Before the ARL Commission’s announcement of new rules for the 2021 NRL season, very few (if any) pundits, administrators or fans of any stripe had offered the assessment that what rugby league really needs is two-point field goals from outside 40m.
Yet here we are.
It is indicative of the fluent, dynamic and suck-it-and-see decision-making of ARLC chair Peter V’landys and his minions at HQ. And why not? V’Landys’s benign dictatorship is enjoying the longest honeymoon period of any NRL boss to date. His numbers are like those of Western Australia’s Labor.
When you have a mandate and capital, even if it goes bad and you change it back, they will call it “leadership”. Why not have a go?
And so V’landys, NRL chief Andrew Abdo and NRL head of football elite competition Graham Annesley have doubled down on the success of last year’s significant “six again” rule change. Their ethos, apparently, is, “well, if it worked once … ”
In a bid to further reduce stoppages and increase fatigue – in turn unpredictability as tired players make defensive misreads - V’landys and his clever sidekicks have given us six more tackles against teams infringing on 10m. There is a handover if the ball goes into touch rather than a scrum, and referees now rule immediately on tries while the bunker checks decisions off site.
There are others. None, though, really appeared to affect games. Things were slightly different. But the feel while watching on television or live from the Brewongle Stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground was, by and large, how it has always been.
Good teams scotched poor ones by running them off the park, hanging onto the ball and exploiting fatigue caused by repeat-repeat – and repeat – sets. The Dragons lost because they are the Dragons.
The six again for 10m infringements resulted in a willingness by defending teams to get offside early in the count, screaming off the line to get a shot on. The risk-reward appears worth it – one extra tackle versus the potential to bash an opponent and jolt the football free.
In the Roosters-Manly game on Saturday evening, Sea Eagles fullback Dylan Walker dropped a bomb into touch. The Roosters took the ball midfield and had a six-on-six left side of the field. From a midfield scrum it may have been three on three.
Similarly, the Panthers won possession against the Cowboys when fullback Scott Drinkwater toed a kick into touch. Penrith played the ball 10m in. According to commentator Andrew Voss, we “got on with it”.
Voss hates scrums because he wants more “action” and does not see them as part of it. The ARLC insists scrums are “part of the game’s DNA” and must, therefore, maintain their integrity.
Anyway, players cannot break away from a scrum until the ball is out, and perhaps that millisecond of cover defence from the Dragons scrums was why Cronulla Sharks were able to rip off a cracking four-pointer when multiple men ran angles and the Saints clutched at Kogarah air.
Incorrect play-the-balls would result in handovers, which was another rule to maintain “integrity” around the play-the-ball without increasing stoppages for penalties. Seems to have worked, save for Justin Olam’s clanger which came from the quite legitimate belief that dropping the ball was a knock-on, as has been the case since 1994. Perhaps the knock-back is back.
Is the goal of the new rules to make defensive lines look like a touch game with teams making huge metres but being too fatigued to actually do anything at the end of sets? pic.twitter.com/pqtI7DBJPD
— Jack (@jackkcronin) March 13, 2021
Injured players would be sidelined for two minutes when play was stopped by a trainer. Bailey Simonson was taken off for such a ruling in the Canberra-Wests Tigers match, and did not come back on. TV viewers barely noticed. Fans at the ground likely missed it completely.
Yet of all the new rules, the most appealing is the immediate awarding of tries via the old-fashioned, stiff-armed, flat-palm point to the spot by the adjudicator.
If there were potential issues – as there were with Blake Ferguson’s barnstorming effort on Friday that led to Clint Gutherson’s try – it is checked “in the background” by the bunker.
The result may be the same – try or no try. But for the fan it is a slightly different, more fluid, less stilted experience. It is as if the play flows – even if you know the boffins are working behind the scenes to kill or repeat the buzz.
Maybe that little point of difference is the key. Change-up each year. Keep things fresh, interesting, bubbling along. Keep ‘em guessing.
See the 40 metre, two-point field goal, designed to “encourage more unstructured play and increase the chances of a result changing in the final moments of a game”.
That was one thing the weekend did not throw up. But we wait with bated breath – even if just to see if it excites as much as the big chiefs believe it will.
