Let the debate about rugby's points system begin

Good article. The change I would make is to increase the conversion to 3 points (making for more interesting in-goal play as the players really want to score near the posts) and decrease drop goals to 2 points with missed droppies going back to where it was kicked. 4 droppies to equal a converted try is much better than 3 to surpass a converted try. One only has to look to league where the big margin a converted try has over drop goals and penalties causes the teams to run with the ball and be more creative on offense. I wouldn't however lower the value of penalties however as rugby is a much harder game to police than league so there should be a bigger disincentive for unfair play.

Dear Spiro, This is a very interesting way to open up a debate. Not only you expose the problem, but you also offer what you think could help it and you even go further and expose others' views on the subject. However, I'm afraid I am not convinced that there is a problem with the drop goal. If we had, say, drop goals deciding every game, it would concern me. If we had a situation like, let's say, 2009 when Morné Steyn broke the record of drop goals in a single Super XIV season, it would concern me. But what I am witnessing this year 2011 is: Round 5 (at the moment of writing this comment) No tries in the Chiefs-Sharks The Reds scored 7 tries against the Rebels The Crusaders outscored the Highlanders 6 tries to 1 The Blues outscored the Hurricanes 5 tries to 1 The Waratahs lost to the Cheetahs who managed to score 2 tries vs none by the hosts. That is 22 tries in 5 games, which makes a healthy average number of tries per game. What's more, we have not witnessed a vicious trend for drop goals during any of these games. (It's true the games at SA are to start yet, but realistically, it's only the Stormers-Bulls who could take us to comfortable slumber by an excess of easy drop goaling) What I'm seeing instead is that, as the 2011 edition grows old, teams are fixing their handling (with some exceptions) and more tries are being scored. I don't see any problem with the drop goal at present. I would also like to focus the talking point in re-using what is already at our disposal. After 2009 horror year (by the way the game was evolving) Referees took them on their hands to avoid that awful trend of rugby which favoured kick and chase and living at the opposition's errors expenses. The refs considered that it was only a matter of applying properly the laws of the game and if they ruled more closely laws like running in front of the kicker and having to completely release the tackled player, things would go smoother and rucks would be easier to defend. By ruling the tackle area differently, the referees were creating the conditions for avoiding the excess of drop goals. (Why to drop goal when there's a try opportunity right in front of you if you just pick the ball out of the ruck?) I think we quite often tend to invent new rules or modify the existing ones instead of applying what's already there, and that's not exactly the proper way to proceed. 2010 was a complete success in terms of trends and 2011 is poised to be another success. Tries are being scored and I think that games like the Brumbies-Reds are going to be the exception and not the rule by the end of 2011. I honestly think drop goals are going to be absolutely no problem.

We the regular fans dont' have hours of time time on here to review the subject of the points system unlike the IRB officails who don't seem very competent half the time in my opinion on many apsects of world rugby ex England rugby captain Will carliing said they were i think he said somtehing along the lines of 79 old farts but here goes my 5cents. If opponent is awarded penalty in oppositions 22m they have option to recieve automatic 3points or like now take kick for touch, and have lineout. This would be good as it would force teams to be disciplined and not conceed penalties, at least I think but also punish teams when match is tight to keep discipline. And also i would take next step in enforcing disipline and punishing medicority or cheating oppisiton Iwould do any penalties conceed in opponents 22m results in automatic yellow card to as well as the automatic points. So you go 10 minutes in the sin bin and you no next yellow red card your off. And then you would think 2wice about giving stupid penalites, as well as at the same time being forced fighting through the pain barrier of human exhaustion as a game wears on, would make for exciting rugby i think, this would certainly weed out the average teams and reward the more talanted and harder working and physically fitter and more disciplined teams, and punish laziness, average talanted unfit, players carrying injuries, and players or teams who have contempt for the rules, and overall in my opinion produce a better brand of sport this being rugby wre tlaking about that rewards quality teams over avareg or medicority. Because fatiuge does cause human error, example car accidents, and sport as well in last qaurter of a match in any sport. And laws are there to be repsected or treated with contempt, if you no the penality is s sin binning , or giving automatic points away you will behave, remember we are dealing with grown adult men these professonal elite rugby athletes are,who should be maure enough adult human beings to no right form wrong . And it ist is human nature to if you can get away with doing something to suit your team or you the indivdual, and you want it depsarately despite it being morally bad but if you want it enough and you no there is no harsh punishment you will do it. Example in real life to back this point up linking it to sport, thats why after natural disasters governments often enforce temporay shoot to kill policies to reduce looting of shops. And then it make you the individual think twice about stealing food or clothes even though you ar edesparate and oyu there is a high punshment cost your life. And thats why now crime in my opinion is on the rise for less serious crimes like assualt, drunken fights, car stealing, and just genreal thuggery, and juvineile crime as well is so much higher. Cos these adults and teenagers no the courts in Australia are currently soft for crimes tha i said, and they will not go to jail for long if at all just put on a good behavour bond so it doesnt enecourage them with an incentive to behave or do the right thing cos the punishment is soft. No disipline in schools coz school displine is soft , so they can get away with not doing there homework or bullying. But by gee like in real life and in pro sport if you no the punishment is severe and harsh like for murder, you can do 20 years or life or the death penalty in some countries you will think twice about murdering your neighbour you don't like or a work associate you dont like which is law currently today. Murder carries serious punishment so only a extreme tiny fraciton percentage of people lose there nerve or cool and break the law and don't tolerate people they are not happy with. And the same logic applies to sport, if the penalty is soft you will keep doing it. Rugby used to have so many more proffesional fouls before the ellow card system at least when i watched it did and i am 45 will be 46 this year, and boy did it slow the match down, i watched so many bledisloe cup matches growing up "When the bledisloe had real meaning unlike today " where both teams would commit proffesional fouls and no sin bin was in place and especially when the match got tight if the other team had to score a try at the end the other team would commit alot of proffesional fouls, and that was awful as it rewarded cheating and medicority when you were getting tired you new wouldn't be a man down and could conced 3points but that would eat up to much time on the clock and you new they had to score a try only option to win match, no sin bin or yellow card rewarded that also a cheap shot, so the name of the game in modern rugby or present time in twenty 11 should be to reward quality and punish bad behaviour for cheating you no the laws so dont break them and if you are tired bad luck your not good enough to win or compete at the absolute highest level of say a good all blacks team, or are jus tnot fit enough and individuual or team to compete at the elite level. I am a aussy to. So yes harder penalties dish out the yellow card more (automatic yellow car din opponents 22, and if you do it again you get red and so be it if your team is exhausted and down to 10 men cos you are not good enough to sustain the pressure and onslaught from an awsome All Black side bad luck, get motivated to improve your tactical knowldege of rugby or train that extra bette rin your strength and conditoning programs at training. Being tough on penalties and haveing harsh punsihments reawards successful teams and weeds out mediocraty. And this i believe will promote better more attacking and more ball in play over 80 minutes, and also the refs in the super 15 and around the world the majority sure need to get better effeicieny at scrum time, with the binding stuff in general. You can hear Canno, Kafe and kernsey commenate on fox sports ripping there hair out sometimes saying things along the lines of two slow in other words. This would help rugby effecieny to cos when played and referred well by good teams and officals it is a quality sport rugby, some memorable matches.

I think there is less an issue with the points system and more an issue with what penalty kicks are given for and how many different infringements there are. Let's try and get rid of some of the annoying things that players are getting penalised for! Getting rid of the scrum hit would be one place to reduce penalties. The ELVs also tried admirably to remove a lot of the reasons for full penalties. Instead there were free kicks, but this made things a little crazy. A better middle ground would be to allow most penalties to not be shots at goal, but still allow the option for tap kicks, scrums or kicks to touch. Just have teams kick for touch and keep the game going. Butctake away those frustrating 50/50 calls from the ref that leads to shots at goal.

I quite like the CPI idea though Sheek, and let's keep it fluid. Each week the IRB should review the previous week's scoring ratio's and apply a weighting percentage to areas that they would like to see more of. Tries may go up 4% one week to 5.2, drop goals reduced by 4% to 2.88 and so on. Or The referees could do their job.

Spiro, Why not just get rid of the breakaways , solves all your issues. Less defence=more tries, less issues at the breakdown, breakaways are there first at breakdowns (mostly) disrupting the speed/flow of both ball and game, less pressure at scrum time=possibly less resets. I could probably think of more, frankly they are pests, always have been, always will be... Planet -- Comment left via The Roar's iPhone app. Download The Roar's iPhone App in the App Store here.

Let the debate begin? To paraphrase Groucho Marx: "That's a new meaning of the word "begin" with which I'm not familiar"

Some Roarers are arguing a reduction in value of the drop goal from 3 points to either 2 points or a single point. Like other point change suggestions, they attack the symptom but don't provide a cure. Point 7 above in Spiro's post outlines how more effective changes can be made without tinkering with the points coring system. If a missed drop goal means the ball returns to the place it was kicked, & a scrum feed to the opposition, then players will be much more inclined to use this type of scoring opportunity more judiciously. In one foul sweep you remove the insidiousness of those "easy" drop goal point scoring opportunities without having to tinker with the points score value system.....

There is nothing wrong with the point system, some people like to carry on about Kaplan's last penalty awarded against the Brumbies (round 2) but they forget about all the other penalty's the brumbies gave away to get into that position. Also the Brumbies gave away a plethora of penalties to loose against the Reds, the fact that the Brumbies scored 4 tries and still lost becuase of the multitude of infringements they committed just shows that the current system is fair (round 3). Also if a kicker can convert a field goal from 55m out then his team should be rewarded and he shoudltn be punished for the attempt otherwise you will never see another decent feild goal. Everyone is just having a cry becuase some results didnt go their way.

KW4743, Excellent post! You're thinking about it like a decision making player! Essentially: - more (relative) points for a try = more infringements to stop tries = defending team giving away penalties - more (relative) points for a penalty = playing for penalties = teams afraid to run and play inside the own half = kicking inside own half + more shots at goal from anywhere inside opposition 50. Penalty + restart after the penalty conversion would be the fairest penalty for infringements and the more effective disincentive to giving away penalties. It would go a long way to stopping defensive teams infringing to try to stop tries. Also, it is a more appropriate penalty - if you have earned the meters into the oppositions 22 and the opposition THEN infringe, they should pay for that infringement (ie points) and then the game should continue from where the game was up to before the infringement took place. Why should the infringing team get the ball back on halfway after infringing? However, in this case the penalty should not be worth 3 points, as the game will continue from the penalty spot. I think 2 points, is a fairer value. As the attacking team has the territory and a chance of either a try or further penalties. Also, as I've said before, the penalty shot should be a drop punt to speed up the game (put a 30 sec stop clock on it) and reduce the distance the kick can be taken from - I don't think many players could drop punt over the cross bar from outside 30. Yes, yes, if I want to watch AFL go watch AFL and leave rugby alone... I don't watch AFL, but I do think we could implementing this idea would cut out stopping the game for >2mins and watching kicks from >50m. This would also simplify things as it would mean the rule would not have to be limited to penalties given inside the 22. Also, crucially, this would make teams less afraid to run the ball out of their own half (outside their 30 especially) as they wouldn't be so afraid of giving away penalties out of fear of losing 3 points. Radically speaking, making the opposite number of the infringer (or a representative of that player position ie, front row, locks, halves, etc) kick would make the penalty shots a goal more interesting, spread the glory around, increase the appeal for players with atypical skill sets. Yellow card TMO reviews could be tricky. More categorical fouls such as hands in the ruck, pulling half into ruck, would be ok to check/confirm, but fouls that occur by degrees of time such as not rolling away, going off feet would be harder to provide a definitive ruling on. These are still ultimately be a judgement call and TMO can be less accurate as the true events can be distorted by slow motion, multiple replays, not being an eye-witness. I prefer games its 15 v 15 the whole match, I'd like to see players that infringe deliberately sent off, not to return, but they can be replaced. This is still a huge disincentive but doesn't change the dynamics of the game - 14 v 15 just isn't a true contest anymore, all events from then are qualified. What are your thoughts on the ruck and scrum rules?

Joe, you seem to have stumbled in to an area that you shouldn't be. Didn't your mum ever tell you not to walk down dark alleys by yourself?

The objective in changing the points system is to encourage attacking teams to aggregate pionts by scoring/converting tries rather than kicking penalty goals and drop goals, and by association encourage running rugby (but not necessarly so - if a team is relatively strong in the forwards it might be encouraged to use its forwards dominance rather than its backs to score tries). And conversely to encourage defending teams to not deliberately commit fouls/penalty offences with the intention of preventing attacking teams scoring tries, and provide attacking teams an easier (and less attractive) option of aggregating points by kicking goals rather than scoring tries. An increase in the points earned for a try and/or conversion relative to the points earned for kicking a penalty goal or drop goals can be engineered by either increasing the points earned for a try and/or a conversion or by decreasing the points earned for kicking a penalty or drop goal or both which would, in all three cases, incentivise attacking teams to try and score tries but also incentivise defending teams to commit penalties to prevent tries being scored. It seems that if the number of points earned from scoring a try is increased relative to the number of points earned from kicking a penalty or a drop goal, the perceived extra incentive for the attacking team to turn down penalty attempts and to try and score more tries, other things being equal, will be pretty much balanced by the extra incentive for the defending team to deliberately commit penalty offences to try and prevent tries being scored. So, is there much to be gained from changing the points system? Accepting the above analysis, to be effective, a change in the points system to increase the value of a try and/or conversion to incentivise an attacking team to score more tries, needs to be accompanied by an additional change to reduce the incentive for a defending team to deliberately commit a penalty or to take a greater risk of being penalised while trying to prevent a try being scored. Changing the relative points value of a try/conversion vis-a-vis a penalty/drop goal won't do it. With or without a change in the relative points, an obvious dis-incentive for a defending team to commit penalty offences within its own 22 to slow down the attacking team, would be a mandatory yellow card for a deliberate (cynical seems to be referee talk for deliberate) penalty offence. (I have a problem with this in that it would involve a judgement call by the referee. Because of the impact on a game of the issue of a red or yellow card I believe that they should be subject to mandatory TMO review. Mistakes will still occur with the issue of red and yellow cards but such judgement mistakes should be reduced with mandatory TMO review.) Another, perhaps more effective and rather elegent, dis-incentive (discussed in other posts) for a defending team to commit penalty offences within its own 22 to slow down an attacking team would be for the attacking team to be allowed to attempt to convert the penalty and then re-start the game from the penalty mark with a scrum or a kick (tap or to touch). Either or both of these two defending team dis-incentives should be more effective than changes in the scoring system in promoting the scoring of tries (whether by backs with running rugby or forwards with dominant forward play) over the kicking of penalty and drop goals . They make for an elegent package in that the attacking team has the opportunity to take the points for a penalty goal and then start again hot on attack against a defending team short one man and there is further incentive to try for more tries while the offending team is short a man. And the dis-incentives are not inconsistent with the spirit of the rugby union which is after all a football (kicking/catching and goal scoring) as well as a running/passing and rucking/mauling/set-piece game and it is important to maintain a balance, and the related need for different body types and skills in the game. These are the things that makes the game different from Rugby League and American Football and Australian Football.

I think i said this before....If you guys want to watch rugby league or afl, go watch league and afl. Leave 'our game' alone. The pionts system is just fine, the rest of the world are happy with it. I cant help to think that its mainly fans from australia that wants to change the rules of rugby union. And union is only a past time in australia, so changing the rules to suit your aussie taste is a little unfair to the rest of us.

Someone said the other day to only let each player take just one kick at goal. That would certainly make things interesting and add a further element of strategy. Don't really see much point in the points change outside of the drop goals worth 1 point. It's been done to death though so little to nil chance of that happening.

Hi Sheek, Agree 100% - and I wish it would be put to bed - I am getting sleepy with the continual debate. Nothing wrong with the existing system - a player infringes - he gets penalised - simple, case stated, points system all okay. Referees - yes 100% - improve this and improve the scrums - Rugby - no problems Agree on the return to spot kicked for Drop Kicks that go over the deadball line. Now to try to wake up after reading for the umpteenth time - the case of "changing the points" ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Drop goals being two points 100%. I dont think you're going to get much argument on that.

Let some air out of the ball.They'll have to go for tries.

so you basically want guaranteed possession for the attacking team, go watch league then.

I agree in getting rid of the hit, but you are kidding yourslef if you think that means it just becomes strength, there speaks a leagie, technique would still rule, its just you eliminate the destabalisation caused by the hit.

Yes, and make the kick at goal a drop punt to speed the game up and reduce the distance of the kick. Also make the kicker the opposite number of the player who gave away the penalty (same for penalty kicks for touch).