Gerry Thornleyargues whichever ELVs are adopted universally the fear must be that the game will not necessarily be the better for it
LET'S FACE IT, rugby has become a little boring this season, hasn't it? There are still some cracking games, and both the refereeing of the vexed ELVs (Experimental Law Variations) and the pre-season protocol about penalising players for going to ground has calmed down, along with some of the initially irate reactions to them. But much of the rugby is simply not as good to watch as last season.
Confusion also reigns, not least among supporters, who can scarcely understand or even recognise the sport from a season ago. This is because last April the governing body's council voted to trial 13 of the 33 ELVs at the outset of the current season.
More of the ELVs had already been in existence since January 2008 in the Super 14, at the behest of the International Rugby Board (IRB), while the end-of-year Currie Cup in South Africa and the Air New Zealand Championship operated under the full raft of ELVs.
Then, just to muddle things further, at the outset of this season the IRB issued their "protocol" to crack down on players not staying on their feet (liberally if inconsistently applied) and crooked feeds at scrum time (largely ignored).
Confused? We certainly ought to be. Perhaps, in hindsight, it would have been better if the IRB had ensured the global game had actually moved forward universally and simultaneously in adopting all the ELVs in their entirety.
Certainly, that's what Rod Macqueen believes. The 1999 Australian World Cup winning coach was one of the luminaries on the IRB's rugby committee of the ELV group along with Pierre Villepreux, Graham Mourie, Richie Dixon and others who, unpaid, had worked on the ELVs for four years.
"That's been the issue from day one, because then the Northern Hemisphere would have been fully able to evaluate what's right and what's wrong," says Macqueen. "The argument here is not about which ELVs are right or wrong. The argument here is why didn't the Northern Hemisphere trial the ELVs in their entirety to actually see what works and what doesn't? A lot of the ELVs depend on the run-on effect of other ELVs."
SO WHY DID the IRB allow the Southern Hemisphere to start them off in January 2007, and then allow a scenario where the Northern Hemisphere - with a collective gun to their heads - could apply them in piecemeal format?
The results have been chaotic.
The Super 14 and Tri-Nations permitted a greater contest at ruck time by allowing defenders to play the ball while on their feet. It looked almost like a different sport. From his time with West Harbour in Sydney when the ELVs were trialled in 2007, Ulster coach Matt Williams says the benefits were positive. "It speeded the game up and reduced the number of penalties," he says, a point echoed by Macqueen, "and it gave a huge boost to the attacking team. It puts the onus on you to move the ball quickly and not leave it under the last foot."
Tony McGahan, the Munster coach, also cited this as a reason the Tri-Nations teams were generally obtaining quicker ruck ball and playing a higher tempo game in the November Tests.
The "protocol" came with the proviso that if players, due to their momentum, go to ground beyond the ball in clearing it out, play should continue, but in reality they too have been punished. It's clear this "protocol" was primarily in response to pick-and-go endgame tactics, especially Munster in closing out the Heineken Cup final against Toulouse last May, even though it had been happening on a weekly basis across all competitions.
Granted, players had been going off their feet with increasing impunity in recent seasons, but coupled with players being penalised for not releasing the ball, it has made running from one's half or counter-attacking risky in the extreme.
And Munster could be forgiven for thinking their endgame against Toulouse was the video template presented to the refereeing community in pre-season. The English referee Wayne Barnes was particularly harsh on Munster in their last-ditch home win over Montauban and defeat away to Clermont, when the reigning European champions conceded 30 points through penalties in their own half - many of them when they had been in possession. It wouldn't have been so galling had their French opponents been penalised as rigidly for being offside or coming in from the side.
Coupled with the neutering of the maul - more anon - Munster have seemingly been victimised, but McGahan is not of a mind to say as much. "If we were winning I'd definitely come out and say something, but I think after the previous two losses it would be sour grapes to be honest, and I think we're under enough scope as it is."
At the very least, attacking teams continuously have to commit more players to rucks to secure the ball than defending teams. The net result is that Munster have felt obliged, like many other teams, to tailor their initial intentions to run the ball or counter from their own half.
"Without a doubt," concedes McGahan, "especially after the Montauban game. We've had to look at the way referees are refereeing and the way we're playing the game. Playing any sort of rugby in that zero to 40 (metre) zone is really a no-go zone, unless you've absolutely got a distinct advantage in tactical formation."
SIMILARLY, WILLIAMS trimmed Ulster's counter-attacking and running games after conceding nine points at home to the Dragons when in possession. He points out Ulster were the joint highest try scorers in the Magners League "but we've had more penalties kicked against us than any other team in the league because we try and run the ball. So I've had to change that. The referees' crackdown on penalising teams in possession for losing their footing means you run a high risk if you have four or five rucks in your own half. We're running at a 50 per cent penalty ratio while in possession."
This is all compounded, he adds, by different interpretations from country to country. "A Scottish referee's interpretation can be completely different to a Frenchman, or an Englishman or an Irishman. So many coaches are just saying: 'boys, in your own half, kick the s*** out of it.' It's not the laws, or the ELVs, on that particular point."
Macqueen notes that blaming the ELVs for all of this is ironic. "At the moment the biggest issue in the Northern Hemisphere is the breakdown and yet you're playing none of the ELVs which apply to the breakdown at all," he says, referring to an offside line as soon as a tackle is made, or if a player is on his feet he can play the ball after a ruck is formed, and the reduction of most offences from full to indirect frees.
Decried as a cheat's charter in many quarters, Macqueen says it has allowed referees to police it and speed up the game, with indirect frees coming down from 27 per game to 22. He also points out there were, on average, 50 kicks out of hand per game in the 2008 Super 14, as against 51 a match the year before.
He also regularly cites the unprecedented amount of kicking in the World Cup semi-finals and final, although as Macqueen should know, semi-finals and especially finals are invariably ultra-cautious games low on tries. Like most sports, teams are less inclined to take risks in World Cup finals.
As Wales coach Warren Gatland and many others have maintained all along, there was little wrong with the game and its laws before 2008 had they been enforced more rigidly. A prime case in point is the maul, where referees had gradually ceased applying the use-it-or-lose ruling, but the ELV permitting defending teams to bring down mauls clearly states that this can only be done from the waist up. Repeatedly we have seen mauls brought down in their infancy from below the waist with impunity.
McGahan warns "the maul is a wonderful attacking weapon. We really don't want rugby to become a ball-off-the-deck game only. That may be fine for the Super 14, which is played on fast dry tracks in a three-month block. One of the challenges of coaching here is the variety that comes with varying conditions over 40 weeks."
There should still be room in the game for a dynamic maul, not least because it also sucks in defenders. But as Macqueen accepts, it was never the intention of the ELVs to completely rid the game of the maul. "That would be the last thing rugby union needs. Rugby union needs mauls. It's one of the nuances of the game and commits defence. Maybe this will be one of the ones that won't go through."
There are, as Williams points out, only three ways to move the ball forward: run it, kick it or maul it. As one of the other options, running it, is often deemed too risky to attempt from inside one's own half, the net effect has been that more teams have simply kicked it back down the middle of the field; all the more so given the ELV prohibiting teams from carrying or passing the ball into their own 22 and kicking it out on the full. While this has merits, in that it denies a defending team a-get-out-of-jail card, cue endless bouts of aerial ping-pong.
WORRYINGLY, REFEREEING standards are dipping. The move towards full-time, professional referees has, given retirement in the mid-40s, not made it a very attractive career option. Interestingly, neither Alain Rolland nor Alan Lewis are full-time referees.
"So much of the problem is the interpretation of the referees," says Williams, adding: "The officiating is the biggest issue facing our game. I get a lot of deaf ears on this, but tell me the penalty you've seen for the opposition not being five metres back from a scrum?" Not one.
With still insufficient policing of the hindmost foot, offside line and scrumhalves being continually spoiled illegally (a pet hate!), all in all negative, defensive teams have been given a leg-up. As Wasps director of rugby Ian McGeechan has noted: "It seems to me that a strong kicking game and a decent chase are now enough to win you a match, while anything more imaginative stands every chance of losing you one."
The lineout had been the game's primary attacking weapon for the previous three or four years, but not any more. Coupled with the neutering of the maul has been the ELV which imposes no restrictions on the number of players either team puts into a lineout. Even when trialled in club rugby in Sydney, when he was with West Harbour, Williams was against this ELV, "because the game's a contest, and allowing defenders to have more players than attackers in any situation gives the defence a bonus."
Instead, the five-metre offside law at scrums (though loosely enforced) has made this set-piece the preferred attacking option. Indeed, this is one of the few ELVs which appears to have almost universal approval. (Williams would go further, and apply the five-metre offside line at lineouts and rucks as well, in part to simplify the game.)
A HUGE AMOUNT of data is being assembled globally. All the professional teams and coaches across Europe will be surveyed in exactly the same way, so that all the information can be analysed. The IRFU are also launching a similar survey on the IRFU website for all levels of the game and for all stakeholders. Analysed independently by a professional company, it will also be conducted on all the European Union websites.
The IRFU's Owen Doyle accepts it is "unhealthy, to say the least, that there are three or four variations of refereeing being played around the world now. This is a universal sport and it needs to come back under one set of laws."
D-Day will be in May. Outlining the process between now and then, Doyle says: "The IRB will discuss the ELVs at their meeting in March, on foot of which each union will make a submission to the IRB. The rugby committee of the IRB will then take cognisance of all these opinions and make a recommendation to IRB Council as to which should come into full law. My understanding is that a date will then be set in May for the game to be played under one set of laws across the world at all levels."
There will be nothing remotely resembling uniformity of opinion, and whichever ELVs are adopted the fear must be that the game will not necessarily be the better for it. It's been a long, painful process and not only is it unclear as to how it will all be resolved, there may be further pain ahead.
"At the end of the day, rugby will get what it deserves," says Macqueen. "I'm not annoyed, I'm frustrated, because I'm involved in something with a group of people who have the best interests of the game. The disappointing thing for me as a businessman is seeing politics once again overcoming sense and that yet again we are not going through a professional, business-like process."
ELVs The good, the bad and the ugly
The Good:The introduction of an offside line five metres behind the hindmost foot of the scrum.
Though often leading to a footrush to the gainline or a free kick downfield for outhalves, it has also revitalised the scrum as a means of first phase, backline attack.
The Bad:Kicking directly into touch from inside the 22, if a team puts the ball back into its own 22,
earns no ground. Though good in that it denies a defending team a get-out-of-jail card, coupled with
the "protocol" about players staying on their feet at the breakdown, it has contributed to moonballing from 22 to 22.
The Ugly:Pulling a maul down provided the player grabs an opponent between the hips to the shoulders. Result: one cannot recall one instance of referees applying the law here, with the effect that one of the game's unique features and primary attacking weapons has been neutered. As "numbers" no longer apply at lineouts, it gives a further advantage to defending teams.
WHAT THE EXPERTS THINK OF THE NEW LAWS
Rod MacQueen
1999 World Cup-winning Australian coach and part of the IRB's ELV working party.
"Three years ago the IRB recognised that we needed to address some issues in the game, and a lot of that was due to interpretation of the laws. The game has become complicated and we wanted to make the game simpler to understand. For example, there are 30-odd laws at the breakdown.
"When the IRB decided to put a process in place, at great cost, for that not to be followed is beyond my comprehension. I cannot understand why the Northern Hemisphere did not undertake to look at all the ELVs. My issue is not to say which is the right or wrong ELVs, but simply to follow a process, and not do what has happened in the past and make decisions on assumptions and political self-interest.
"The disappointment in all of this is that we wouldn't be having this debate because we would have all of the data across the world and then we could make more informed decisions."
Matt Williams
Ulster coach
"Even in all the discussions and arguments we're having, not enough people are truly saying what is the cause of this problem. There are symptoms, but what's the disease? And the disease still comes to the officiating and the control of the officiating.
"You also feel for the officials, because there is so much happening. But that is what the ELVs, in full, are designed to do. They take the decision-making away from the referee. Some of it has worked, some hasn't, but the biggest problem facing the game is officiating, as in setting standards, and controlling of tournaments, the ranking of referees and how they communicate with coaches. The fact that the Super 12 and Super 14 have been having conferences with coaches and referees for more than 10 years, and there's only been one for this season's Heineken Cup, is an indictment of the game up here."
Owen Doyle
Head of the IRFU ELV laws group
"We want to ensure that rugby maintains its unique and specific characteristics, and that it remains in the long-term a game for all shapes and sizes, that teams are allowed to play to their strengths, and it's important that we don't just focus on the elite game. In other words, whatever comes into full law is workable across all levels of the game.
"We will start getting the results of surveys being conducted by independent companies across Europe in all the six nations regarding their opinions about the ELVs. We're also observing matches as to what we see are the outcome of the ELVs, and are going online shortly with a survey that will be available to the rugby public at all levels - players, coaches, referees, supporters, volunteers, parents. They can log in and give their opinions and all of that will be data-based. We don't just want to have an anecdotal opinion on any of these Experimental Law Variations."
Tony McGahan
Munster coach
"It's very hard to comment on the ELVs at the breakdown until you've actually experienced them. But if you put a rule through the November internationals, the Southern Hemisphere sides were superior at the breakdown because they were able to stay on their feet longer.
"The five-metre offside rule at the scrum opens up another attacking dimension, and not being able to pass back into the 22 and kick has forced sides to play a little more, but the protocol at the breakdown has led to more kicking, especially from outside the 22 to halfway. Sides are paranoid about playing any rugby there whatsoever.
"You'd hope that the rules of the game are there to support positive rugby. No matter what style you play, we're all there to score points, but if you're refereeing very harshly on the attacking side and then looking at the defence, the defending side is going to win all the time, and that's what's happening at the minute."
