Monday, August 15, 2005
My crisis with Rugby Union Football
Maybe it is just sour grapes and when the Wallabies whip the Boks next week I will get over my frustration with the game… But then it may go deeper, as I have been getting somewhat disillusioned with Rugby Union of late.

No doubt the Wallabies were out-gunned by the All Blacks in Sydney. Their scrum half (Weepui (?)) kept momentum going forward all the time and McCaw and Collins hit the rucks with great pace, enough to disrupt much of the ball the Wallabies had.

For their part the Wallabies were scratching around for players and though Gitteau then Flatley then Whitteker performed admirably at five-eighth, they did miss Larkham’s ability to take responsibility for making the calls. Latham, Rogers, Tiranui and Sailor also either did not lay or did not finish.

My crisis in confidence with Rugby Union rests with decision making and the whole philosophy of the modern game.

Indulge me for a minute. Though out-played, the Wallabies were no doubt on the arse-end of three tries from bum decisions by the referee:

Try 1. Australian advantage played for a knock-on, the clearance kick goes straight to Rokocoko on the Wallaby’s 22. He makes 20 yards, ruck, recycle, try. Referee obviously thought that Rokocoko is such a poor player that your advantage is over the moment he catches the ball.

Try 2. Australian attacking ruck; without the ball, Gregan is taken out by Collins coming though the ruck. Ref waves play on, All Blacks pick up and run the length of the field from a counter attack, line out, penalty, then try. Is tackling a player without the ball part of the game now?

Try 3. Ball turned over at Australian attacking ruck, All Blacks spin ball wide and – doh – pass it forward. Ref lets it go: try. Helpfully, the pass forward occurred on the 22-yard line – a useful point of reference for seeing that it was way forward, had the referee known the rules of the game.

Did the referee not know the rules, did he not see them or did he misinterpret them? It is unlikely to be the first and was a probably a combination of the second and third. Sadly, now Rugby Union is so over-complicated, so burdened with rules and different facets of play, that you will always feel ultimately frustrated by it.

But the philosophy behind it is crooked too. The modern game revolves around cheating and how best to get away with it.

The game’s advocates devotedly refer to this as ‘playing right on the limits’. But it is not, it is cheating. Players know the rules and they break them because they know that in most instances they will get away with it. Games are commonly won by the team that can cheat the most subtly. I cannot think of any other sport where this is the case.

Each scrum is the subject of cheating. As the referee can only be on one side of the restart, players always have an opportunity to cheat on the other. Props drop binds, bore-in or simply pull down on their opposite number. It happens every time. Commentators refer to this as a ‘lot of pressure on that scrum’ and it is shrugged off as just being a bit of light hearted ‘front-row skulduggery’. It is not pressure, nor is just something that props do. It is trying to get away with cheating.

Each tackle area leads to one a number of infringements. Invariably, all the involved players will attempt to break the rules. Either the grounded player will not release, the tackler not make any real attempt to roll away, both teams will use hands in the ensuing ruck or a defender will try to lay over the top of the ball to prevent it coming out quickly.

At most line outs, the gap closes or the jumpers are pulled down. Again, commentators refer to this as ‘pressure’.

Around the pitch ad hoc infringements occur with remarkable frequency. Forwards do not defend from the proper offside line at a ruck (ie behind the back foot), but if the refs looking, the backline will go offside instead. Late tackles and lazy runners lead to constant infringement (Jerry Collins is good at the former, Springbok locks at the latter). High tackles without arms occur constantly. Dan Carter tripped Gregan after a quick tap and go from a midfield penalty. This was a cynical, intentional foul (though there was no question of it leading directly to points), so why wasn’t he sent off?

It is not necessarily a failure on the referee’s part. If every infringement were called, the game would grind to a halt. It is the whole philosophy of the game which is at issue.

With one referee, thirty players and grey-area laws, all the game’s administrators are left with is just trying to make an absurd game work.

For me, this leads to feelings of injustice when your team goes down, instead of shrugging it off and accepting the result. If you read BBC’s Scrum-V chat, you will find out that even All Black supporters feel they were hard done by the referee in Sydney. How can this be? Decisions clearly favoured the All Blacks!

It makes for one-eyed supporters who revert to blaming the referee, when instead we should be looking at the game itself and the way it is coached and played.

On Sunday, I went to watch a different sort of rugby: a top of the ladder clash between the Brisbane Broncos and the St George-Illawarra Dragons, in the National Rugby League.

Though the Broncos went down, it was an enthralling game of flowing ball-in-hand rugby, brutally hard tackling, clever running lines and some great subtle kicking skills. The Dragons hooker and half-back constantly changed the point of attack until eventually the gaps emerged and they romped home four tries to one.

In the whole match I counted one instance of cheating – a Dragons player pushing the ball out of Tonie Carroll’s hands, in a 3 on 1 tackle. The ref adjudged it a knock-on.

Is it that Rugby League players angels? I doubt it. They are every bit the brutish athletes as their Union cousins. But there are just fewer opportunities to cheat. Fewer opportunities to cheat leads to fewer missed infringements or incorrect decisions. When your team goes down, you are left feeling disappointed with their performance, rather than spitting chips about the referee and the ‘blatant cheating’.

While Rugby Union requires a wider range of skills (ie each player must learn to ruck and maul as well as run and pass), the game’s intricacies are every bit part of the problem as they are part of the appeal. It is known as being the thinking man’s game or ‘the monster’s game played by gentlemen’.

But it is the straightforward laws of Rugby League that gives this game its appeal. It still has players of great skill, fitness and vision and can produce games every bit as exciting as Rugby Union.

Its simplicity gives it universal appeal. Like football (soccer) all you need to kick off is a patch of grass, four coats and a ball. Stroll on the 2005 finals series and go the Broncos.

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