Rules and referees are ruining our game

Tubby, if you think the 6Ns is more entertaining than the Super 14, then so be it. As I said in my post below, the 6N has been boresville to date and I couldn't help thinking how badly these teams would fare in the Super 14. Anyway, each to their own and we can agree to disagree

"“The current Super 14 rule changes, or ‘re-interpretations’, have destroyed the physicality and raw challenge at the breakdown, and we’re not necessarily seeing better rugby as a result. ” What game are you watching?! The spectacle is far better than last year." I agree that the game is nowhere near as good to watch as last year. the excitement has gone from half the game. When your team is defending now, really you are just passing the time until a mistake is made, the hope of springing a turnover from the ever contested breakdown is gone. how many 15 or even 20 phase passages are we seeing this ear with nothing much actually done? really quite soft pick and drive. penalise people lying on the wrong side, let people on their feet have a shot at the ball. and enough with the referees seemingly wanting to trick the front rows into packing in early. get a decent pace on the crouch-touch etc so everyone knows what the calls will be. even though the stormers are finally playing to potential, I'm not watching as much of the S14 as last year and paying more attention to the 6N.

Rugby tried a game with less laws. It was called the ELV's, and it was a shambles. That's the negative - here's the positive; turn the game 90 degrees and play across the field. You'd have 100 metres width, and who needs more than 70 metres to score a try anyway? There'd be more space for the 15 blokes to find a gap, and the finest technical defence systems in the world would not cope. Remember that you read it here first...

Giving away penalties is negative - not scoring off them......

Yeah - I agree with you there...if you don't want the opposition scoring three points don't offend! Find it strange that a Bulls supporter would be against taking penalty kicks from all over the park with Morne Steyn in the team. Also don't understand the fixation with the value of penalties/kicks/drop goals ...part of the game, everyone knows, everyone plays to it. Yes the new "interpretations" are a little frustrating right now - I for one do not enjoy the try fests, but the Stormers are getting it right, and it wont be long before other teams starting settling down too. (Bulls defensive play is shocking.....the attacking play is what winning them games...) For the past 3 or 4 years the rules in rugby have changed every year - lets hope things stay the same for a while so that the coaches and players can adjust properly.

I read what you wrote. I just don't agree with any of it. You want the old laws back at the breakdown, yet for the longest time people have been complaining that the breakdown needs fixing. So what's it to be? People were complaining about the breakdown long before 2007. The type of turnovers you want to see return were not always commonplace in rugby. They evolved over time from the mid to late 90s on and many would argue became stronger than the attacking sides' ability to clear the ball from a ruck (especially when aided by increased rights to the ball for the tackler.) As far as I can tell from the Super 14, the game is being played how it often is at lower levels. For too long the game has been clogged at the higher levels. I don't know what it will look like at Test match level, but I think you can find plenty of examples from the Super 14 that contradict what you're saying in regard to physicality, otherwise how would sides win? The most recent rounds have hardly been track meets, have they? How can anyone suggest that the Bulls aren't playing total rugby (or whatever you want to call it)? The new interpretations take some getting used to and the rugby does appear a bit strange at times but NO sport looks like/is played like it was in 1995. 1995 or whenever people were most in love with rugby is never coming back. You could reset everything to 1995 and in ten years it would be something different. Sorting out negative play/restoring turnovers won't stop the game from evolving into something you may not like.

oh my god, you actually have no idea do you? 7s is absoloute waffle, it's hardly rugby and if you love it so much, watch it, it's on all the time, just don't harp on with that kind of rubbish in case someone hears you and tries it

We need to right back to 1995 Laws if we wish to see Rugby returned to its former glory. I loved Rugby with a passion once upon a time-I won't even watch it now and shake my head as I see the game lurch from one disaster to another. We do not even seem to have a referance point anymore.

Brian, I hear what your saying and sure, winning is great, but being entertained is also what we are after. I remember the Bledisloe match at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, 2000 where the ABs were up 20 odd points after about 7 minutes. Australia clawed their way back to be leading with 60 seconds to play when that great winger Lomu broke our hearts and lifted the Kiwis. I think nearly 110000 fans left the stadium that evening believing they had witnessed the greatest game of rugby ever, combined with the biggest crowd in rugby history. Even the Kiwis were gracious in victory. Rugby and entertainment were the winners that night, as well as proving Australia's ability to host World events exceptionally well. The movement home went like clockwork. However, the point here is Super 14 is moving in a positive direction and entertainment is essential, especially here in Oz where we do have significant competition for followers, especially in winter. We just need to keep tweeking the laws and we'll just about get it right. You'll never please everyone all the time. By changing a conversion from a try to 3 points will, IMO, change the mindset of teams to opt for ball in hand rugby more often than we are seeing now, although most would agree this has changed this year to some extent. By doing this, the kicker remains important but the decision process is changed to some extent to provide, IMO, further entertainment.

The reinterpretation changes in rugby this year are a Godsend and a move in the right direction to making the game more open and if the northern hemisphere have any brains they will get smart and adopt it as well. The more 15s evolvess toward 7s the better the spectacle will be .

it would appear that way....i think many oval shaped ball following fans grow up in aus with the two games side by side and league is the game that has never changed and perhaps is therefore easier to follow, because it is so simplistic, but i personally don't find it entertaining at all, or at least until the end of the finals series and occasionally origin when they try to avoid their phase ball being shut down and throw it around a bit...but even then it's a bit of a mindless game for me, i really just hate watching it....union in my mind is superior in its tactically based gameplay and it's diversity through multiple phase ball play...oh yeah and scrums can at least occasionally have a point in union, i don't know why they bother in league....it's realistically touch rugby but tackle...fun to play, not to watch.....so i don't think it's a thing of aussie sports fans not liking winning, that's why they've turned on union...the wallabies haven't been the powerhouse that the aussie league and cricket teams have been so it's easy to turn to the dominant code and enjoy that while it's going well, but when the wallbies aren't winning apparently rugby is boring...bet noone was saying that in '99....?

You suggest "If we are wanting to see more tries, then the points system for penalties needs to be amended." Quite an assumption and one that points to the essence of the difference between Australasian fans and South African fans of rugby. Where Australasians are seemingly obsessed with the need for "entertainment" (ie. scoring tries), all South Africans care about is winning and winning no matter what it takes, be it tries, penalties or drop-goals. It might stem from the fact rugby in Australia (and maybe NZ, I don't know) is under pressure from other games in order to attract crowds and thrive, whereas in SA rugby has always been the only winter sport to attract massive crowds and revenue. Don't Aussies prefer the thrill of winning over being "entertained" for 80 minutes?

yeah, i often think that the most important things are just ignored and whatever the ref's are told to focus on that week is all that they blow up...like what is all this holding the ball at the back of a ruck for 5 minutes?? they should have a limit to how long they have to get the ball out once it's at the last feet. And they blow up the scrum when it collapses even when the ball is at the number 8's feet...why??? just let them get it out, the scrum contest is over dammit!! And again the biggest problem is the killing, when have you ever watched a game where there were no opportunities to score?? ever??? there always is, but some idiot dives on the ball or comes in offside or takes out the halfbacks hand or trips someone or knocks it down or something else daft and all thy get is a brief talking to and they concede 3 points..BIG DEAL!!! who wouldn't do that...2 minutes later you could have kicked off to some bloke who knocks in on and you slot a droppy from the scrum or run through and get an intercept and all of a sudden .... penalty null and void....what's the point?? the punishment needs to be more sever so blokes aren't trained to do it

because it works like that for everyone and the team wouldn't necessarily lose their captain unless it were for a repeated infringement, in which case there is even greater risk...imagine playing, and infringing twice in a row in which case your team has now conceded 10 points and lost you for 10 minutes...you'de be the biggest jackass in the world and probably wouldn't be in the starting XV the following week....that's that point

and the idea is that if the deterran is great enough, teams will not try to kill deliberately but turnover within the rules to avoid losing a try's worth of points...might as well just eventually let one in, right? if they can get there....

ok i'm right there with you on lots of that Sam, but as much as we're seeing counter rucking, it's generally only when the ball slows and clustered defences see that there's only two attacking player standing protecting the ball....it's very rarely contested at the immediate point of tackle. On the mauling side of things, yeah i definately see what you're saying, it has been a really up and down issue in rugby for a number of years and has become an area of great debate, it is largely down to interpretation, but i think it's a bit naive to expect that defences are ever going to be in contact with the ball carrier in a maul, because that would essentially defeat the purpouse of forming one because it becomes extremely vulnerable...as much as it is essentially structured shepherding, it's not like you ever see a team go 80 metres to the opposition try line is it?? it's extremely hard to manufacture a good maul, which is why only few teams do it very well, it's a hugely technical area of forward play and for me personally it's an awesome part of the game to watch, always has been, and i just don't see what all the fuss is about...it amazes me that there are people out ther who love and watch rugby who don't throoughly en joy watching a powerhouse maul plow throught an opposition forward pack. But to each their own, there is always a contender to any opnion on any aspect of the game... that's why we're all here!

it's only better because the ELV's were so ridiculously bad it made rugby a joke..... The spectacle might be better for someone who doesn't appreciate specialist positions in the forward pack or proper contesting for the ball at the tackle but otherwise much of it has been crap....watch the french games from the 6 nations, bar the most recent with england which came down to a woeful refereeing performance and you'll catch some real entertaining rugby with proper breakdown contests.....it's down to keeping what has made the game what it always has been and not changing it so it's always favouring the attacking team....rugby has to hold onto the things that makes it unique, not what makes it necessarily exciting to watch to the average person. if you're taking away the rights of the defender at the ruck contest they just fill the defensive line...and surprise, that's exactly what teams are doing. the saders are playing mccaw like a number 8 just like the stormers are playing schalk burger much the same way, because ref's are ignoring other rules in favour of the new interpretations, they are a distraction to fair contest.

i like...

who cares about casuals...you're either borught up with a sport and you're passionate about it or you don't really care anyway

and reducing the value of a penalty would just cause greater incentive to infringe everywhere, so that's a significantly more horrific idea...the problem is not how many kicks are taken at poles it's how many players are deliberately infringing the ball int he attacking red zone because risking 3 points makes more sense than risking 7