I Wish I Still Loved Rugby Union

Once upon a time rugby union was my favourite code of football. It was the only type of football I played in high school (very poorly admittedly) and the Wallabies winning the 1999 World Cup, along with the amazing Bledisloe/Tri-Nations victories in that era, remain some of my favourite moments as a sports fan.

In recent years however I have found myself slowly drifting away from the sport. I still watch some Wallabies games, I still watch the occasional Waratahs game and of course I follow the World Cup. But besides the spectacle that is the World Cup every four years, to me rugby has been falling further and further behind other sports. Hardcore rugby fans might not like this article but based on the statistics related to Super Rugby ratings on Foxtel, as well as diminishing crowd numbers, at least for the Australian teams, I clearly am not alone.

The Wallabies do still draw a crowd and have sold out the upcoming 3^rd Test against Wales here in Sydney, but rugby certainly is nowhere near where it used to be and in my opinion it’s because the game itself has dramatically regressed.

As rugby became a faster game with better athletes and better goal kickers, the amount of penalties at the ruck seemed to increase and has lead to the game basically being played between the 22s, with penalty kicking becoming the primary way to score. As soon as a team crosses halfway, they are happy to pick and drive until the opposition inevitably infringes and they get a shot at goal from distance. Try scoring on the other hand seems to be a secondary luxury. Hell, even George Gregan who began his career as an exciting player, started to stand around trying to talk the referee into giving a penalty rather than delivering quick ball to his backline for an attacking move. By the end of his career I despised Gregan.

Obviously this is a huge problem as what fans want, particularly casual fans, is attacking football with teams looking to score tries rather than chip away with shots at goal. But as the rules currently stand, there is no incentive for the teams to do so and thus I think it’s once again time to make some changes to rugby’s rules to encourage more attractive football.

The main change is to reduce the value of penalty shots from 3 to 2. This would mean it would take four successful penalty goals to beat one converted try. Teams would have to weigh up if they are better off kicking for touch, getting field position and going for 7 rather than settling for 2 and I think they’d become inclined to go for 7. I’m happy to leave field goals as 3, as they are difficult to execute and occur during open play, however if others think they should be reduced too I would be fine with it.

In conjunction with the scoring change, I’d start making a lot of infringements, particularly at scrums, only short arm penalties rather than full arm penalties. They already have started doing this in Super Rugby and it should be explored more and extended across all forms. Along with this, scrums should only be allowed to pack once. If the referee sees a problem, then he should call a short arm penalty straight away. The amount of game time lost to referees acting as scrum coaches is unbearable.

Some rugby purists might take issue with this, but honestly it’s not like rugby rules haven’t been changed a lot already. It wasn’t long ago that tries were increased from 4 to 5 and it also wasn’t that long ago where lifting in lineouts was illegal. The game needs to adapt or die and if some people can’t see that right now it is doing the latter, than they really won’t see it coming when the sport has serious financial problems in the future due to revenues drying up, at least in Australia.

Rugby will never lose its hardcore fan base, but that’s true for every sport and in that sense the hardcore fans actually don’t matter. What matters are the rest of us who should be rugby fans but no longer have the level of interest we used to. What matters are the kids who are growing up following only rugby league rather than both league and union.

I desperately want rugby to survive and I want to care about it as much as I once did, but until changes are made to make it entertaining again, I’m afraid it’s just too difficult to watch.