'Legalised obstruction': Thorn defends rugby's 'uniqueness' after World Cup winning coach turns maul rat

A host of new laws and modifications have been introduced to make Super Rugby more appealing this season, but a World Cup winning coach wants the changes to go even further by banning a divisive facet of the sport.

Wayne Smith, the veteran coach who guided the Black Ferns to success in last year’s Women’s World Cup – thanks to a couple of rolling maul tries in the final – has called for the end of rolling mauls as a legitimate scoring tactic.

“I don’t like the driving maul as part of the game. There are six or seven forwards in front of the ball. There is no access to the ball. It is legalised obstruction,” Smith told stuff.co.nz.

“I would get rid of it entirely. You could do it very easily by changing the laws so that if the attacking team chooses to kick a penalty to touch inside the 22, then the other team gets the throw in.”

Thorn, the coach of the Queensland Reds and a former All Black and rugby league star, defended the rolling maul in an interview with Christy Doran for The Roar Rugby Podcast to be released on Friday.

“I hear what he’s saying but it’s got a uniqueness. You take away the maul, the scrum, the lineout – you might as well make it ten men and you’ve basically got rugby league.

“Everyone goes ‘you went from league to union, and the games are getting more similar now,’ but they’re light years apart as a forward.

“There’s breakdowns, lineouts, what we don’t have anything like in league.

“One of the hardest ones is kick off receipts. Catching a kickoff, you’ve got two guys lift you and you’ve got to get in a position and catch it above your head like an AFL player.”

He said scrummaging and maul work in rugby presented huge challenges for players and coaches.

In the stuff.co.nz piece the author, Mark Reason, began: “This is a polite plea from Wayne Smith to World Rugby. Please, please, please abolish the driving maul. It is a blight on the game. It is against the very essence of pure rugby. It does not allow a fair contest for the ball. And it is a crashing bore.”

The boredom line is subjective. There are fans who revel in seeing a charging forward pack rumble over the top of a back peddling rival outfit. There can be something primal about such impressive shows of strength.

In his piece, Reason put two and two together and came up- with five, blaming rolling mauls for a decline in Super Rugby viewership.

“Last year’s Super Rugby was dominated by the Blues and the Crusaders, the two strongest mauls. Moana Pasifika, new, vibrant, but less organised, were buried beneath the rubble of those mauls. And the tactic has clearly become a turnoff for viewers as TV figures continue to plummet.”

Scott Fardy in the Brumbies’ maul (photo: John Youngs photography)

The Brumbies, of course, honed their expertise in attacking driving mauls under Dan McKellar – but his replacement Stephen Larkham questioned the tactic when he was announced last year.

“We’re world renowned over here already, in terms of our maul, it’s arguably the best maul in the world, has been for a number of years,” Larkham said.

“If you’re a traditionalist, you love the intricacy behind all of that. But we have to break away from some of those traditional elements to make the game a little bit more exciting.

“That’s what we’re going to be working on over the next month, we’re going to be working on a game plan that’s  a little bit more exciting for fans to come and watch and for the players to play themselves.”

Larkham was part of a “shape of the game conference” with the Australian rugby coaches, CEOs, broadcasters, referees and administrators from RA to consider tweaks that would make the sport more exciting. Some of those have been introduced, and are deservedly anticipated – including time limits on conversions, penalty kicks, scrums and lineouts. But

The negativity towards the maul as a legitimate tactic seems like another example of rugby’s identity crisis – an attempt to change the game while plenty think it’s a blight, plenty more think like it just the way it is, thank you very much.