The times they are a-changin: The truth about what impact rugby's infuriating stoppages are having on action

Rugby chatter is obsessed with time. Old-timers and nostalgists bemoan how “slow” the game has become, clogged by box kicks.

“The Try From the End of the World” is etched in brains as if it was de rigueur. Our skill levels, and those of our heroes, grow with the uneven passage of time and memory loss. Wildly emphatic, mistaken belief is more human than dispassionate observation.

Time. Physics has taught us time is far less certain than we thought. Time vanishes more than it flies. Not nearly as simple as believed, time is not uniform, even from floor to table, it moves at different speeds; from Dead Sea to Everest, the gap is stark.

Zones of time are fictions, just as time itself is full of structures and layers which are mostly to make life easier, not more true. Escape our atmosphere and immediately the illusion of “a time constant” is stripped from an astronaut. When our great-grandfathers were born, the approximation of time was more palpable: each watch, each clock, each town, and each place “kept” time as best it could.

As we remember events, or try, we estimate, guess, and imagine. As a veteran investigator, I’ve learned to embrace the subtle distinctions and distortions of witnesses, no-one necessarily lying intentionally. Faced with external proof of error; many merely dig in deeper and make me part of a vast conspiracy running things.

We are not driven by rationality. Reason arbitrates. But it does not animate. We love to believe our memories. Our myths.

I cannot remember rangy Western Province No. 8 Morne du Plessis, whose awkward offloads were glaring for their rarity in the game of the Seventies and Eighties, ever knocking on a ball. Ever. And I saw almost every one of his Newlands matches. But of course he did.

The average modern player has better hands than the best old hands. In the 1987 Rugby World Cup, there were 32 scrums per game. In 1991, 31 on average. By 2015 and 2019, it was 13-14 per game (and yet generated more penalties than in the first two Cups!)

StatsPerform has a deep look at how rugby has evolved over time, in time, and around time.

The point is we have found more time in rugby. Within the 80 minutes, we cut scrums down to a third of the old levels. A third!

Similarly, lineouts have become more scarce: an average of 25 per game in 2015 and 2019, down steeply from 1987 (45) and 1991 (39).

ELV 19 was a big reason: before that change, one could pass back into the 22 (or run back), kick out on the full, and not suffer as a team would now. Another is yesteryear’s defending teams were far more likely to steal a lineout (41 percent of the time in the 1991 Cup) than now (9 percent stolen in 2019) after lifting has been nearly perfected.

Thus, it was more tempting to create lineouts, which were almost toss ups. Now, 23 percent of kicks are box kicks, which are seldom aiming for touch (in 1987/1991, box kicks were less than 10 percent of kicks).

Add the two set pieces together and you see from 1987/1991 to 2015/2019 we cut them down almost by half. Even if we assume resets or slow lineout walk ups, it should be no surprise that ball-in-play has spiked in rugby. How could it not?

Sure enough, in 1995, ball-in-play was just 25:45 minutes on average. The most recent World Cup saw it at 34:21 minutes: a 33 percent rise in ball-in-play.

In case our amateur (or actual) statisticians baulk at stopping in 2019, the ball-in-play in the Six Nations has also risen, peaking recently in 2021 at a remarkable 38:21 minutes!

A match with less than 30 minutes of ball-in-play is agonising to the modern fan; this was almost every match looked in the 80s.

So, if we are honest, and do not allow our time-addled brains to confuse us, we will all agree that the period of measured time in which rugby is being actively played has increased over the years. More rugby is played within the 80.

This does not mean it is more tiring, because there are more breaks. Waterboys, TMO looks, fake injuries, and shameless extended pre-kick routines by goal kickers provide breaks.

Tee time has become tea time. Asking for the tee. Waiting. Positioning it. Getting caught by the ref. Resetting. Doing a double clutch. Prancing. Looking to Mother Mary. Genuflecting.
Ripping a ritual fart. Then, swaying, praying, sashaying. Finally, a bloody kick.

(Photo by Matt Roberts/Getty Images)

But still, with all of that being said, the difference between 25 and 35 minutes of ball-in-play is palpable.

With players far larger, a bit faster, and considerately more powerful in contact, the fact the time of play has increased (together with the cut in set piece formations) has meant the average number of carries and tackles (and thus, rucks) has also increased steeply from the 1980s through now.

In the first three Rugby World Cups, teams averaged between 77 and 86 carries a match; and 48-58 tackles. Jump to 2015 and 2019 and the average carry load was 114; tackles: 124.

Consequently, the average ruck count in 1987/1991 (27 per game) exploded to the current 82-83 ruck average.

World Rugby: wonder no more about proliferation of head injuries.

No matter how many cards are waved, when bigger, faster players carry 40 times more a game, tackle twice as much, and clean or guard three times the number of rucks, your overall total and force of collisions has risen along with your risk of litigation for enhanced risk of CTE.

A single player can now make more tackles than an entire team did in 1987. When Moana Pasifika was finally able to play their first Super Rugby Pacific match, the Crusaders welcomed them to the competition by forcing the newcomers to attempt 233 tackles.

It would have taken six 1987 Rugby World Cup matches to equal this tally. Glaswegian Jonny Gray famously made 43 tackles in a Pro14 match versus Leinster in 2021. Just go try that: run into a bloody tackle bag 43 times with force and see how you feel. Now, turn the bag into Tadgh Furlong.

As players have improved their lateral quickness, fitness, and organisation on defence, they miss and fall off fewer tackles. Now, coaches want to see a 90 percent success rate, with a higher portion “dominant.” In 1987, the average tackle miss rate was 30 percent!

So, more time in play, fitter big men, stronger players, more phases of brutal contact in tackle and ruck, far faster defensive line speed, fewer missed tackles, and less grateful time spent in set pieces: read the recipe for safety struggle.

And yet. Yet, we long for more. More time.

Even as the time “not in play” has shrunk, it has mysteriously grown. The Lions series of 2021 more famously bored much of the neutral rugby world by having hour-long halves.

As we learned on [Episode 9] of the Roar Rugby Podcast from Major League Rugby referee boss Jonathan Kaplan, MLR has tried to find more time on the clock by trialing law variations:

Kickers have 60 seconds instead of 90 to take a penalty or conversion, and have a kick clock.

Seven points are given if a try is scored under the posts; no conversion necessary.

The number of scrums is capped at two per incident: the original plus one reset. If the reset collapses, the ref must make a decision.

Ninety seconds is too long for a kick. Go back to one of the most impressive kicking displays in rugby history: Frans Steyn in Hamilton, New Zealand in 2009. He kicked three from three penalties from his own half. His average time to kick? About twelve seconds.

Golf has studied the effect of standing over a ball on a tee, and the conclusion is clear: nobody hits it better after about fifteen seconds of waggle and meditation. All a protracted time over tee does is tighten muscles and nerves. But, kicking coaches will say, they need to bring the heart rate down. Tennis has a serve clock, and by the end of a set, a top player’s heart is pounding, but can still find the court. So can a flyhalf, in 30 or 45 seconds. And if not, it will just be a test of his skill, anyway.

A one-reset rule for scrum is more problematic. Refs are often guessing, but this forces an even wilder guess.

Perhaps the answer is to freeze the clock from the moment the scrum is called until the command “feed it” is given. We freeze time in order to have more of it.

Another point of possible time harvest is during the “kick to the corner.” Make the team choose poles or touch within a set time, and the moment touch is found, time is off. No more milkman walking 40 metres to the spot.

No lineout conferences. Actually enforce the five second “use it” ruck rule.

Far less chats between refs and players. Just do the ten metre march.

And stop pulling players up on quick taps that were fairly close to the imaginary mark.

To end where we began. There is no single time. Games feel longer or shorter based on action and moments and memory, and often by who won or lost.

The quarter final in Wellington which the Boks lost to David Pocock felt about three hours long because it was a horror show, but probably sailed by for some. The guy blowing Waltzing Matilda on a sax outside our hotel made the wee hours pass slowly, too.

If we add more action, we will have more injuries. If we subtract stoppage, we will have more exhaustion. If we cut tee time, we may miss a few more kicks (or will we?).

What say you, Roarers?