed and any injury which stops play requires a direct replacement. The problem with that is that genuine injuries to front rowers might lead to an increase of Golden Oldies scrums. No one wants to see a group of grown men pretend to scrum.

Melon - I'm not sure what you mean about fake injuries getting in the way of the rules?

This is one aspect of rugby (and there are a lot more than just this one) that I'm happy with at the moment. I like the rules about interchange just as they are. I think they create interesting team selection considerations and interesting coaching considerations on the day. In short, this is one instance where I say it ain't broke so don't mess with it. Having said that, one thing I do hate is the fake injuries as a way of getting around the rules. But I think this just means the ref should keep a good eye on things to make sure existing rules are being followed rather than a rule change.

To respond to Paddy's question - it has been for years. As soon as you didn't have to be injured to be replaced, it became a 22 man game. Arguably it was even before that as what counted as an injury often seemed pretty dubious to the outside observer. It's also worth noting that in front row positions, and for everyone else if you can manage to invoke the blood rules, there's a form of interchange already in place. It probably doesn't get exploited as much as it might, but it's there. Thus while you might want to argue that it would be better to go back to a 15 man game (along with proper rucking, no playing the ball on the ground and whatever else you liked from the past) those birds have flown. ABC 2 in the late night legends program it used to have occasionally showed old rugby tests (60s and early 70s). And didn't they look slow and scrappy. I suspect the modern player can't match the general toughness of his predecessors (because the old timers got tough from manual work much of which is done by machines now) but would still beat them hollow for speed and size. Regardless I think the a champion in one era would be a champion in any era concept has a lot going for it.

The attempted comparison of players from past eras to present eras is pretty lame. This whole idea that the ABs are tough because they work on farms is pretty dumb...aint too many farms in South Auckland or Wellington. Spiro wrote an article for the SMH quite a few years ago now that spoke of how small the old era footballers were compared to current footballers - and he was right - but by golly it drew a response from the oldies; I cant quite recall who the old player was that put pen to paper but he gave Spiro a serve. I watched a video of Sydney Uni v Norths Sydney Grade Grand Final from the sixties recently. It was pretty interesting; players could not pass from left to right, the kicking was poor, one on one tackling lamentable, scrums degenerated into a resting place for old men, forwards were walking after twenty minutes - sure there was talent on display, but to suggest that these players would cut it in the current Sydney grade comp is not real. And this would be right across the board at all levels of competition world wide. The club with which I am involved has our very own mini Pinetree - this fellow played a handful of tests for the Wallabies in the 1950s - if you listen to him, all youth, in fact anyone born after the Great War is a poofter, and the whole world is going to hell - and as for Rugby, well "In my day"..... Which is not to say that he does not deserve and is not afforded respect, but he would not play for the Wallabies these days, not even close.

True Tah - Pinetree is a dinosaur and his views on modern rugby are generally laughable. I recall him saying that rugby players eating pasta was stupid as Italy were terrible at rugby and that in his day a breakfast of steak and eggs did him right. Modern player fitness and strength is more tailored towards rugby - the game is light years faster and the hits and collisions are far more intense. If you watch a match from Pinetree's era it appears to be in slow motion - being a raw boned farmer or lumberjack would have been enough back then, but in this day and age it would be very difficult to make an impact unless you can train more or less full time. The only WC exit that can be blamed on too much time in the gym would be 07 as that would be the only time the NZ team spent more time in the gym than any other team. In every other WC the team that won was just as full time rugby as the ABs (and in the case of the 99 Wallabies, the 03 English and the 87 All Blacks you can look at the training methods, preparation and overall superior fitness as being a huge contributing factor to their victories).

TT, I can't speak for Kaino or So'oialo or Kefu. In fact any talk about the current crop of players 'ability to bench press a wild boar is pure speculation. What I can vouch for is that Kefu was a terrific number eight for Australia and his ability to break tackles and defend his line has given me way more joy than his ability to dig in a fence post ever could. I'm glad that builder sent him home - who knows, it might have given him more time to practice his footy.

No. rugby players can last the full 80 minutes but the fitter more committed ones will do better.

Maybe this is a crap idea, and obviously one that came to me in the moment, but should caps be given to a player only when he has completed an 80 min block in his nation's jersey? So if a player continually plays only 1 or 2 min, he would need to come on eighty times to gain an international cap. For example, Whitaker played 70 odd tests, but if you divide his playing minutes by 80, you'll find that maybe he only achieved maybe 10 to 20 "caps".... Is this an absurd idea? Does it take anything away from Whitaker's value to the Wallabies? Or does it prove that he was really only a 20 cap type of guy, and will be remembered as such...?

Keith I can't speak for Kaino and So-oalo, but I know Toutai Kefu wasnt sure what he was going to do after school, and one his mates got him to come along and do some manual labouring for a builder. At the end of the day the builder went to Toutai's mate and said dont bother bringing your mate again, he was bloody hopeless.

Could it be that Martin Johnson is showing off some of England's bench in the hope that one or two might make a splash so England could have 3 or 4 members of the Lion's squad to SA & not be wholly left out? Right now,maybe only Ellis is a certainty. Jools-USA

"Yawmn. this whole post is crap." Don't be so hard on yourself matta, you're just getting started.

Yawmn. this whole post is crap. Keith, youre an idiot. Paddy, how old skool can you be? not only that but have you actually played under the ELV's? I have and I can tell you its bloody hard!

Yeah yeah, they lifted pigs, wresteld wild cows and walked 30 miles over broken glass every day just to get from their letterbox to their front gate. And when they got there they were run over by angry tractors. Meads and his mates were, by all accounts, very good at handling these trials. No doubt lilly livered sissy pretty boys like Rodney So'oialo and Jerome Kaino would have struggled in that world. The current All Blacks, on the other hand, are much better at playing rugby.

Keith I hate this argument, but Colin Meads would have been a start in any era, he was as good in his era as McCaw is in his. In fact I remember he blamed the successive failures of the ABs at WCs because he thought they spent too much time in the gym, and I think Sir Colin has a point. Back in Pinetrees Day, in NZ guys didnt go to gym, they dug post holes, they wrestled and killed wild pigs and carried them home through the thick bush, they did logging jobs, they carried farm animals around. Ditto for the blokes in South Africa, in fact I can recall Andrew Logan mentioning a South African forward who had to wrestle a mortally wounded lion, no mean feat. The Welsh forwards were toughened through time spent at the coal face, and the French forward pack used to be dominated by peasants from the fields - its little wonder the likes of Australia and England were slaughtered by these teams throughout the era before professionalism, when the bulk of our blokes had desk jobs, like being lawyers, doctors, accountants, etc. I agree with MC, that the amount of training that professional sportsmen do is to fill in the gap that is left by not having to work jobs, how else could they justify their salaries?