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Opinion
Plenty of headlines were generated last week with the Queensland Reds’ announcement that their end of season two-match Challenger Series would include a number of law variations and innovations, and on the surface most of them look logical, even overdue in some cases.
The tweaks are all designed “to speed up the game and increase ball-in-play time” and include things like time limits on kicks at goal and set piece contests, as well as a clarification to deliberate knockdowns and the advantage laws.
The Reds have named a development squad to take on a Queensland President’s XV in the matches at Sunnybank this Saturday, and at Easts Rugby club next weekend.
But far from Queensland going rogue on the Laws of Rugby, these Law Variations in use for their trial games are just the latest in a series of trials that actually started at St.Edmunds College in Canberra a fortnight ago, when Brumbies and Waratahs XVs played each other under a very similar set of LVs.
The Brumbies and Melbourne Rebels will utilise that same set of LVs in another trial game in Albury this afternoon.
As you can probably guess, all these games – and other end of season tours scheduled for early next month – are designed purely to get some game time into what’s left of contracted and players not already in action with the Wallabies and Australia A, and new recruits and training squad members alike.
“It’s just an opportunity to get some game time into these guys,” new ACT Brumbies coach Stephen Larkham told me this week.
“All these guys, and it was the same for New South Wales, all these guys have come out of John I Dent Cup but they haven’t really played together as a Brumbies outfit. So, it’s a great opportunity for us to do that.”
I know what you’re thinking right here, because I had exactly the same thought. If only we had some kind of next-level development competition being played at this time of year. A National Something Something.
Well stay tuned. I’ve known for some time the desire was there to get a competition of some sort up at the back half of the year, but it seems now that desire is becoming more of a necessity.
“That’s the plan, to set up some sort of competition through this period so that we’re getting that next level of rugby for these guys to develop,” Larkham confirmed.
Back to these LVs being implemented. For one thing, there’s not a prescribed set; the set in use in Queensland is similar but not exactly the same as the set used in Canberra and Albury. It’s LVs by agreement, essentially.
The full set of LVs in use for the Queensland Challenger series can be found here, but the quick summary is thus.
All the time limits in place within the Laws of Rugby that have long needed enforcing will be. Kicks at goal, restarts of play, setting scrums, ball into the lineout; all of them will have their respective time limits enforced via wired-up timekeeper.
(Photo by Morne de Klerk/Getty Images)
A referee saying ‘use it’ when the ball is at the back of the ruck means use it now, not when your extra players arrive for you to box kick from behind.
Deliberate knockdowns will be ruled as a ‘deliberate attempt to catch’, or a ‘deliberate attempt to knock down’ and will only result in a penalty kick rather than a yellow card. Advantage will only last three phases before being called over, or the penalty is blown.
That annual focus on tacklers having to roll east-west will return, and in something of a shock to me, only contested lineouts will be pulled up if the throw is not straight. It’s a shock to me because I had thought that NRC variation was promoted to Super Rugby years ago. I didn’t realise it wasn’t in play now, but it might explain a few things.
But not all LVs are equal. The Queensland games will allow only the players in a lineout formation to join any subsequent maul, whereas the Brumbies-Waratahs-Rebels games didn’t and won’t. I’m not sure all games will prevent the opposition scrumhalf for advancing beyond the halfway point of a scrum, either.
These LVs all sound promising, but what’s driving them? Well, it turns out the coaches themselves are. Sort of.
“All of the Super Rugby coaches, CEOs, and general managers met at the Shape of the Game conference in Auckland, along with World Rugby Director of Rugby Phil Davies, and New Zealand Rugby and Rugby Australia representatives,” Larkham explained.
“We thrashed it all out and broke it into three components: the broadcast, the fan engagement, and the on-field.
“We discussed all aspects of the game, and knowing that we’re in this competitive environment, tried to work out exactly what we can do to make a game a bit more enjoyable and bring some more fans into games.
“The big one around the Laws was trying to get more ball in play time. Some of the Super Rugby games were 25, 26 minutes of ball in play out of the 80 minutes, and the actual game time is not 80 minutes, it’s more like 90 to 100 minutes. So you’re talking about less than 30 minutes ball in play and that’s a fair amount of dead time.”
The NPC in New Zealand wasn’t a candidate, but the Australian states agreed to trial some variations and report back to Adrian Thompson, RA’s General Manager of High Performance Programs, with a view to building the business cases for future implementation in Super Rugby.
But don’t expect huge change for 2023.
“We can’t change the fabric of Super Rugby next year because that will affect the Test teams going into the World Cup,” Larkham said.
“But these things are in Law, the time compliance things are in Law already, they’ve just got to be refereed.”
So similarly to how some things were trialled in the early seasons of the NRC, what we might see next year is a change in refereeing approach, or even within a refereeing interpretation.
“The time compliance stuff is there so we’re going to try and get that in, just with a timekeeper (if not on-screen).
“And then with the deliberate knockdown, that’s a framework that the referees can potentially modify anyway. I don’t think that’s going to change the fabric of the game.
“Set piece is an issue. It’s really an onus on referees to make sure they’re making good decisions,” Larkham says.
“It’s not trying to fix that and it’s a very difficult area to referee, because there are little tactics that happen in the front row that only the front row knows that they’ve done.
“Sometimes the opposition front row don’t know why it’s come down, but the guy that’s done it does know. It’s very hard for the referee in that part of the game.”
From the one trial his side has played, Larkham says improvements have been achieved without a lot of disruption.
What rugby law needs to change? (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)
He said the Brumbies just didn’t bother setting up ‘caterpillar rucks’ and thus the five-second ruck wasn’t an issue. Kicks and restarts all happened well within the time limits, and so did scrums and lineouts.
“We didn’t actually have a free kick for time wastage. We practised it, and the Waratahs had practiced it through the week. Referees sorted that, or the players sorted that.
“We made sure that we were ‘setting’ quickly and they never got to [the time limit]. I think they got to within ten seconds for one.”
It does kind of make you wonder if these LVs have been so easy to adapt to now, why coaches haven’t just done this before. If teams can get used to packing a scrum within thirty seconds of the mark being made over the course of a few weeks, why the hell has the game allowed itself to devolve like this?
As it happens, Larkham wasn’t and isn’t a huge fan of the advantage law tweaks and probably won’t support it going forward.
“We weren’t particularly happy with that one I don’t think.
“I think three phases just probably brings you back to another set piece start, as opposed to just let it play out. So we were probably against that one.”
But, on the whole, the consensus is there on both sides of the Tasman to make the necessary improvements that the game so desperately needs.
All teams want to play in front of bigger crowds and all the benefits that come with home ground advantage. All the clubs know that the best way to increase crowds – and therefore revenue – is to make the sure the product is worth watching, and especially worth sponsoring.
The best way the game can become more stable and sustainable off the field is to make the make the rugby played on the field the very, very best it can be. That’s a view that unites both RA and NZR in ways that their respective Chairmen often seem some distance away from.
So these trials will help, in time. So too will things already in place in the United Rugby Championship or even Major League Rugby. Precedents and working examples can only help business cases.
“I think that was the goal out of the conference, that we might not be able to get any LVs into Super Rugby for this coming season, but going forward we know we need to improve the spectacle of the games,” Larkham says.
“So post World Cup, there will be a few changes.”