The semi-final match in the World Cup brought up an interesting anomaly in the rules of rugby. I don’t mean the abomination that was the red card. (Clarification, as far as I could see Rolland made the correct decision in sending Warburton off under the rules he is required to follow: It is the rules themselves that I believe are an abomination—I stick by my rant from last year on this.)
The interesting anomaly was the way that it could have been to Wales advantage to have had a prop injured off the field, so much so that the Welsh coach, Warren Gatland, admitted after the game that he had considering having a prop fake an injury. The basis for this is as follows. In a policy introduced a few years ago to deal with a spate of extremely serious scrum injuries, particularly in games played at lower levels, the IRB introduced a rule that both teams must have a full complement of two specialist props and a specialist hooker in order to have a contested scrum. Teams go into matches with one reserve prop and one reserve hooker. Accordingly, if two props or two hookers get injured out of the game in the course of a match, the game has to resort to “golden oldies” scrums in which neither team is allowed to push. This is a very good for a team that is being pushed back in scrums.
Now if faking were simply a black-and-white matter, one might just rely on teams having a sense of good sportsmanship and aversion to scandal (but see “bloodgate”), but injuries exist along a continuum and it is a judgement call as to whether an injury is serious enough to require coming off the field. The current rules allowing substitutions for any reason, not just because of injury were introduced after the South African coach admitted faking injuries simply to get fresh legs on the field.
So my suggestion is to similarly change the rules to eliminate any advantage to arise from having a front-row player injured: Allow any team to request non-contested scrums at any point in a game, either because they have run out of specialist front-row players, or simply because they are being too heavily beaten by the superior scrummaging of the opposition. Then, to reinstate the advantage that the team with the dominant scrum would have, allow the team that had not requested non-contested scrums to place one fewer players in the scrum. Currently the rules require teams to place at least seven players in the scrum, so I am proposing either increasing this to eight for the team requesting non-contested scrums, or reducing it to six for the other team.
It also shows that winning the The 3-4 playoff isn't valued that much!
ReplyDeleteNot sure what's more troubling. That you watch this sport at all or that you know enough about the rules to work out who is cheating. :)
ReplyDeleteWell, that would be one way to eventually create a no scrum League type game.
ReplyDeleteLike the economy.. if you change a basic rule you get everyone thinking of ways to exploit it, and in this case weaker scrumming teams stack their forwards with fast runners, request non contested scrums and use their fast runners to play a game that buggers the fat props on the other team.
In the WC final there were 12-13 scrums, ie, taking up about 20-25% of the game, so the fast running team has an advantage for up to 80% of the game.
JC
@Sinc: Do note that this is a Seamus post. I have no clue what he's talking about here. In fact, Seamus had to remind me that the final game was Sunday and not Saturday as I couldn't recall off the top.
ReplyDeleteEric - yes, sorry. Didn't see that. I'm going to blame middle-aged eyes and your font for that. :)
ReplyDeleteJC:
ReplyDeleteI agree that would be a risk, but I would still require that there be 3 specialist front-rowers in the starting XV and 2 in the reserves, and that uncontested scrums would require that either two props or two hookers be removed permanently from the game (i.e. the same effect as when there are legitimate injuries). I really don't think that any team could afford to go into an 80-minute game deliberately planning on having, in effect, only 5 reserves. The other team would still have the option of subbing off the fat props (you were thinking England here, weren't you) for loose forwards and still having a man advantage in the backs. That situation would essentially be akin to putting a 2-3-2 scrum up against a 3-4-1 circa 1924, and we know how that worked out!
"The other team would still have the option of subbing off the fat props (you were thinking England here, weren't you)"
ReplyDeleteActually, I was remembering me!
JC
While I agree that removing/reducing the incentives to fake injuries is a good thing, I would like to take away the possibility of uncontested scrums as much as possible. A proper scrum is a key part of rugby as well as one of the key differentiators between rugby and rugby league. The first thing that I would do is add an extra prop to the bench. I wouldn't increase the number of allowed substitutions though, so if a team uses this extra prop then one of their non-props doesn't get to play as a substitute. If a team does run out of props I would follow Seamus' idea of giving an advantage to the other team (it could also be done by moving up the field a few metres, rather than the number of players in the scrum.)
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with teams being able to choose uncontested scrums just because they are losing the scrums, so I would only allow this if both prop replacements had been already made (imposing a high cost in terms of opportunity to substitute later in the match).