Saturday, July 30, 2005
The trouble with the modern game
The Wallabies got rolled again by South Africa, in another pretty gutless display. After doing all the hard work in the first half, they retreated to some pretty slap-dash, casual and unimaginative play in the second.

Jones had made four changes, which suggested that last week’s game was a serious affair and simply the first round of poker game. But the big difference this week was the tactical game deployed by Larkham and Gitteau in the first half.

By mixing it up, the South Africans (when they were not off-side again) were eventually forced back, neither on the front foot nor drift defending across. The Wallabies began to cut them to pieces.

Vickerman and Dunning shored things up in the set piece and everything looked pretty peachy. About 15 minutes into the second half, it seemed inevitable that the Wallabies would scored again and seal the win.

Alas it didn’t come and somehow the game was swung back the other way; lineouts were lost, turnovers bounced back to the Springboks and some pretty casual work by Larkham saw a change in mood. Sailor and Vickerman were also replaced, despite playing well.

To make matters worse, there was a Springbok try out of nothing – a first phase line-break from halfway line.

The game was eventually won by a penalty that should have gone the other way. Sour grapes? Maybe, but the incident epitomises a bind that the game currently finds itself in.

That rucking grey area

The modern game of rugby is played at such frightening pace that you cannot blame the referee for interpreting incidents in different ways. Coupled with this, on the pitch there are 30 players who are doing everything they can to hide the ball from their opponents, and the poor ref.

When you watch the TV replays in slow-motion, it is arguable that an infringement occurs at pretty much every breakdown, particularly with hands in the ruck, cleaning out and holding on to the ball in the tackle.

Sure, the referee penalises the ones he sees; and in many cases, slowing the ball down (hands in the ruck) is penalised pretty harshly. But the tackle occurs so fast that a grey area emerges between the time the tackled player goes down and fairly sets the ball back and the first defender in making a grab for the ball, prior to a ruck being formed. At the same time, both are either legitimately holding the ball, or are committing an offence.

So, back to the incident in question, which resulted in the penalty that effectively won the match: A South African player was tackled, turned to fall and set the ball back on his own side. George Smith (who played a blinder) was clearly on his feet, there was no ruck (ie no opposition players bound to him) and he made a grab for the ball, but for one reason (see below) he couldn’t bring the ball round to his own side.

Probably half a second later, SA players arrived to clean-out, bound onto Smith who was then correctly adjudged to have used his hands in the ruck.

However, the real infringement had surely already happened. George Smith would have been away with the ball, had the tackled South African player not been holding on to the ball, on the ground, illegally.

The 50-50 restart

The game’s administrators have tended to give the attacking side the benefit of the doubt and often tackled players are holding on for 2-3 seconds ‘setting the ball back’, but are really simply and pretty cynically ensuring that the opposition players cannot fairly take the ball and are delayed long enough for a ruck to form.

This policy is also reflected in the number of times attacking teams recycle the ball in a ruck using their hands, illegally, but seemingly with the complicity of the referee, just that the game is freed-up.
The importance of this issue is heightened by its frequency of occurrence and the sanction imposed for transgressing, which of course, is a penalty.

Where either three points, or 50 metres lost ground, are imposed in the penalisation of a grey area of the game, the referee will always be in line for criticism and analysis. In affect, the talking point of the game becomes the referee’s interpretation of the play, rather than the players or the game themselves. In close games, the losers (in this case, Australia) will always argue that they were hard done by, doing little to improve the spirit of the game already facing up to the pressures of turning professional.

Therefore for a 'grey area' of infringement, we need a 'grey area' of restart. Scrums and lineouts no longer provide this (to a greater or lesser extent), so we need an alternative.

In Australia we don’t have to look far to find this. In AFL (one of) the referee(s) bounces the ball high and the players have a 50-50 chance of leaping to win possession and restart play. Surely this is fairer than seemingly tossing a coin to decide who gets penalised in the tackle area to ruck transformation?

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