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 3rd 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.
Nice one, Cuz. All solid points. I played semi-professional rugby and now don't even change the channel for the Wallabies. Such a shame.
ReplyDeletePete
Excellent article. All valid points and very worthy of Rugby officialdom to take notice of.
ReplyDeleteI hope someone of influence gets to read this.