Before he went away to the IRB conference on the future of Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) as one of 60 rugby administrators, coaches, referees and players’ representative, a leading Australian told me that the likelihood was that most of the ELVs in operation during the current European season would be confirmed.

He conceded that there was no chance of the sanctions and free kicks reform being accepted because the hostile British and Irish unions, particularly, had torpedoed this reform by defying the IRB (once again) and refusing to allow any of their senior competitions to trial that particular variation.

So the fix was in against the spirit and practice of the ELVs despite the fact that they were the most analysised and trialled set of sports laws of any sporting code. Over 800 matches involving 3000 players from the highest levels of Test rugby to the muddied oafs of social players have participated in the trialling of the ELVs.

The same lobby of British and Irish unions (who have opposed every reform and modernisation of the laws of rugby since the 1890s), together with Italy whose game was based virtually entirely on rolling mauls (like the Queensland Reds before the ‘use-it or lose-it’ reforms in 1995) were instrumental in getting the ELV allowing the maul to be pulled down to be abolished.

Steve Hansen, the All Blacks forward coach, one of the 60 delegates, makes the point that this decision needs ‘a little bit of work’ on it: ‘Before the ELVs the rule was very stacked in favour of the attacking team. It was difficult to stop and to me was more like an illegal obstruction. I think they will look at ways to make it a more even contest.’

One change that comes to mind immediately is for the law to be strictly applied that if the maul stops a second time, the ball must be released or the defending side gets a tap penalty. In previous years referees have allowed the maul to stop up to five times and then penalised defending sides when it collapsed.

This made rolling mauls, as Hansen suggests, unstoppable. Hopefully he is right when he indicates that some sort of ploys will be made available, short of pulling the mauls down, to the defending sides.

Hansen is also disappointed, and rightly so, about the decision to require even numbers in the lineouts, dictated by the side throwing in.

As he said, the All Blacks and a number of other inventive sides had worked out clever attacking and defensive plays based around their freedom to juggle their lineout number.

So some of the cleverness has been taken out of rugby which is a pity.

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 point about this is that in 2007 Wales would have forced a lineout inside the Ireland half and the counter-attack to set up the winning kick would have been that much harder. Just as importantly, the old law rewarded teams like the Springboks in 2007, and England in every year (except 2003), who played the touchlines more than the middle of the field.

These team played football rather than rugby.

There are complaints that the non-ground kicking from balls played into the 22 ELV actually encourages kicking.

This disregards two main points: first, the worst kicking matches rugby followers have had to endure were those played before the ELVs came into force. That Australia – South Africa kickathon at Sydney, in John Connolly’s early career as the Wallaby coach, is a case in point. Also, in the RWC the teams that invariably kicked the ball rather than play rugby, South Africa and England, were the finalists in the tournament.

Second, under the ELVs the team with good systems to run the ball back (the New Zealand, Wales and South Africa) and a good defence against the high ball have done very well.

In this year’s Super 14, the South African and New Zealand teams are dominating the tournament (with the NSW Waratahs being the only other real threat), these teams have generally kept the ball in hand running it back and when they have kicked it has been skilful kicking.

It was always going to be an incredibly difficult task to modernise the rugby laws to take into account the growing size of the players and their speed and the desire of spectators to have a contest and a spectacle. The diehards, especially in the British unions, have always resisted making rugby a more accessible and skilful code.

Some of the ELVs were actually flagged in the 1890s and rejected by the Home unions but accepted by the new Northern Rugby League which broke away from the Rugby Football Union (the England union) in 1895.

The kicking directly into touch sanction against a team taking the ball back into its 22 was played in Australia and Auckland (two rugby league strongholds) throughout the 1920s. The rule was called ‘the Australian dispensation’ and was the generator of a generation of brilliant Australian and Auckland running backs.

I once had a discussion with Dr Danie Craven, arguably the most profound thinker about the laws of rugby who ever lived. He told me that the laws of rugby are ‘wrong’ because they are too complicated and there are too many of them.

‘How will know we have the right laws?’ he asked me, and then answered his own question: ‘We will know when we have the right laws when they can be written down on a piece of paper like the football rules.’

We are nowhere near Dr Craven’s right laws yet. But slowly (too slowly unfortunately) and not always surely, we are getting there. The IRB conference decisions was a step, small but significant, along this path to the right way for rugby to go.

IRB Announcement on ELVs

Top Rugby Stakeholders Agree ELV Recommendations

Senior stakeholders from the international Rugby community, including a number of the world’s top coaches, referees and administrators, met in London on Monday and Tuesday to review the Game’s Experimental Law Variations (ELV) programme. The four-year programme culminates in a decision in May by the IRB Council as to which ELVs might be accepted permanently into the Laws of the Game.

The aim of the Conference was to assess the impact of the global ELV trial and the additional variations being trialled by the SANZAR Unions, as well as to evaluate other ELVs being trialled by individual Unions. The Conference was hosted by the IRB Rugby Committee and Laws Project Group (LPG).

“We held a positive and constructive meeting at which all stakeholders were able to share their opinions on each of the ELVs. This was an important milestone for the ELV programme and it was crucial that robust discussion was entered into and that all positive and negative impacts of the ELVs were raised,” said IRB Chairman Bernard Lapasset.

“Naturally opinions differed in several areas of the ELV programme. The IRB regards this as a healthy and positive state of affairs as the Game’s Laws have always and should continue to allow coaches and players to interpret Law so that different styles of play can be employed.”

“The Unions tabled detailed research and analysis to support their views. Everyone had the opportunity to air their views. What was clear was that there was agreement on many aspects of the ELVs and a collective will to see a return to one set of Laws to govern the Game as soon as possible.”

“This conference was not a decision-making meeting but at the end of the day the conference provided a set of collective recommendations on the ELVs to assist the IRB Rugby Committee in formulating its final recommendations for the IRB Council meeting on 13 May. Council will then decide which ELVs, if any, should be fully integrated into Law,” added Lapasset.

The Conference was the latest step in the extensive global ELV consultation and evaluation process. Attendees were also presented with Game analysis and statistical surveys from over 800 matches, involving more than 3,000 players, coaches and referees at the Elite and Participation levels of the Game from 15 IRB Member Unions.

“It is has been a long road since the genesis of the ELV programme 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,” said Lapasset.

“Collectively 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, as were the Experimental Law Variations with initial trials starting in 2005.”

“In the past Law changes were discussed in theory and implemented without on-field testing but importantly this ELV programme has included global practical trials. The entire process is now coming to an end and the IRB would like to sincerely thank its Member Unions for their participation in what has been an unprecedented review of the Laws of the Game,” added Lapasset.

Recommendations for the IRB Rugby Committee
The following is recommended to the Rugby Committee for adoption into Law:
Law 6 – Assistant Referees allowed
Law 19 – Kicking directly into touch from ball played back into 22 equals no gain in ground
Law 19 – Quick Throw permitted in any direction except forward
Law 19 – Positioning of player in opposition to the player throwing-in to be two metres away from lineout and the line of touch
Law 19 – Pre-gripping of lineout jumpers allowed
Law 19 – Lifting in the lineout allowed
Law 19 – Positioning of Receiver must be two metres away from lineout
Law 20 – Five-metre offside line at the Scrum
Law 20 – Scrum half offside line at the Scrum
Law 22 – Corner Posts no longer touch in goal

The following is not recommended to the Rugby Committee for adoption into Law:
Law 17 – Maul – Head and Shoulders not to be lower than hips
Law 17 – Maul – Pulling Down the Maul
Law 19 – Freedom for each team to determine Lineout Numbers

Sanctions and Free Kicks (subsidiary recommendation for further examination)
Tackle/Ruck Infringements (subsidiary recommendation for ruling in law to be sought by a Union to clarify interpretation of current Law)

Other Union-specific ELVs
Up to 15 minutes half time – recommended to Rugby Committee for adoption into Law
Rolling substitutions for Community Game – recommended to Rugby Committee for adoption into Law
Use of Under 19 variations at the scrum for Community Adult Game where agreed by the Union – recommended to

Rugby Committee for adoption into Law
Protocol to extend the remit of the TMO – not recommended to the Rugby Committee for adoption into Law
ELV Conference attendees: Bernard Lapasset (IRB Chairman), Bill Beaumont (IRB Vice Chairman and Laws Project Group), Mike Miller (IRB Chief Executive), Oregan Hoskins (IRB Executive Committee), Giancarlo Dondi (IRB Executive Committee), Peter Boyle (IRB Executive Committee), David Pickering (IRB Executive Committee), Jean Pierre Lux (IRB Rugby Committee), Geraint John (IRB Rugby Committee), Francis Baron (RFU), Rob Andrew (RFU), Kevin Bowring (RFU), Chris Cuthbertson (RFU), Roger Lewis (WRU), Joe Lydon (WRU), Bob Yeman (WRU), Phillip Browne (IRFU), Eddie Wigglesworth (IRFU), Owen Doyle (IRFU), Roy McCombe (SRU), Frank Hadden (SRU), Colin Thomson (SRU), Andre Watson (SARU), Johan Prinsloo (SARU), Peter de Villiers (SARU), David Nucifora (ARU), John O’Neill (ARU), Robbie Deans (ARU), Santiago Phelan (UAR), Ricardo Garcia Fernandez (UAR), Marcelo Toscano (UAR), Steve Tew (NZRU), Neil Sorensen (NZRU), Steve Hansen (NZRU), Nick Mallett (FIR), Francesco Ascione (FIR), Carlo Casagrande (FIR), Rene Hourquet (FFR), Jean Louis Barthes (FFR), Didier Retiere (FFR), Bill Nolan (Laws Project Group Chairman), Dr Syd Millar (Laws Project Group), Bruce Cook (Laws Project Group/IRB Development Manager), Ian McIntosh (Laws Project Group), Dr Mick Molloy (Laws Project Group/IRB Medical Officer), Graham Mourie (Chairman of IRB Rugby Committee & Laws Project Group), Paddy O’Brien (Laws Project Group/IRB Referee Manager), Pierre Villepreux (Laws Project Group), Richie Dixon (Laws Project Group), Rod Macqueen (Laws Project Group), Steve Griffiths (IRB Head of Technical Services), Corris Thomas (IRB Game Analysis), John Feehan (6 Nations), Derek McGrath (ERC Rugby), Ian McGeechan (British & Irish Lions), Lyndon Bray (NZRU Referee Manager), Nigel Owens (IRB Referee), Rob Nichol (IRPA), Damian Hopley (IRPA).

*At the conclusion of the Conference the FFR tabled its proposal to deal with the issue of uncontested scrums. This will be further discussed by the Rugby Committee and Unions will be able to give further feedback before the May 13 Council meeting.