Law variation Suggestions From Warren Gatland

[shasta]

For me the most needed change is...............

..........."The final item on my Christmas wish list would be to review how we use replacements. The game is producing incredibly powerful athletes and when you see teams like South Africa at the World Cup name a bench with seven forwards and just one back, it means that your forwards only have to play for 40 minutes. That was not what it was intended for."

...............I think this issue has done more to damage both Rugby codes more than any other.

https://www.smh.com.au/sport/rugby-u...28-p5etyj.html

[Burgs]

I'm mixed on this.
I think Rugby has evolved from strength to strength and ways to overcome those strengths.
This is really the case for any sport.
Agile Campese Wings gave way to Lomu's, then swung back to Habana's (ironically particularly in SA).
Hookers have been third Props who can throw, then agile Openside types with big engines.
Centres have been extra Flyhalves, then massive battering rams.
Battering rams have largely moved on to Benji Marshall goosesteps at the whiff of a blade of grass ( I suspect not far off until we see more "Bundi-ball" types)
Some teams have kicking #10's, others run & pass "Quarterbacks".
I think it is evidence based to say players are bigger and faster than they have ever been.
The field is effectively "smaller" (ie more crowded) than it has ever been.
Perhaps you could make a tenuous link between the strength of Australian "Running Rugby" of the past and the upward plane of Sevens in Australia now, where the game is at the ultimate in creativity and flair.
So, in regard to Gatland's point, you can either accept-
1. We have reached "Peak Rugby" in strategy/tactics and player physique, or
2. Strategy will evolve to expose the 7:1 tactic, or
3. Major change to laws &/or player numbers &/or field dimensions is required.
I would have assumed a Coach of Gatland's stature to be in #2 camp and armchair experts like us to be split between #1 and #3, so not sure if to be concerned or not...

[shasta]

player numbers &/or field dimensions is required

The Mungos tried the first then blew it by introducing interchange. Rugby did the same and had the same result; behemoths running to "win the collision" rather than running at a gap. Supposedly in the name of player welfare, instead the game(s) are more dangerous than ever.
The second has merit but in reality is impossible.

[Burgs]

I dunno if "impossible" is accurate, but agreed it is a great challenge for the coaches out there!

[Hansie]

Field is too small for Speed, Agility and smarts. Delete warnings in red zone before giving out yellows. First offside, not rolling away, coming into a ruck from the side equals a yellow. Reduce penalty kicks and drop kicks to 1 point. One scrum reset only, play longer advantage for knock on.

[shasta]

Field is too small for Speed, Agility and smarts.

That is true Hansie. But the dimensions are unchanged. What has changed is the size of players and forwards in particular. This has been brought about by the expanded replacement laws over time. Many more knowledgeable people than me also partly blame this for the increase in head trauma.
I think the interchange might be having another detrimental consequence too. A noticeable number of players are now staying in the game into their late 30's. Doesn't do a lot to encourage up and comers.

[Sheikh]

From one of the Guardian's rugby writers:

Was rugby better in the old days? Try watching it and you will soon find out

Another week, another set of ideas for how rugby union can be improved. Another year, another panoply of breathtaking matches, any one of which, if they had taken place in the distant amateur era, would be hailed by those “who were there” as legendary.

Last week Warren Gatland became the latest to offer his thoughts on how the game might move on. But in this age of social media incontinence we are never far from a thoughtless rant about how awful the game has become.

Last year, meanwhile, a casual glance through just the match reports this correspondent has written reveals yet more extraordinary displays of skill and drama. From Newcastle’s 40-point victory over the champions Leicester on the first weekend, through France v Scotland in the Six Nations, Leinster’s win over Toulouse, Wales v Fiji at the World Cup and one weekend in Paris that has already passed into legend – and it happened less than three months ago.

The quarter-finals of this year’s World Cup between New Zealand and Ireland on the Saturday and France v South Africa the next day were as good as any in the history of the event. The rugby was hailed by some, particularly the first half of the Sunday game, as the greatest ever played. A personal view is that, yes, they were astonishing, but also no more than the latest examples of a sport that seems to deliver weekend after weekend (viz the last couple of rounds of European rugby).

So why do we keep bemoaning the quality of the modern game? And, worse still, holding up the 20th‑century version as some sort of golden age when players were skilful and looked for space instead of contact?

It is difficult to evoke through words alone sufficient levels of contempt for the latter idea. Be in no doubt, all you nostalgists, rugby union was woeful in the amateur era. If you don’t believe that go back and watch it. All of it. From first whistle to last. And not that 101 Best Tries video your grandpa bought you for Christmas in 1987.

Admittedly, to watch an entire 80 minutes from the amateur era is not easy, but videos of them do exist on the internet. While researching Unholy Union, the book I wrote with Mark Evans a few years ago on where rugby has come from and where it is going, I sat through the entirety of the second and fourth Tests of the Lions tour to New Zealand in 1971, counting the key metrics such as scrums, lineouts and tackles.

And I did it twice. So no one else would have to.

There were slightly more set pieces (50-plus scrums, 50-plus lineouts) than there were tackles in both matches. It is worth pausing to consider that. The fourth Test in particular, a draw played out in blustery Auckland, was an incoherent mess of amateurs scrummaging, flapping, kicking, punching, elbowing, trampling and generally slip-sliding around. Sometimes with a ball somewhere near them. And we grew up being told what a legendary Test series that was.

Undoubtedly the biggest disadvantage the modern game has against the old days is levels of scrutiny. No one is trying to pretend every match nowadays is a thrill-fest. No sport anywhere has ever managed to magic away its dross.

The big problem now is that a person can watch six live matches a weekend on telly. A sport like rugby is laid bare, the brilliant never quite shaking off the stultifyingly bad. But just imagine if we were able to watch six live matches a weekend from the 1970s. That would be an experience to shake us from our nostalgia. That would do more for the popularity of the modern game than any tweak to the kicking laws.

The other problem is, perversely, how good everything is. Including and especially defences. Players in the modern game are immeasurably more skilful than their predecessors – of course they are, they’re full-time professionals – and they look for space all the time. It is just that there is so much less of it now.

There was footage of a try from some Welsh club match in the 1980s that did the rounds on social media a year or two ago. Nice simple handling down the line for a try in the corner, straight from a scrum. Beautiful skills executed simply.

And barely a defender in sight. The play may have started from a scrum, but those defenders arrived on screen one by one, as if each had been released sequentially from a cage on the touchline.

It is the modern game’s very excellence that would make such a try impossible today. Defences would never allow it. All the more extraordinary, then, that we see more spectacular tries in a season these days than any compiler could muster from the amateur era to fill a VHS for Christmas.

There is far less space in the modern game than there used to be last century, when you could throw a picnic rug over a pack of forwards as they marauded from set piece to set piece, from punch-up to punch-up. And so there are far more collisions, which throws up genuinely serious issues for the modern game to ponder.

But do not confuse that with players looking for contact over space. Or with a sport that has become boring and cynical. The opposite applies in both cases. Modern players are far nobler and more disciplined in the face of a more aggravating experience than their amateur predecessors, and they find far more space against more brutally constricting defences.

In short, they and their sport are far, far better than they ever were. Let us be careful what we wish for.

[shasta]

A nice long premise for the modern game. Leading right up to the problem I see. Lack of space. I don't agree with the conclusion that players don't look for the collision. Sure they do so in an endeavour to help create space, but the emphasis on winning the collision is fact.

I've no doubt that the modern game is a great spectacle but I'm also in no doubt that it could be even better and safer with less interchanges played by these fitter more skillful professionals.