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 Global game Rules, season changes simplified
Posted: Monday November 08, 1999 12:50 PM
LONDON (Reuters) -- Simplified rules and a uniform season for both hemispheres are among suggestions designed to widen the appeal of rugby union after a World Cup which failed to scale the heights. Organizers promoted the 1999 tournament as a truly global competition akin to the soccer World Cup or the athletics world championships. They were wrong on several counts. Despite the claims of some respected critics such as former New Zealand captain Sean Fitzpatrick, rugby does not cater for all physical types but instead favors the strong over the swift. Lack of power as much as lack of technique and experience guaranteed there would be no major upsets in the group stages and the semifinal lineup could more or less have been predicted before the start. Two memorable semifinals finally set the tournament alight, even if Saturday's final went to form with Australia defeated France 35-12.
Call for rule changesSince the game went professional after the 1995 World Cup, rugby administrators, led by the Southern Hemisphere, have tinkered with the rules to broaden its appeal.The immediate outcome was to initiate a glut of try scoring, particularly in the Super 12 and Tri-Nations competitions, which were derided by some British commentators as more basketball than rugby. To the neutral observer, rugby union moved closer to rugby league in its attacking patterns with the ball recycled relentlessly. The inevitable result was the introduction of rugby league defensive patterns with forwards standing wide in defense, centers developing into extra flankers and tackling becoming fiercer and more aggressive. "Teams today are playing a narrower pattern so they have more control and ball-retention at the tackle area," said Wales coach Graham Henry. "This is why the game is less spectacular than a season or two ago and why people thought the game was boring." The Wallabies, whose defense was coordinated by a former rugby league coach in John Muggleton, were the defensive masters at the 1999 World Cup with U.S. center Juan Grobler the only person to cross the line against them in more than eight hours' play. Australia intends to now devise ways of overcoming its own defensive patterns before hosting the 2003 Cup. "When we go home we will look at ways of breaking our own defense and put them into our attacking play so that when other teams get to where we are, we will still be a few steps ahead," Muggleton said. The International Rugby Board (IRB) meets in Australia this month and Tasker Watkins, president of the Welsh Rugby Union, has urged them to take a further look at the laws. "The laws of rugby union football, like the laws of the land, should be simple, easily understood and equally simply applied," he said. "In order to do service to this marvelous game and the laws and the manner in which rugby is to be played, it is important that the try should be restored to its old majesty." Former All Black coach John Hart, who resigned after his team lost to South Africa in the third place playoff, believes the laws should be drastically rewritten. "I am a firm believer that the laws should be simplified," he said. "The Rugby Board should scrap the laws and start again in the new millennium." Hart said administrators had to get the balance right between attack and defense. "We have a game that is unique," he said. "What we need is boldness."
Summer rugby urgedFrancois Pienaar, captain of the 1995 Springboks who won the World Cup in Johannesburg, and South Africa assistant-coach Alan Solomons called during the tournament for a uniform season for both hemispheres based on the Northern Hemisphere summer.Wales' fullback Shane Howarth, a former All Black, joined their ranks in a newspaper column Monday. "The days of rugby union as a winter sport must come to an end," Howarth wrote. "I have come to the conclusion that if rugby teams of the Northern Hemisphere are to compete with their peers in the south then the game must become a summer sport." Rugby league has already moved to the summer in the Northern Hemisphere but its has a less top-heavy administration than union which remains essentially a professional game run by amateurs. If union does make the switch the way would be clear for what would effectively be an annual world championship with the top team in the Six Nations' championship joining the Southern Hemisphere trio each year in an expanded Tri-Nations competition.
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