Negotiating the crooked line
To see or not to see. That is the question after the opening two rounds of the new Premiership season when the emphasis seems to be on increasing the time the ball is in play by ignoring certain law infractions. Crooked feeds into the scrum have long been connived at, but now forward passes are being tolerated and not straight in the lineout has become a relative concept.
Not too unstraight, it seems now. Which sort of makes sense given the determination to unclot matches from numerous scrum resets: why blow for a throw that, while not straight down the middle of a lineout, is not veering towards the thrower’s scrum-half and swap that set piece for a potentially troublesome scrum?
Get the ball out and away seems to be the mantra and, added to the drift towards making it harder for defending teams to contest at the breakdown, rugby union is becoming less a contest for possession and more one of what sides do with the ball. Some are adapting more slowly than others: Last Saturday, South Africa persisted in kicking to Australia’s full-back, Israel Folau, not a smart tactic in itself, rather than trusting themselves to sustain an attack.
It is a legacy of the days when teams considered it to be dangerous to be in possession in certain areas of the field, that is within range of the opposition goal-kicker. Wales have for years made conquest of the skies a key part of their gameplan and in Dan Biggar have one of the best retrievers around, but with officials now seeming to favour the attacking side it is becoming more of a risk to give possession away.
One consequence is that there will be more inconsistency. When Leicester played Gloucester at Kingsholm on the opening night of the Premiership season, they were awarded a try after JP Pietersen had appeared to throw the ball forward after being tackled. There was no review, but later, when Adam Thompstone chased a kick ahead and had a claim for a penalty try after being impeded as the ball bounced over the Gloucester tryline, he was ruled on review to have been in front of the kicker.
Which he was, if marginally, but certainly less in front than Pietersen’s pass was of its target, Manu Tuilagi. Who is deciding which rule breaches to see and which not to? Not referees, now professional at the top level and obliged to act on directives – speeding up matches is the latest one – but because they remain employed by unions, rather than World Rugby, they remain subject to the whims of their employers with countries having differing priorities. There is no move to have the world’s leading officials employed by the game’s governing body, even though it would aid consistency by removing them from the conflicting demands of their unions when it comes to which laws to focus on, although the idea has been discussed in the past.
The law on a forward pass is clear: “A throw forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward, ie if the arms of the player passing the ball move towards the opposing team’s dead ball line.” The definition was changed three years ago having read: “A throw forward occurs when a player throws or passes the ball forward. ‘Forward’ means towards the opposing team’s dead ball line.”
So it is now not about whether a pass is forward, but the direction in which a player’s arms are pointing. If a player perfects a throw like an American Football quarterback in a clear backward movement and manages to manoeuvre the ball out of the side of his or her throwing arm so that it clearly travels forward, there is no breach of the regulation itself, only its spirit.
When World Rugby announced last year the current experimental law variations, which are being trialled throughout the world in club and international tournaments, it stated that the laws must allow for a fair contest for possession, especially “in the contact area, in general play and when play is restarted at scrums, lineouts and kick-offs”.
It is not quite working out that way. Even Sam Warburton, renowned turnover specialist, is finding it hard to steal possession at the breakdown since players were stopped from putting their arms on the ground beyond the ball . As fetchers struggle to adapt, England have shown that operating without a specialist openside is not the handicap it would have been even a year ago.
Before the start of the season, Exeter’s head coach, Rob Baxter, said he was concerned that attempts to speed up the game and demystify some of its more arcane elements as it sought a new audience in countries such the United States, China and continental Europe, would make it less a sport for all shapes and sizes and more one modelled on rugby league, all action and athleticism with no room for specialisation.
One of the current law trials discourages players from putting a foot into touch before catching the ball or planting it over the dead ball line before dabbing it down, because the reward will no longer be a lineout on the line the ball was kicked from or a scrum. In the first instance, the player will be considered to have put a foot in touch and in the second a drop-out will be awarded.
If it is currently hard on kickers who have not made an egregious mistake, it is another move in favour of the team in possession. That said, the six-point try is unlike to pass into law because in the trials it has spawned even more kicks to touch and driving mauls, which remain difficult to defend legally. If player welfare lies at the heart of any permanent changes to the laws before the next World Cup, the contest for possession and the value of rugby union’s staples, such as the set-pieces, should not be far behind. To see or to be all at sea.
• This is an extract taken from The Breakdown, the Guardian’s weekly rugby union email. To subscribe, just visit this page and follow the instructions.
