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I am being turned off rugby by the game’s rules, and the blame falls at the door of the IRB. It’s bringing the game into disrepute.
Specifically, and there are numerous others I could grizzle about, too many games are being won by penalty kicks.
Examples are in every game but there are too many to list.
To refresh people’s minds of the latest example: Durban; 6th April; Sharks with six penalty goals beat the Crusaders who scored the only try of the match.
It was a game where the Crusaders should have won, and like many others, the Crusaders outplayed the Sharks.
They just didn’t outscore them.
And before the great outcry starts, I do not keep tabs on the numbers of games where there have been more goal-kicks than tries, nor other games where kicking for goal seems to be the only reason to waste eighty minutes of your life watching rugby.
Dubious scrum/breakdown rulings by referees have many teams win games at full time by the three point penalty goal.
Rugby is a team game whereby the object is to provide a reward for a team’s effort in the way of tries.
Tries are so important we even reward teams who get four of them in a Super Rugby game with greater competition points.
Kicking goals is a skill honed to near perfection by an individual.
But the game is not about watching a perfectionist kicker spend much of the eighty minutes kicking the ball between two posts because a bloke with a whistle constantly provides him the choice to do so.
It is a team game played by fifteen skilled team players working together endeavouring to score tries.
I am so over it and am sickened to the point of having to watch trivial misdemeanours interrupt the game flow, and see disappointment of a superior team losing due to disproportionally rewarded outcomes.
This hoary old chestnut has been argued many times before, and this article holds nothing new, but, and this is the gripe; when so many fans without a vote tell those few with it to change the rules to make the game worth watching are being ignored by a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude, I move on to only watching games where I am entertained by the likelihood of teams who provide tries, and to hell with the rest.
Simply put, our IRB still cannot get over the fact that league has got there first, and in their eyes we cannot be seen to do what league does better.
Because of this attitude the game is brought into disrepute by them by them not correcting the problems union has.
It can be simplified into a spectacular game by:
1. Removing a three point kick at goal for a scrum/ruck infringement and for being offside. (Make indirect free kick/tap/or drop kick at goal.
2. Reducing a drop goal to a one point score.
3. Allow a three point kick at goal only for foul play combined with a yellow or red card.
4. Make the player let go of the ball when he hits the ground in a tackle, not “place it,” thereby allowing an even faster flow of the game from a ruck.
With just these four simple changes, the need to score tries becomes more paramount.
Granted there are many other changes needed, but when teams out-point but don’t out-play their opposition and are rewarded for it because of goal kicking points, I would prefer to go and play tiddlywinks with Tana Umaga.
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.