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Opinion
Rugby league is the greatest game of all – but how can we make it even greater? The following rule changes would improve the spectacle and make the game fairer for all involved.
1. Remove the restart rule
It was brought in to stop players laying on the tackled player to allow their defence to reform. Remove it and go back to penalising players who hold down the tackled player.
It has resulted in teams having more than six tackles and causing blowouts with huge winning margins becoming common. It is ridiculous to talk of record wins because they are being compared to games that were played under different rules.
The rule also stops a team from kicking penalty goals when a penalty goal could put a team in front on the scoreboard. Because of this, teams with a strong defence don’t mind the restart rule.
2. Change the value of tries to three points
Tries were changed to four points in 1982 because the ARL thought fans wanted to see more tries in the hope of increasing the falling crowds.
They figured this would encourage teams to go for tries rather than kicking for goal. This change to four points devalued the penalty goal encouraging teams with a strong defence to infringe in the play-the-ball more often because the attacking team would take a tap in the hope of a four point boost to the score.
Joseph Manu scores a try. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
3. Remove the two point field goal or reverse the points based on the forty metre line
It makes no sense to reward a team that can’t make it over the forty metre line with a two point field goal while penalising the team that does.
4. Discourage the bomb by making it easier to defuse them
The reason why we have the six tackle rule is to encourage creative play when a team has the ball. In unlimited tackles a team could play safe and hold onto the ball until the defence was tired and buckled under the relentless pressure of teams running one out.
Because the bomb is the easiest way of scoring a try, teams play safe and have five tackles of safe play getting into a position to put up a bomb.
When a bomb goes up there is an increase in obstruction by both sides that is often subtle and hard for the referee to see it all. There is also the absurd sub rule that allows a player to obstruct if they have their eyes on the ball.
In Sunday’s Warriors versus Bulldogs game, a Canterbury player fell with his face hitting the ground. The Warrior should’ve been penalised for taking out the legs and causing the dangerous fall but was not because he had his eyes on the ball and not caring about the player jumping in the air.
This could have been much worse if he landed on his head.
To make the bomb a thing of the past we should make the field goal the only scoring option on the sixth tackle. This would encourage creative ball playing in the first five tackles in order to maximise point scoring and offer the attacking team the option to kick a field goal and get six tackles again from the kick off.
We should also allow the defence to punch the ball dead resulting in an end to the attacking team’s set of six. Good tactical kicking would still be rewarded by kicking to players who get themselves into open spaces where the defence can’t punch it dead.
5. We should remove golden point or change the scoring system for it
All competition games should be the same length. The problem with golden point is at the end of all the other games the result was determined by the scores at the end of 80 minutes, there is no extra time.
A team that wins should get more points than a team that draws and therefore the table is not a true reflection of the results. Giving teams two points for a draw in the eighty minutes is not a true reflection of the game. This could be corrected by altering the points given for all the different results.
To give the distinct results their own individual values the points could be distributed as follows:
4 points for a win.
3 points for a golden point win.
2 points for a draw.
1 point for a golden point loss.
0 points for a loss.
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