Speedy set pieces and 20-minute red cards: have rugby's changes worked?

The Guardian

02-03-2025

No sport has a more torturous ­relationship with its law book than rugby union. Mainly because those laws keep mutating, sprouting new clauses and subclauses like a wordy virus. In 2018 matters had reached such a point of impenetrability that World Rugby rewrote the entire book, its plodding 160 pages reduced by 42%.
Since 2018, of course, that ­slimline version has continued mutating, and last week World Rugby updated it again. Some of it was changing ­terminology: it is now officially the try line, not the goal line; a knock-on is a knock forward; and a word that never existed in the real world ­anyway, the jackaller, is henceforth to be known as the stealer. But, of the material changes made on the pitch, some still being trialled, what can we say after three rounds of the Six Nations?
If there is one thing that preoccupies World Rugby more than a pithy law book, it is that its precious game be fast and fun to watch. To that end, the new law that wards off all evil ­grapplers of ruck and maul from touching the scrum-half seems to make sense, especially if those No 9s respond by doing something meaningful with the extra time and space.
The good guys here are Scotland, France and to an extent Ireland, all of whom have lit up the first three rounds at various points. England, though, have frustrated. Actually quite inventive when they want to be, they have all too often spent the extra grace setting up mind-numbing ­aerial assaults from the base of scrum, ruck and maul. The old Twickenham boo machine cranked up again last Saturday as Alex Mitchell rained down kicks on Scotland's deadly back three.
The jury remains out on any law offering assistance to a ­particular player. The balance of rugby's ­contests between attack and defence is delicate indeed.
World Rugby loves a quick game, which means the governing body is also paranoid, like so many others, about the real calling card of rugby union, its life and soul: the set pieces. These must now be ready to form within 30 ­seconds, embarrassments that they are. This seems easy enough for ­lineouts but there is little clarity on what signifies a scrum being ready to form. If it means on the point of ­engagement, hardly any are ready within 30 ­seconds of the mark being made.
Crooked put-ins at the scrum, of course, remain unofficially ­condoned, but now a side can get away with a crooked throw-in at the lineout too, so long as the opposition do not compete with a jumper of their own. Which feels perfectly ­reasonable. A personal view is that a crooked throw should also pass unpenalised if it is thrown to the opposition's side.
Another subject of World Rugby paranoia is time spent by kickers crouching over teed-up balls. Now all conversions must be taken within 60 seconds of the try, instead of the previous 90. But 60 minutes or so studying a random selection of such kicks this week suggests the shot clock does not start until five seconds after the try. With one of the ­penalties (which already had a 60-second limit) in the Wales-Ireland game, the clock did not start until 15 seconds after the shot had been called.
There have been some ­repercussions here. Fin Smith tried to delay his ­conversion of England's try at the end of the France game until the clock had turned red, thus denying Les Bleus a restart. He had a window of about two seconds between 80 ­minutes up and the shot clock ­running down. Wisely, he chose the safe option and France had one last chance they might not have had under the old system.
At the end of the England-Scotland game, though, Finn Russell ­inexplicably rushed his conversion of Scotland's late try, kicking with a full 15 seconds left on the shot clock. He was also made to take it at least two metres wider out than the try had been scored. His kick missed by about one.
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These are not in the law book, but for the first time the Six Nations public benefits from a chip in the ball. While knowing exactly how far that touch-finder went and where it crossed the touchline is, er, quite ­interesting, what the sport is crying out for is a chip that can detect when a ball is passed forwards (which is nowhere near as often as those folk who still refuse to accept Newton's first law of motion think it is) and whether a ball has been grounded. England's try against Scotland clearly would not have stood had the latter been ­available. Countless angry fans moaning about forward passes would be shut up had the former been.
Well, it's better than the system it replaced, but to send players off and ban them for accidents is still so wrong. The quicker a sport becomes, the more accidents it will see. Newton might as well have written that as his fourth law, it is so unarguable.
Ireland became the first team in the Six Nations to suffer a 20-­minute red card when Garry Ringrose was sent off for an accidental clash of heads in the first half of the game against Wales. He has now been banned and offered a place at tackle school, with howls from a multitude of ­armchairs that he needs to work on his technique.
Garry Ringrose, one of the best defensive centres in the world … Brian O'Driscoll, his predecessor as such, ruefully observed: 'In the modern game, everyone is going to get sent off.' What a desperate place for a sport to find itself in.