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Australia's James O'Connor, center, tries to break through the tackle of New Zealand All Blacks during the Bledisloe Cup rugby test at the National Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009. All Blacks won the test, 32-19. (AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama)
There’s a lot to be learned by comparing the two internationals from last weekend, provided we forget who won and lost and instead focus on the statistics from each game.
First, there were a total of eight skillful tries in the England-Kangaroos game, as against only three in the All Blacks-Wallabies game.
More importantly, there were ZERO long, boring standstills for penalty goals in the Kangaroos game, as against TEN in the Wallabies’, from which, of course, a massive 30 points were yielded.
These 30 points were due to what people are now calling Whistle-Ball, the negative sport-within-a-sport whereby you get your buzz from the whistle being blown for a penalty within a certain 40 percent or so of the grass.
The remaining mere 21 points came from the other game, the positive sport-within-a-sport called Real Rugby, that is, the positive endeavour of scoring tries and kicking conversions (and sometimes field goals).
To summarize: for the total of 51 points in the Tokyo game, Whistle-Ball on 30 beat real Rugby on 21. No wonder the Japanese present evidenced no enthusiasm.
No wonder so few came in the first place. How could they understand a game dominated by an obscure negativity, penalties of such variety and marginality that they even stump the coaches and pundits.
Now thinking more broadly.
In the now-finished Tri-Nations-Bledisloe tournament, a total of ten matches (of which the Wallabies played seven) Whistle-Ball on 219 points (from the 73 penalty goals) beat Real Rugby on only 183 points (from everything else).
Yet some people still seem to get enjoyment from a sport whose rules are such that more than half the games are won on the other side’s errors and mistakes, some of them milked.
Since these folk seem otherwise more-or-less normal, I am trying to make sense of it all. They can’t all be negativity-driven secret misanthropes.
It’s more than just a short-term matter of bums-on-seats and TV audiences.
Healthy-minded parents will encourage their children into a sport that rewards positive endeavour more than it punishes negative such. Surely parents, like most of us, admire speed and strength and agility and skill and vision and courage and stamina and intelligence and kicking skills and a dozen other of the worthwhile positive abilities that Real Rugby draws out.
Parents will also support a sport that they understand.
Here are my guesses at why Rugby has moved this way in recent years:
* Of course, we all appreciate kicking skills. (Yet such are also in demand in Real Rugby for converting tries, potting field-goals and kicking for position.)
* We have lost, or at least are de-emphasising, our great Rugby distinction: young William Web Ellis ran with the ball. (There is another game for harmless, armless young blokes who enjoy booting leather with leather.)
* The Emperor has no clothes. Active supporters are so close to it all that they just cannot see the obvious: the current laws have made the modern game just too negative.
* We think that’s the way it’s always been. (It hasn’t.)
* We believe that change is too much trouble.
* Too many administrators are old players whose many hundreds of games have seeped into their brains and blinded them to the obvious fact that Rugby has lost its way, steering by the rear-vision mirror rather than by the future and by the genius of its origins.
* The troglodyte powers-that-be in Europe are scared of the game looking like Rugby League.
Even the world’s top coaches are uneasy about how the laws have spoiled the modern game.
Put on the spot earlier in the season about his team’s boring but numerically effective all-kicking game, Springbok coach Peter de Villiers just said “I don’t make the laws.”
And on that very subject a day or two earlier, All Blacks coach Graham Henry suggested giving a clean marker of the high ball twenty metres (thereby reducing kicking to the red zone for penalties).
And there are many other good ideas for restoring balance to our game.
As an easy minimum, reconsider the ELVs.
How about only two points for penalties (the sin-bin and like measures introduced since the move from two to three points deal well with serious indiscretions). Then, of course, there is the six-man scrum option for cutting the amount of try-inhibiting defending traffic (and might a seven-man scrum work?).
I hope that the agenda for the post-World Cup review of our game (the coming Law Wars) includes serious discussion of Whistle-Ball.
I humbly submit this way of looking at our great game and the related simple statistics as one aid to this process.
Join The Roar rugby editor Christy Doran, former Wallaby Matt Toomua and a cast of regular and special guests as they look at the biggest issues in the game on The Roar Rugby Podcast. If you’re looking for great odds on the next game check out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Chances are you’re about to lose. Set a deposit limit.