Hybrid would be an unholy union

A response to the article Evans, Bennett push for hybrid rugby - Western Force Rugby Supporters Site

Hybrid would be an unholy union
Spiro Zavos | April 1, 2008 Hybrid would be an unholy union - rugbyheaven.com.au

"I'VE always said the smartest thing rugby should do is merge with rugby league."

I hope the chairman of the Queensland Rugby Union, Peter Lewis, was misquoted when reports suggested he foreshadowed a hybrid rugby game. The two codes can't be merged into one. The reason for this is that the two codes have differing and contradictory unifying principles. Before people accuse me of league-bashing, let me make the point that the unifying principles are neither better nor worse than each other, just different.

The unifying principle of rugby league is that it is a man-on-man game. The unifying principle of rugby union is that it is a game built around the notion of a constant contest for possession. You see these principles at work with the way rugby league has taken the contest away from the scrum and the play-the-ball ruck: and the way the mauls, rucks and scrums in rugby union remain a contest (especially when the referees insist on straight feeds).

So any hybrid game, as apparently envisaged by Lewis, would either be a man-on-man game (rugby league) or a contest-for-possession game (rugby union). This is a case, therefore, of two into one won't go. Have to say this is a compelling argument against. Hard to see a compromise..

One of the crucial aspects of the experimental laws variations (ELVs) is that they are an attempt to take some of the mess and uncertainty out of the rucks while still retaining the principle of the constant contest. In the laws of rugby there are about 30 ways in which players can infringe at the rucks and mauls and incur a full-arm penalty. The ELVs have reduced the full-arm penalty to a handful of offences: foul play, not coming in from "through the gate" behind the last feet, and offside. All the other offences at the ruck and maul are short-arm penalties.

The hope behind this simplification is that referees won't be deciding the outcomes of matches. Is this happening?

In the Super 14, the Waratahs have lost the habit of scoring tries, even when they are on top of their opponents, as they were for most of Friday's match against the Cheetahs. Even though they won 23-19, the Waratahs were outscored by three tries to two. But they were frustrated, as well, by the way the Cheetahs tended to kill the ball when they were hard on defence.

There's been a lot of discussion about what is going wrong with the Waratahs. The fact is they are only two points out of the top four. This represents a stronger position than the criticism that the team has been receiving might suggest.

The Waratahs, though, are struggling with their scrum and have lost the dominant lineout that took the team into the 2005 Super 12 grand final and 2006 Super 14 semi-final. And this brings us back to the constant contest for possession in rugby. This season the Waratahs haven't won enough of those contests.