Rugby Law Changes to be Trialled

Could rugby be heading for the six-point try? Yes, in fact, it could be – and that’s official. DAN RETIEF reports on some big changes to be trialled.
In all the World Cup hype, some key proposals to change the laws have gone almost unnoticed. One of these is whether the value of a try should be increased to six points and all kicks to two points “to promote continuity of the match and reward scoring tries over penalties”.
This scoring system will be trialled over the next year-and-half in competitions such as the Australian National Championship, the Welsh Principality Championship, the Pacific Cup, the Nations Cup and some others and if 6 is better than 5 and kicks should all be two points it could be law by November 2018.
Another experiment is that a penalty try will automatically count eight points; no conversion will be taken. Imagine how that would suit strong scrummaging sides such as the Lions and Western Province?
The package of law trials has been approved by World Rugby’s executive committee after detailed analysis and evaluation of proposals from unions worldwide by the Law Review Group, the Scrum Steering Group and the Multi-Disciplinary Injury Prevention Group.
The Law Review Group includes the like of Nick Mallett, former Lions and England captain Bill Beaumont, former Lions and Scotland flanker John Jeffrey, former Wallaby Michael Hawker and former Puma Agustin Pichot.
Great care is taken before a suggested alteration is even trialed. World Rugby (formerly the IRB) is cognisant of the often haywire outcomes of proposals despite the best intentions.In the past, especially in days of Doc Craven (“Rugby has laws, all other sports have rules”), changes were often tested at Stellenbosch and recently the Varsity Cup has also been used to experiment with two referees and a different scoring system. Interestingly, in the next period of trials no South African competition will be involved.
Player welfare, law simplification and spectator experience are at the core of all the laws put on trial. Once again this emphasizes (South African coaches, are you listening?) that World Rugby wants a faster, more spectacular game to be able to compete with other global sports events.
Other thought-provoking modifications include an even shorter scrum set sequence with the players and not the referee dictating the feed, and the introduction of a five-metre drop-out if the attacking team infringes in-goal (rather than the compulsory scrum).
Sadly, though, there are no proposals to try to do away with the biggest malady in rugby – the tedious driving maul which has become most teams’ preferred way of scoring and is nothing but legalised obstruction. [Shots fired! – Ed.]
There are also no suggestions to try to find a way to cure the breakdown, which has become pretty much a lottery, by perhaps returning to rucking. And there are no attempts to calling a halt to obstructive running in the backline.
In the early days scoring a touchdown (dotting the ball behind the tryline) meant a team was given a chance to “try” for the posts (the modern conversion). [Which is why a try is called a try – Ed.]In subsequent years officials realised that scoring a try was somewhat harder than kicking and by 1906, the year of the first tour by Paul Roos’ ‘Springbokken’, it had become worth three points.
Thus it stayed until the early ’70s when the try’s value was increased to four points and the next rise came in 1992, just as South Africa was emerging from isolation, when it was made five points.
My view is that no change is needed in the value of the try – just a change in attitude that re-kindles and emphasises rugby’s founding principle of “carrying, passing, kicking and grounding the ball to score as many points as possible”.

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Haaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahaaa!!!

Feeling like a twat perhaps????

 Eh Fox lay off the

Actually, the site came up with an error when submitting the post. Simple error rendering two duplicates. Nothing to say about the actual info?