Maul tweaks might just hit the right note

As if there haven’t been enough changes heading into the new Super Rugby season, another one we have to get our heads around involves an aspect of the game that became unstoppable in 2015.

The liberal interpretations of elements of Law 17 – Maul , and particularly the way the maul formed meant that if a team was good enough to get it moving almost immediately, there really wasn’t a lot the defending team could legally do to stop it.

It’s no surprise that it became a major weapon during the 2015 Super Rugby season; the success at that level guaranteed the maul tactic would then carry through to the Rugby World Cup.

However, by the time the Rugby World Cup came around, the maul’s invincible force was already endangered. World Rugby in September announced a series of tweaks to the Laws, after a long and detailed consultation process.

Of the tweaks, the World Rugby website reads:

Every four years, rugby’s governing body undertakes a complete health-check of the game’s playing trends across the Rugby World Cup cycle to ensure that the sport continues to develop at all levels around the world. This extensive process is undertaken with full union consultation and has player welfare, game simplification and fan experience at its core.

The implementation of the package of law trials and law amendments by World Rugby Council, follows detailed analysis and evaluation of union submissions by the specialist Law Review Group (LRG) which reports to the Rugby Committee. This evaluation process also featured specialist input from the Scrum Steering Group (SSG) and the Multi-Disciplinary Injury Prevention Group (MDIPG) over the past year and is the next phase of the law change process.

Among the outcomes were a number of law amendments (including a crackdown on simulation), closed trials (including trialling dual referees in New Zealand’s NPC), and clarifications around Law 15 – Tackle, Law 16 – Breakdown, and Law 17 – Maul.

Pertaining to Law 17, the statement included the following advice from the Law Review Group:

The group debated trialling a collapsed maul. The consensus was that this would be perceived as dangerous and should not be trialled.

The group agreed to issue a law application (from 1 January) guideline to enforce the following:

The ball can be moved backwards hand-to-hand once the maul has formed. A player is not allowed to move or slide to the back of the maul when he is in possession of the ball. Sanction: Penalty kick.

Now, I don’t mind admitting that I missed this announcement at the time, and in fact wasn’t aware of the changes until the week of the first Super Rugby trials.

And because I was kicking off my rugby season with a commentary stint, I figured I better get my head around said changes quick smart. In doing so, I received a very useful email from SANZAAR Game Manager, former Test referee Lyndon Bray.

In the email, Bray reiterated the clarifications around Law 17, including the timeframe of implementation. For the southern hemisphere, it took effect from January 1. For the northern hemisphere it won’t take effect until July 1, as the major competitions were already under way by the time of the announcements.

“The ‘confirmation of the current Law’ effectively forces all attacking teams to transfer the ball back to the last player in the maul, and works in tandem with the directive during 2015, that every player must join a maul ‘from the last player in the maul’, not join one or two players up the maul,” Bray began his explanation.

“How this will affect teams in practice: last year, teams would create a ‘ripper’ who literally ripped the ball off the Jumper (once he got to ground), and then the Ripper would ‘slide backwards’ until he was at the back of the maul (potentially creating two to up to four layers of attacking players between him andamp; the front of the maul).

“World Rugby outlawed this practice by creating a confirmation that the ball needs to be worked to the back by ‘hand to hand’.”

The reasoning for the law clarification is pretty sound. You only have to recall the increasing amount of ‘condoned obstruction’ commentary around the use of the maul to know that it was becoming an issue within the game. David Pocock almost doubled his Test try-scoring tally, and more than doubled it at Super Rugby level as a maul pilot in 2015.

Bray continued with his explanatory notes, with some suggestions and thoughts around how the re-worked Law clarification might work in practice this season.

“In 2016, teams are training to still have the Ripper take the ball from the Jumper, but then he hands the ball to the player at the back (most probably, in practice, we will see teams use their Hooker to bind at the back and accept the ball),” he wrote.

“This is likely to have two impacts: slower set up and formation (and a less blatant obstruction), and as a result, time for the defence to actually power up and defend the initial maul. With a more deliberate construction of the maul, one would also hope that it becomes easier to referee.”

This is certainly the most important element of the change. The requirement of the ripper to then transfer the ball to the back of the maul by hand, and not via a couple of backwards steps himself, is going to be the opportunity for the defence to get set against the maul.

Already in trial games we’ve seen opposing packs attacking the hindmost lineout lifter, with teams that get their timing right able to drive sideways or diagonally toward the sideline. Even if they’ve got their timing slightly out, defending teams have been able to hold steady and force the attacking team to release the ball once the referee calls on them to ‘use it’.

The contestability of the maul might still be debatable, but already it’s evident that there is now more opportunity to get set and defend against the maul. It won’t be all one-way in 2016, it would seem.

“The other key issue,” Bray continued, “is that we need to be vigilant on how players ‘join the maul’ on the attacking side; that they do so at the back of the maul, and if they slide forward, that they do so without unbinding.

“This is important in relation to the attacking team looking to ‘shift the point of the maul’ to the left or the right. Simply throwing players ahead of the ball carrier, say, to the left hand side of the maul, and then shifting the maul to the left is not good enough. This is essentially blatant obstruction.

“In summary, we don’t want to lose the capability of teams mauling successfully, but we do want to ensure that the maul is more equitable so that the defending team gains reward for strong defence of the maul.”

I’m sure we all recall the success or otherwise of the ‘joining the maul’ law clarification announced mid-season last year. Referees would crack down on players making token contact with the ball-carrier, we were told, yet within a fortnight the crackdown was evidently over, as players again tapped the ball-carrier on the arse as they sailed past and bound directly onto players in advance of the ball.

It was about as successful as the crackdown on crooked scrum feeds.

I’m thankful to Lyndon Bray for taking the time to provide the explanation around the law clarification, and especially for his agreeing to allow me to share that explanation in this column.

It will be interesting to observe how teams have adjusted to the clarifications over the opening rounds of Super Rugby, and probably more crucially, how alert referees will be as it happens in front of them.

On limited viewing, it looks to me as though the clarification around Law 17 will have the desired effect, but as always, the proof will come with the continued application of the tweaks.

Footnote: You can see some useful explanatory videos on what is now legal and illegal around the maul on the World Rugby website, including a video of a Wallabies maul from Rugby World Cup 2015 as an example of what is now illegal.