THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN

 

REVIEW OF ELV’S (EXPERIMENTAL LAW VARIATIONS)

By R.J.P.Marks

 

I have been very fortunate to have had a number of privileged rugby experiences in a rather long rugby career spanning the disciplines of playing, commentating, selecting, coaching and administrating. Two of the rugby giants that I travelled with over a concentrated period were Dr Danie Craven and Ray Williams OBE and both had a profound influence on my rugby philosophy.

 

(Danie Craven was the greatest rugby achiever of all time in terms of his distinguished playing, coaching and administrative contributions which were all enhanced by his brilliant academic mind.  He played for his country in five positions, and I can remember someone telling me that the greatest team to have ever left New Zealand was the 1937 Springboks captained by no other than Danie Craven. He was President of the South African Rugby Union when I first met him during the 1963 Wallaby tour but it was while flying around South Africa with him in a private jet on a coaching tour involving black youth that I gleaned his views on the game.

 

Ray Williams was the doyen of coaching organisers in his day and went on to be the head administrative officer of the then powerful Welsh Rugby Union. From there he became a key figure in the IRB and an important organiser of the 1991 World Cup which of course Australia won. It was while travelling with him around Australia for a month that I was able to learn how best to formulate Australia’s National Coaching Scheme.)

 

 

While I learned much more from both of them than needs to be related here my abiding lessons were:

 

From Danie Craven:

 

The interesting point about “the Doc” as he was affectionately called was that he considered the highlight of his career not to be his playing, coaching or his 37 year Presidency of the South African Rugby Union but rather his Chairmanship of the IRB Laws Committee. He was emphatic that being the guardian of the great game in that capacity was the ultimate responsibility and he had some definite ideas on what should be preserved or enhanced. For him the three most important objectives were to:

 

 

From Ray Williams:

 

Ray was a very clear thinker who taught me the importance of establishing principles before rushing into programs. A good example of that were his three principles of attack which were:

 

v     Go Forward

v     Support

v     Continuity

 

And his lone principle of defence which was:

 

v     Pressure

 

To this day I refer to these four factors when analysing a team performance and the outcome is always in accordance with how well these were carried out.

 

I mention these men in relation to the current Experimental Law Variations (ELVs) and it concerns me that the wisdom of these great leaders is not being applied. They were leaders and leadership seems to be missing on this issue.

 

Before I come to the specifics of that concern I need to refer to some more general issues associated with the whole process.

 

ü      It would seem that over the four years of trials there has been a wasted opportunity to broaden the experimentation. Excessively the same ones have been trialled over and over again albeit at different levels. It was the ideal time to experiment with the scrum engagement, the punishment for deliberate or consistent infringement and the points system which will be treated in more detail further on.

 

ü      In the past under far more conservative laws than those that exist now there have been some fabulously action-packed games with the 1972 All Black v Barbarians game to the forefront. The major encounters will always attract great crowds and large viewing audiences by virtue of the occasion and if the Wallabies beat the All Blacks or if Ireland beats England, the respective supporters won’t really care how fluid the game was. The arm wrestles and the over caution displayed in many such big games was due much more to the attitude of the coaches and players than to the laws.

 

Surprisingly the vision of the appointed experts on the ELV Committee has not been broad enough to recognise that the attitudinal shift desired by most of us could have been easily changed through the points scoring mechanism as opposed to changing the brilliant mosaic of the game itself – a simple solution to which I shall refer later.

 

ü      People forget that the whole project is an experiment and when an experiment produces unexpected or disappointing results those in charge of the laboratory need to go back to the drawing boards. Some officials were far too quick to endorse the ELVs before they were fully tested and now that weakness and unfortunate side effects have been exposed, they are too reluctant or maybe even too stubborn to revise their thinking and to make any alterations.

 

ü      Some of the outspoken advocates for the implementation of the package (whichever particular package that might be) have vested interests in supporting a political line and, to be fair, I don’t suppose you can expect them to bite the hand that feeds them

 

 

ü      Australia now finds itself in the ridiculous situation of having to accommodate four different sets of experiments namely,

 

§         those decreed by the IRB

§         those decreed by SANZAR in the Tri-Nations series

§         those decreed by SANZAR for the Super 14 competition

§         and the original package used by Australian clubs

 

For those referees that work at all levels the job must be an absolute nightmare.

 

ü      The great games of the world have never had to make such changes of the magnitude embraced by the ELVs. Most of their changes have related to equipment and in football (or soccer as some southern hemisphere countries still call it) the only real law change has been to stop the goalkeeper from picking up and kicking from a deliberate pass from a team mate. That was good so don’t think that the writer is opposed to incremental change even when times are as good as they are now. The radicalism of these experimental variations is another thing altogether and driven, dare I say it, by personal egotism, extended consultancy fees, big noting emanating from the now notorious ARU “Spin Factory”, a leaning on a lot of people either on the personal payroll or on some other “connected benefit scheme”.

 

ü      The push coming from Australia is that the ELVs must be adopted to promote entertainment but that is according to its own rugby definition of the word. Normally “entertainment” means amusement and enjoyment with the emphasis being on enjoyment in the rugby context because surely if we want to be amused, we go more in the direction of vaudeville than of rugby. The IRB coffers would suggest that the entertainment value of rugby is not in dire straits and if the ARU coffers are in jeopardy, then fix the competition structure rather than the laws.

 

The ARU’s propaganda has said that the 2008 television rugby ratings for Super 14 have increased because of the ELVs which weren’t in operation the previous year. This conveniently and deviously hides the fact that 2007 was a year where the focus was on the World Cup and that for much of the competition the best players were absent. On top of that increased ratings don’t translate directly into money and the crowds that the participating Unions need were actually down in many cases.

 

 

ü      Many of the criticisms that have led to these experiments have come from administrative incompetence. Soon after the introduction of professionalism the authorities allowed the referees to become a law unto themselves. Why I don’t know but maybe it was to short circuit the lawmaking process and to allow the game they wanted to come in through the back door. Criticisms of the law were far more muted when the law book was strictly applied in the amateur days so it could be argued that the need for much of the change is based on the false premise of seeing weaknesses in the “bodgie” laws rather than in the real ones. I have facetiously suggested in the past that one of the experiments should be to trial a few games under the current laws because we have all forgotten what that game really is.

 

The administrators abrogated their responsibility of ensuring that the laws were but even more irresponsibly they allowed this insidious “Aide Memoire” to take precedence. As a result we have seen a multiplicity of laws being ignored and replaced with the referees’ own variations. The most glaring example of that is that the current Law Book still states that lifting in the lineout is illegal. Many to whom I relate that fact cannot believe that this is how much the official Laws have been allowed to become irrelevant.

 

NB. The “Aide Memoire” was conceived early in the professional era when a group of professional referees was called together for discussions. After these talks took place they issued a document about what they were going to allow and disallow irrespective of what the laws actually stated and that is when cleaning out, lifting, putting the ball into the scrum under your own hooker’s feet and all the other infringements were made semi legal.

 

Enough of the general flaws in the whole exercise, so let me now turn to the specifics mentioned in the opening and in so doing  I shall relate to the last four Tri-Nations tests involving Australia – pretty much the ultimate experiment if you like, at least from a Southern Hemisphere point of view..

 

In relation to part of the Craven lawmaking prerequisite to:

 

 

These games under the ELVs have:

 

  1. produced numerous contact possession contests which involve players being left on the ground all over the place

 

  1. Almost eliminated the true ruck and maul in the continuity process which is a massive attack on two of the most valuable identities of the game.

 

In the last Bledisloe Cup game there were a mere six mauls and I would suggest that nearly all of these occurred at lineout meaning that the ball-in-hand maul has almost disappeared as a continuity vehicle.

 

It may be said that, “but with 168 tackle/rucks in the same game how has the identity of the ruck been removed?” The simple answer to that is that the classification of the ruck under these ELVs in no way resembles the ruck that Danie Craven was talking about as an identity of the game.

 

It should also be recognised that the principle of retaining the identities has now been enshrined in the Rugby Charter so if the ELVs are adopted in this form, it will be against the IRB’s own guidelines.

 

In relation to the Ray Williams notion of governing any system with a set of principles:

 

 

I was personally involved with a team of specialist Sydney doctors who deemed the collapsing of a maul as one of the most dangerous practices in the game. It was very quickly made illegal by the IRB about 25 years ago and for the life of me I cannot understand either what has happened to make it safe or how administrators can expose themselves to litigation when the next fatality occurs. Being so blasé about safety is beyond belief especially after the recent death of an Argentinean player in a maul.

 

The irony of this measure is that the authorities have waged a war on the ruck because it occasionally left a few scratches on the backs of players but can then encourage the pulling down of players in all sorts of vulnerable neck positions. (As an aside, I have spoken to dozens of ex internationals in recent months and not one of them has regarded the ruck dangerous in any way. In fact the majority have said its return is the only way to clean up the unsightly mess that occurs at most breakdowns.)

 

 

 

 

Assuming two things, the principle of compliance has to be a high priority for the lawmakers. The assumptions are firstly that the referee will not arbitrarily turn a blind eye to a lot of infringements and secondly that no one wants to hear the whistle blowing and the action being stopped all the time.

 

Clearly the ELVs have failed that test as there were a total of 33 free kicks and penalties compared with an average of 19 in the 2007 Rugby World Cup (the lowest number was 11). Any set of laws that produces 33 penalties, whether they be short-arm or long-arm, is flawed on the basis that players find compliance too difficult. It is no good saying that the increase in penalties is compensated by a reduction in scrums because in RWC 2007 the average number of scrums was 19 and in the Bledisloe there were 26.

 

As for the highly contentious debate on the role of the referee I thought that one of the intentions of these ELVs was to clarify the law and to reduce the refereeing factor in the outcome equation. In fact he has become an even more crucial figure with his welter of penalties and his discretion in deciding what is short-arm, what is long-arm and when he will clamp down on a series of technical infringements. In short he is becoming an increasingly irritating figure. We have all recently mourned the recent passing of Doctor Roger Vanderfield who like Danie Craven was a former Chairman of the IRB Laws Committee. Roger also was a highly intelligent person and steeped in the true values of rugby. His trade mark as an international referee was his great application of the Advantage Law and his ability to be the 31st player as opposed to being the central figure on stage which these ELVs are encouraging. I tend to think that in Heaven he might be keeping his fingers crossed that sanity will prevail and that  they do not come into being particularly because his brother Dr Geoff Vanderfield, who sat on the IRB Medical Committee, so vehemently opposed the perilous practice of collapsing mauls.

 

What this analysis says so far is that statistics that were supposed to come down are in fact going up but let me now turn to the general play kicking situation. In the Bledisloe we saw a tolerable 55 kicks in this area which excludes penalties, conversions and restarts. In the previous three Wallaby Tri-Nations games, however, we were treated to general kicks which were in the seventies climbing to over 80 in the South African thrashing of Australia at Ellis Park.

 

Many of these kicks were generated from the variation which removes the kicking out on the full option for a ball passed or carried behind the 22 metre line. Under current law most of these resulted in a kick out and a lineout. Ironically from this situation we now invariably see a series of kicks and this occurs from another fault in the ELVs.

 

Any technical or tactical rugby person would know that one of the great challenges of our game is to build or construct a platform from which a final assault can be made on an opposition goal line. This not only requires skill but it also requires some continuity in the attack or to put it another way, it requires some security of possession in the broken play phases. Under current law this could be done with good contact techniques in making the ball available, rucking and mauling. As such running and making contact often gave you a better chance of maintaining possession than kicking.

 

With the new ELVs the turnover rate has escalated to the point that a fielder of the ball outside but close to his own 22metre line is reluctant to take the running option particularly when the kick has been well chased. This is so because he realises the danger of a turnover in that part of the field so what does he do? Not surprisingly he tries to reverse the situation with a kick downfield which often deteriorates into a ‘tit for tat’ situation that can give us 80 kicks in 35 minutes of live rugby.

 

This is what the Springbok captain Victor Matfield had to say after the last test against Australia, “We found that during the Tri Nations the teams that kicked the ball the most normally won.” Surely that must send shock waves through all rugby lovers!

 

If that’s the condemnation from South Africa let’s hear what the coaches of the other Tri-Nations’ team think:

 

Smith and Henry explained the ELVs had led to an enormous game transformation.

"The kicking game in particular has changed considerably," Henry said. "We had 38 kicks that we received last weekend, and in a normal game it would be a third of that. It's become more of a kick-chase game."

All Blacks assistant coach Wayne Smith could not agree more, believing the Law of Unintended Consequences has hijacked the ELVs.

The experimental law variations were introduced to encourage attacking rugby, but instead, Smith claims, they have produced the opposite effect.

"The ELVs have created a game where territory is important, where you don't want to be caught too often behind your gain line or in your own territory," Smith said. "Someone's going to get a free kick which could create momentum for the other team.

"The vision was that teams would have to run it out from their 22m. I'm sure there are a lot of opportunities where teams could run it out, but the first tendency now is to kick it."

Australia’s fullback seems to agree that the game has been transformed into a kickfest:

"There's a lot more kicking in the game, a lot more infield kicking," he {Ashley-Cooper} said. "With teams now a lot harder on the ball, it's all about playing territory."

That is powerful stuff coming from very important sources and must lead us to the questions:

1.      Do we really want an enormous game transformation?

2.      Has this escalation in kicking and uncertainty of possession maintenance really enhanced the entertainment value?

Referring to the 35 minutes of game time mentioned before, we were told the ELVs were going to produce more game time. The last Bledisloe gave us 35 minutes and guess what? This was exactly the average of the 2007 RWC. The only difference is that in that 35 minutes we have to put up with 33 penalties and sometimes 80 kicks in a game that has lost its structure. As someone succinctly put it, “Even if the ball is marginally more in play, that's not much use when it's 50 meters up in the air.”

 

The ARU keeps on calling for more of the same experiments to be carried out in more countries but surely we have done the experiment comprehensively in the southern hemisphere and they do have television sets on the other side. When a scientific test is carried out in one country the results are analysed by many others that don’t have to repeat the experiment themselves. What is so different here? It is now time for the politicking to stop and for the results to be judged. If the experiment has failed in some areas as many think it has, then surely the admission should be made and the obsession to blindly follow through should be abandoned. The longer these experiments go the more their worth is being questioned and the respected Phil Wilkins’ article below, along with some of his reader’s comments, confirms that.

 

This is not to say that there haven’t been many action packed phases in this years’ Tri-Nations and Super 14 but most have involved the quick tap following a free kick which doesn’t provide the necessary variety of movement. As one wag below says, it’s a bit like watching the dummy half in rugby league running all the time – action yes, but it is the same repetitive action. It is quantity at the costly expense of quality. These quick taps create the illusion that sometimes we are getting one long action packed phase when in actual fact it is punctuated with stoppages due to the compliance problem. The sanction changes have meant that the stoppages are shorter but it doesn’t alter the fact that there are now more of them and that the intrusion of the referee is even greater.

 

These variations were piloted at the Danie Craven Stadium within the great man’s beloved Stellenbosch University. I hope the outcome will live up to his standard bearing but I fear it will make him roll over in his grave next door. Ray Williams is still very much alive and I know that he is not opposed to law change particularly if it provides more space for the attack. I don’t think he would be opposed to the experimentation that has taken place and I don’t think he would have a problem with the general intention of the ELVs. I am sure, however, that he would want to see the principles by which the variations were conceived and I would be reasonably confident in predicting that he would not see the proposed legislation matching the best of those guidelines. Surely if the principles were sound, after four years we wouldn’t be still be arguing, threatening a splitting of the code and tossing insults across the equator.

 

One of Ray Williams’ most perceptive comments about rugby coaching was that it had a lot to do with resolving complexities into simplicities. The same principle could be used in removing some of the negativity that players and coaches have adopted over the professional years. I have conceded in previous commentaries on this subject that “teams can play a solid defensive game, can do nothing in attack with the ball in hand and still win the game and this prevalent attitude is not good for the enjoyment of players or the marketing of the game.” When I first heard of the ultimate solution which I am about to unfold, I almost immediately dismissed it on the basis of its being too big a jump in the traditional scoring system but the more I reflected on it the more I realised that it fitted perfectly with the stated object of the game and the positive effect it would have on attitudes.

 

In the Object of the Game it states that, “It (Rugby) is classified as an ‘end zone invasion game’. The aim of each team is to gain possession of the ball, take it into opposition territory and to place it in the in-goal area (end zone). As radical as it might at first seem, wouldn’t awarding the game to the team that scores the most tries sit perfectly with that object and aim?

 

RECOMMENDATION

 

Award the game to the team that scores the most tries and use the kicking points to resolve a draw on a count back.

 

This is a remarkably simple change, it does not remove the skill of kicking goals with the place kick or the drop kick but it does put total emphasis on scoring of tries which is not only what the laws state but also is undoubtedly the essence of the game.

 

In conclusion, I have made similar analyses before and sent them to the decision makers in the ARU but rarely do I ever receive a response. Maybe it is that they are resentful of scrutiny but I can only take it that they have no rational argument with what I put forward. In spite of that they still go on heralding this divisive package of ELVs as Rugby’s saviour. I just wish one of them would tell me how I have got it so horribly wrong.

 

 

Dick Marks

October 2008

 

re coaches killing the ELVs?

The experimental law variations are like the free market, or communism. Great ideas on paper, but when you introduce humans to any project it has a tendency to go absolutely pear-shaped.

By the end of the Tri Nations, those devilish coaches had devised a game plan that put so much emphasis on tactical kicking and creating havoc at the breakdown that it was getting harder to argue that the game was a better spectacle. Indeed, from where some were sitting, the ELVs seemed to have created the sort of game plan they were presumably designed to negate.

Sure, there are stats that say the ball is in play more, but that's not much use when it's 50 metres up in the air. And the risks of running the ball from deep are now considered so, well, risky, that the best side in the world is picking a converted centre on the wing because he can kick well. Our mates in the northern hemisphere are saying the same thing after a handful of games of their seasons. So, it all begs the question, have the ELVs made the game better, or should they be quietly consigned to the dustbin of history?

Readers’ Comments:

§         the sanctions rule is rubbish - leads to constant infringement without consequence ... (for no better example look at Moore in the Brisbane test - spent the whole night wandering in from offside and received nothing but endless warnings) .. I defy anyone who has watched the NRL finals of the last couple of weeks to point out the difference of the quick dummy half run employed to massive effect by the Warriors and Storm to that of the rugby halfback from a quick tap ...

§         the game needs to revert back to a format more akin to what it was previously ... the ELV's have done nothing but make the game a series of endless, structureless sequences which make the game a mess ...

§         the stats actually say that there is very little difference between this years Tri Nation and last years. perhaps lets keep the good part (quick line outs anyone?) and dump the rest

§         Personally I didn't think anything was broken.

§         The TRM (tackle ruck maul) was becoming a little messy, but I think that had more to do with official interpretations of the laws rather than the laws themselves.

§         I've said before and I reiterate that the pulling down of mauls CANNOT be allowed, I can't imagine who came up with this one in the first place.

§         Hands in the ruck actually slows the game down as you have eight blokes all trying to pick the ball up and someone inevitably knocks it on.

§         Coaches are not the only ones to blame for the "failure" of the ELVs. From their inception, there has been the view from players, coaches and referees that free kicks have far less impact on the game than full arm penalties.

(This is a view shared by  former John O’Neill appointed Wallaby coach Eddie Jones, “Jones has sided with northern hemisphere critics who argue that the changes, which see most penalty offences become free kicks instead, equate to legalised cheating and lead to an increased amount of kicking in open play’.)

§         The result is a further blurring of the rules around the ruck area. Players are more willing to commit offences due to the fact that the potential benefit of a turnover far outweighs that of conceding a free kick.

§         This problem is further exacerbated by the willingness of the referee to slow down the game with an escalating number of inconsistent decisions. Most referees share the opinion that free kicks have far less of an impact on a game, and so minor offences are far more likely to be penalised than under the old laws.

§         What these two factors essentially do is ruin the flow of the game. Because the ball changes hands far too often, multi-phase play is eschewed in favour of tactical kicking and quick ball is a rarity due to constant infringement.

§         The game also becomes far scrappier because there is an increasing pressure to create genuine attacking opportunities before the ball is turned over or locked up in a slow ruck ball situation.

§         I kind of expect the finishing wingers like Siti and Roko to become players of the past. (How sad!)