• Help Support The Rugby Forum :

World Rugby approves law trials to reduce coronavirus risk

Scotty

First XV
TRF Legend
Joined
Jun 14, 2016
Messages
4,827
Club or Nation
Exeter
World Rugby approves law trials to reduce coronavirus risk - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/52833173

Among the law trials:

  • Removing scrum resets.
  • Taking away the option of a scrum for a penalty, a free-kick, or when an attacker is held-up in-goal.
  • Reinforcing high tackle guidelines to reduce face-to-face contact and the introduction of an "orange card" for potential red-card offences.
  • The player is removed with the offence checked by the Television Match Official. If deemed a red card offence, the player doesn't return. If not, they return after 15 minutes.
  • Removing the choke tackle, with referees calling a "tackle" rather than a "maul".
  • Awarding a free-kick rather than a scrum for when a team fails to "use it" at a scrum, ruck, or maul.
  • Speeding up rucks by cutting the "use it" time from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Restricting the number of players who can join a maul and the time spent in the maul.
How do we feel about this? Virus aside are any of these rules that will keep after? I do like the idea of less scrums regardless.
 
they are just using the pandemic as a cover to introduce controversial law changes that they wanted to make. The only good one is getting rid of choke tackles and that has nothing to do with transmission of the virus.

I legitimately hate the law about joining a maul, they have a version of it in U13 rugby in South Africa and it was so ******* confusing (I hated reffing the U13s in general so that just added to it.)

You can't make any sport less likely to have transmissions. Is a 10% reduction of scrums really going to protect players?
 
Be interesting to see how many unions actually take it up. Seems like mostly a PR stunt really. Some of them are just unmanageable.

Not completely opposed to the concept of an orange card.
 
  • Awarding a free-kick rather than a scrum for when a team fails to "use it" at a scrum, ruck, or maul.
This one i do like, teams keeping the ball in after use it is called to get a reset is annoying. Just get the ball out and play.
 
  • Removing the choke tackle, with referees calling a "tackle" rather than a "maul".
  • Awarding a free-kick rather than a scrum for when a team fails to "use it" at a scrum, ruck, or maul.
I like these two, but not the rest.

As much as I think scrums are an absolute state atm, removing resets fully is heavy handed. There are times where a reset is the legit call to make, not just teams playing for a penalty.
 
I don't feel that strongly about most of these, but does anyone actually think that constantly changing the laws is good for the game? I swear every time I watch a game with a more casual fan I have to explain the five rules they've needlessly tweaked since the last time they watched a game. Rugby has more than enough finicky rules that are confusing to anyone other than hardcore fans without altering them slightly every other year.

No way this is anything other than using the virus as a cover to get a bunch of rule changes they know will be controversial through with minimum resistance. If they genuinely thought scrums were too much of a risk they'd do away with them entirely for the duration of the virus instead of just eliminating resets and half the other changes barely have anything to do with infection risk at all.

At the end of the day there's not a hope you can make rugby significant safer infection wise, it's still going to be a full contact game with a major gathering of several people in close proximity on the ground every few seconds. That said, if they actually just started enforcing 'use it' calls instead of cutting the time to 3 seconds like is suggested here it would improve the game, although I doubt it'd make much difference to infection rates.
 
Last edited:
I don't feel that strongly about most of these, but does anyone actually think that constantly changing the laws is good for the game? I swear every time I watch a game with a more casual fan I have to explain the five rules they've needlessly tweaked since the last time they watched a game. Rugby has more than enough finicky rules that are confusing to anyone other than hardcore fans without altering them slightly every other year.

No way this is anything other than using the virus as a cover to get a bunch of rule changes they know will be controversial through with minimum resistance. If they genuinely thought scrums were too much of a risk they'd do away with them entirely for the duration of the virus instead of just eliminating resets and half the other changes barely have anything to do with infection risk at all.

At the end of the day there's not a hope you can make rugby significant safer infection wise, it's still going to be a full contact game with a major gathering of several people in close proximity on the ground every few seconds. That said, if they actually just started enforcing 'use it' calls instead of cutting the time to 3 seconds like is suggested here it would improve the game, although I doubt it'd make much difference to infection rates.
I agree constant changes and multiple changes isnt good for the game or the casual fan (which is a good point i never thought of). I want some changes(small tweaks) like the use it. Scrums are a shambles and just taking a option of a reset away if you could use it improves the game IMO. But i dont want 10 changes at once in the name of covid.
 
  • Awarding a free-kick rather than a scrum for when a team fails to "use it" at a scrum, ruck, or maul.
This one i do like, teams keeping the ball in after use it is called to get a reset is annoying. Just get the ball out and play.

it's not introducing anything new, it's just following their thinking of eliminating scrums. In that situation the law has always been the other team gets a scrum if the ball hasn't been used, it won't change the game at all.
 
it's not introducing anything new, it's just following their thinking of eliminating scrums. In that situation the law has always been the other team gets a scrum if the ball hasn't been used, it won't change the game at all.
Yes but ive definitely heard 'use it or reset' (appolise i misread and was thinking scrum. Maul and ruck yes your right)

Scrum is a way to restart the game, i want it used if avalable unless immediate push or short pause before push. But the second that ball is useable( and ref calls it) the only options should be ball out or free kick turn over(no option for scrum IMO)

But reset scrums need to happen until the ball is to the back leading to use pen or turn over(no scrum from turnover free kick)
 
the only time "use it or reset" is used is when the scrum goes down and it's not a penalty. You give the team with the scrum an opportunity to get their shove on and go for a pk/pushover try with a new scrum or the opportunity to play the ball out the back.
 
I seriously don't understand why the reset of the scrum is the main point of contention with this virus.

What about every breakdown, lineout, maul and ruck?? Actually every area where contact is made there will be the possibility of infection, just like flu or any other illness.
 
World Rugby approves law trials to reduce coronavirus risk - http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/52833173

Among the law trials:

  • Removing scrum resets.
  • Taking away the option of a scrum for a penalty, a free-kick, or when an attacker is held-up in-goal.
  • Reinforcing high tackle guidelines to reduce face-to-face contact and the introduction of an "orange card" for potential red-card offences.
  • The player is removed with the offence checked by the Television Match Official. If deemed a red card offence, the player doesn't return. If not, they return after 15 minutes.
  • Removing the choke tackle, with referees calling a "tackle" rather than a "maul".
  • Awarding a free-kick rather than a scrum for when a team fails to "use it" at a scrum, ruck, or maul.
  • Speeding up rucks by cutting the "use it" time from 5 seconds to 3 seconds.
  • Restricting the number of players who can join a maul and the time spent in the maul.
How do we feel about this? Virus aside are any of these rules that will keep after? I do like the idea of less scrums regardless.
I cannot emphasize enough how much i want this done. Obviously i'm massively bias as i had to watch Wales choke the life out of a game we were running down in a world cup match by, with no exaggeration, collapsing a scrum for five in game minutes.

I also really like the Red card review system but i think they should go further and just state that the player can be replaced after 10. Reds ruin games.

Agree with others that these don't really seem to be about the virus.

A lot of these changes would actually speed the game up a bit too - for example more free kicks as opposed to scrums. Speeding things up is never a popular proposition up north though.

Obviously i doubt there is as much attention on league in the rest of the world - but they've recently implemented changes to speed up and loosen the game and it seems to have worked wonders in the first few rounds.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Top