The Rugby Union Thread

eSully

McCarthy is out for the season as well on docs orders so. Perhaps one f the first changes they could make to improve player safety is change maul laws that encourage players to tackle upright and keep the player up. Used to great effect by Irish teams but maybe it's now showing in the attrition rates too. Some accidental collisions you can't avoid due to the nature of the sport but I'm sure some law changes could be made to promote player safety without adversely effecting the game.

Would any of you miss the maul turnover if a change ruled it out?

lloyd

There's a few things I'd like changed (or referred as in the law book) in rugby-straight feeds, lineouts, proper rucks, mauls being set properly, blocking etc but....

A change to the choke tackle/maul rule would be good-give the guys in possession a scrum-not sure why it's a turnover and wouldn't unfairly penalise any team.

Tackles that start on the chest and ride up could be penalised and how about straight yellows for anything around the head-accidental or not-obviously would need some guidelines on players ducking into tackles but never got the whole-tall guy tackling small guy round the neck excuse?

I don't like the idea of weight limits as it is a game for all shapes and sizes (at least at lower levels) but I've said before that upping the game time to 90 minutes and reducing/scrapping tactical subs would force players to sacrifice bulk for aerobic fitness perhaps?

A young Dragons player (24) has had to retire this week due to head injuries, he's a qualified teacher so has a career as back up but still heart breaking for the lad-without that career would he have quit, are there others that have carried on? I would say almost certainly.

On a different topic the amount of a certain generation of springboks suffering brain medical conditions right now is suspect-probably drug relate rather than big hits but points to player welfare being low on the priority list.

scrumhalf

And the Wasps go marching on, winning at a wet and muddy Bath. Should have had a bonus point, but butchered a couple of decent chances. Now up to third.

Whoever signed George Smith, Charles Piutau and Frank Halai deserves a medal.

And the whole rugby family, I'm sure, sends its best wishes tot he people of Fiji who are facing what sounds like a horrendous hurricane.

tbm

Piutau's away to Ulster in a few months. Looks the total package.

Speaking of total packages, Tulon are playing today and have Habana at 10 and Ma'a Nonu on the wing.

crunchman

I think @lloyd is right about reducing the number of subs.  At the moment, more than half of your forwards won't go the full 80.  If they had to go the full 80 a lot of them probably would 10lbs lighter and the impacts reduced accordingly.  Front row players don't even expect to any more.

The problem is how you would do it without ruining a game in the event of someone getting injured.  If you only had 3 players on the bench, and you have front row injuries then you end up with the farce of uncontested scrums.  If you have a bigger bench but say that it is for injury only then you wind up with people faking injuries.  Maybe you could have a rule that anyone substituted misses the next match but that would be unfair on the guy who goes off with a dead leg.

The other radical option would be to increase the size of the pitch, or reduce the number of players.  Increasing the size of the pitch probably wouldn't be practical because you would have to rebuild too many stadiums.  What I would like to see is a 12 or 13 a side game played with Union rules.  If you only have 6 forwards then they would be forced to cover more ground and bulk would decrease.  That still doesn't solve the problem of backs the size of Roberts though.  If there was more space, whether he would be more vulenerable defensively to tricky guys with good feet I don't know.  He'd also have to cover more gorund during the match so would probably end up having to be a bit lighter.

The problem is, that while these changes might be good at the highest levels of the game, they wouldn't be good at the lower levels.

Realistically, I'm not sure there is much that can be easily done.  The only other thing I can think of is making sure that they are really hot on performance enhancing drugs.  If players are 10 lbs heavier as a result of using drugs it won't be helping.  Someone referred to the NFL above.  I think that drugs are still a real problem in the NFL.  It's only a four game ban for a first offence, and I don't think the testing regime is very good either.  If they got serious about drugs they would reduce the weight and explosiveness of players very quickly.  It's not just head injuries.  You see so many ACL tears there that are non-contact - just someone trying to change direction quickly.  They are too explosive for their own good.  Again, I think a reduction in the number of players/subs would really help as there would need to be far more emphasis on cardio.

As someone who likes rugby and the NFL, both sports have similar problems.  I don't think rugby is as bad as the NFL though.

On a completely separate topic:

lloyd said:

There's a few things I'd like changed (or referred as in the law book) in rugby-straight feeds, lineouts, proper rucks, mauls being set properly, blocking etc but....

A change to the choke tackle/maul rule would be good-give the guys in possession a scrum-not sure why it's a turnover and wouldn't unfairly penalise any team.

The team in possession used to get the put in.  There were a lot of teams (especially England I must admit) who played forward dominated "stuff it up the jumper" rugby.  The rule was changed (in 1992?) to encourage teams to recycle the ball.  Overall I think the change has been a good thing, but like any rule, people will then look to exploit it.

digitalscream

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/35627087

Not the ideal way for Burrell to get back in the running, but this has to be good news.

lloyd

crunchman said:

I think @lloyd is right about reducing the number of subs.  At the moment, more than half of your forwards won't go the full 80.  If they had to go the full 80 a lot of them probably would 10lbs lighter and the impacts reduced accordingly.  Front row players don't even expect to any more.

The problem is how you would do it without ruining a game in the event of someone getting injured.  If you only had 3 players on the bench, and you have front row injuries then you end up with the farce of uncontested scrums.  If you have a bigger bench but say that it is for injury only then you wind up with people faking injuries.  Maybe you could have a rule that anyone substituted misses the next match but that would be unfair on the guy who goes off with a dead leg.

The other radical option would be to increase the size of the pitch, or reduce the number of players.  Increasing the size of the pitch probably wouldn't be practical because you would have to rebuild too many stadiums.  What I would like to see is a 12 or 13 a side game played with Union rules.  If you only have 6 forwards then they would be forced to cover more ground and bulk would decrease.  That still doesn't solve the problem of backs the size of Roberts though.  If there was more space, whether he would be more vulenerable defensively to tricky guys with good feet I don't know.  He'd also have to cover more gorund during the match so would probably end up having to be a bit lighter.

The problem is, that while these changes might be good at the highest levels of the game, they wouldn't be good at the lower levels.

Realistically, I'm not sure there is much that can be easily done.  The only other thing I can think of is making sure that they are really hot on performance enhancing drugs.  If players are 10 lbs heavier as a result of using drugs it won't be helping.  Someone referred to the NFL above.  I think that drugs are still a real problem in the NFL.  It's only a four game ban for a first offence, and I don't think the testing regime is very good either.  If they got serious about drugs they would reduce the weight and explosiveness of players very quickly.  It's not just head injuries.  You see so many ACL tears there that are non-contact - just someone trying to change direction quickly.  They are too explosive for their own good.  Again, I think a reduction in the number of players/subs would really help as there would need to be far more emphasis on cardio.

As someone who likes rugby and the NFL, both sports have similar problems.  I don't think rugby is as bad as the NFL though.

On a completely separate topic:

lloyd said:

There's a few things I'd like changed (or referred as in the law book) in rugby-straight feeds, lineouts, proper rucks, mauls being set properly, blocking etc but....

A change to the choke tackle/maul rule would be good-give the guys in possession a scrum-not sure why it's a turnover and wouldn't unfairly penalise any team.

The team in possession used to get the put in.  There were a lot of teams (especially England I must admit) who played forward dominated "stuff it up the jumper" rugby.  The rule was changed (in 1992?) to encourage teams to recycle the ball.  Overall I think the change has been a good thing, but like any rule, people will then look to exploit it.

Lot's of good stuff in here except.....reducing the number of players? Sacrilege in my opinion. What would happen to the scrum for starters?

For subs you'd have to have an independent Dr assess injuries, there would be ways around it but there could be things put in place to discourage it-minimum game lay offs for certain injuries, post match follow ups with Union officials spot checking injured players training etc. Big sanctions for breaking the rules too.

I don't think that anything needs changing at the lower levels, I still watch shit patch rugby occasionally and lower down the pecking order you still see rucking, proper scrums etc etc. The big difference is that those ref's actually enforce the laws of the game. 

Elite ref's are allowed a huge amount of discretion in choosing what they see as 'material' to the game, basically if it's not 'material' in their eyes they don't have to penalise it...This is done in part to keep it a spectacle for fans so it's not even more stop start. The big problem with it is that different refs see different things and contributes to the massive lack of consistency. 

With all this power I wonder why when the scrum goes down but the ball comes out they don't just get on with it rather than re-setting. Personally I'd get rid of offences in the scrum being penalties and make them free kick offences-apart from for persistent offences in the 22. It's there as a means of restarting the game not a penalty machine.

crunchman

lloyd said:

With all this power I wonder why when the scrum goes down but the ball comes out they don't just get on with it rather than re-setting. Personally I'd get rid of offences in the scrum being penalties and make them free kick offences-apart from for persistent offences in the 22. It's there as a means of restarting the game not a penalty machine.

As someone who used to play in the front five (albeit at a very low level) I'm not sure I agree with this bit.  There are very few better feelings in rugby than getting an opposing pack going backwards at a rate of knots.

lloyd

crunchman said:

lloyd said:

With all this power I wonder why when the scrum goes down but the ball comes out they don't just get on with it rather than re-setting. Personally I'd get rid of offences in the scrum being penalties and make them free kick offences-apart from for persistent offences in the 22. It's there as a means of restarting the game not a penalty machine.

As someone who used to play in the front five (albeit at a very low level) I'm not sure I agree with this bit.  There are very few better feelings in rugby than getting an opposing pack going backwards at a rate of knots.

Yeah it's a great sight I agree. 

With the free kick off the scrum you could of course choose for another scrum, push them back again and then we'd be looking at it being a penalty-persistent collapsing.

Something needs to be done about the scrum though as every scrum these days seems to be re-set 3/4 times then ending up in a penalty to a coin flip decision...

I would definitely stop the clock/reset it to avoid the wasted time.

scrumhalf

I've yet to see some serious analysis of where the injuries are occurring.

Based purely on my own uneducated observations it seems to me that players are flying into rucks at speed and are likely to injure whoever they make contact with.

exocet

lloyd said:

crunchman said:

lloyd said:

With all this power I wonder why when the scrum goes down but the ball comes out they don't just get on with it rather than re-setting. Personally I'd get rid of offences in the scrum being penalties and make them free kick offences-apart from for persistent offences in the 22. It's there as a means of restarting the game not a penalty machine.

As someone who used to play in the front five (albeit at a very low level) I'm not sure I agree with this bit.  There are very few better feelings in rugby than getting an opposing pack going backwards at a rate of knots.

Yeah it's a great sight I agree. 

With the free kick off the scrum you could of course choose for another scrum, push them back again and then we'd be looking at it being a penalty-persistent collapsing.

Something needs to be done about the scrum though as every scrum these days seems to be re-set 3/4 times then ending up in a penalty to a coin flip decision...

I would definitely stop the clock/reset it to avoid the wasted time.

Were the scrums in the 1970's very unsafe? I don't recall there being many cases of players being seriously injured but player safety should be paramount.

The reason for asking is that if you look back at 1970's scrums in the 5 Nations, they were very quick and dynamic affairs. Seldom was the scrum "stable / still" before the ball was put in and there were very few resets.

lloyd

exocet said:

lloyd said:

crunchman said:

lloyd said:

With all this power I wonder why when the scrum goes down but the ball comes out they don't just get on with it rather than re-setting. Personally I'd get rid of offences in the scrum being penalties and make them free kick offences-apart from for persistent offences in the 22. It's there as a means of restarting the game not a penalty machine.

As someone who used to play in the front five (albeit at a very low level) I'm not sure I agree with this bit.  There are very few better feelings in rugby than getting an opposing pack going backwards at a rate of knots.

Yeah it's a great sight I agree. 

With the free kick off the scrum you could of course choose for another scrum, push them back again and then we'd be looking at it being a penalty-persistent collapsing.

Something needs to be done about the scrum though as every scrum these days seems to be re-set 3/4 times then ending up in a penalty to a coin flip decision...

I would definitely stop the clock/reset it to avoid the wasted time.

Were the scrums in the 1970's very unsafe? I don't recall there being many cases of players being seriously injured but player safety should be paramount.

The reason for asking is that if you look back at 1970's scrums in the 5 Nations, they were very quick and dynamic affairs. Seldom was the scrum "stable / still" before the ball was put in and there were very few resets.

I wasn't about in the 70's but I'm assuming that the laws were very different back then, as well as players physical attributes.

One of the reasons the scrum has become what it is today is the fact that the hooker doesn't have to 'hook' the ball anymore-everyone pushes. more forces are involved and scrums go down. It's been building up to this for years, they tried to get rid of it with introducing 'pause, touch, engage' to take away the element of the hit-if you got the hit right you were on top in the scrum and the opposing team would go down to try and get a second bite of the cherry-it didn't work so they modified it and now they are engaged with no pushing before the ball goes in...finished Adam Jones as a pro rugby player IMO as he spent his whole career perfecting the hit and couldn't/didn't adapt to the new laws.

Possibly it was a more 'honest' time with players wanting to compete for the ball, not wanting to collapse out of pride? 

I don't know but it's a suggestion. Footballers get a lot of stick (especially by Rugby fans) for diving and theatrics on the floor to win penalties/free kicks/cards for the opposition but IMO collapsing scrums on purpose is the same thing (but more dangerous) it's cynical, dirty and out and out cheating. 

Footballers stayed on their feet a lot more in the 70's maybe scrums did in a similar vein?

preston61

digitalscream said:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/35627087

Not the ideal way for Burrell to get back in the running, but this has to be good news.

I agree, he's unlikely to start because I imagine Jones will keep it fairly consistent across the back (with maybe Youngs in for Care), but him and JJ for me is a more solid and reliable centre partnership

exocet

1973 - Eng v Wales. around 4:40 is the 1st scrum.

There's another at 13:10.

I've seen plenty more like this from the 70's.....in fact this one was quite pedestrian.......still wonky feeds mind

lloyd

Very different those scrums aren't they? Quick set up and go.

Both of them scrums get re set these days-the first disintegrated/wheeled so would have been a pen or reset depending on the ref.

The second one the props closest to the camera buckle in and think the Welsh ones head is on the floor....

Safety is paramount but they're a shambles these days.

The feeds are crooked!

koneguitarist

The game has changed so much, but I feel the scrum really should be set like that. No hit, which is the crucial thing. Also the maul should be changed as its not possible to stop legally if set. And with everyone joining in front of ball carrier who keeps moving back, ball doesn't get passed back. 

The whole point about the Setpiece is you have to have a contest where you can win the ball back. 

koneguitarist

Back to size first for Wales V France, Cuthbert back, not sure how or why?

 Charteris out so Bradley Davies in, gonna miss Charteris maul destruction techniques. 

And Lydiate for Tipuric which is I think the right call for France. 

Just wish we had some out and out speedster on the wing, or on bench, if we lose either winger, there is no speed whatsoever on the bench. 

lloyd

Agree with the Cuthbert inclusion-not sure James has done anything to deserve being dropped and cuthbert has done nothing to force his way back in. Re wings injuries does Williams not go to wing with Anscombe at FB?

koneguitarist

Yes and he is not slow, but we have no one with sheer out and out pace. Shane Williams was quick off the mark in his day but no real top speed like Habana, Mark Jones had some serious speed over a distance.

 If Leigh Halfpenny was fit I would have him on wing, as he is faster than all our back three.

Liam Williams is probably the fastest we have got, Tom James was caught by a centre hence not being able to finish off his try against Scotland. 

lloyd

Forgot Priestland-he'd be first on at 10, 15 and 12. Tom James got corner flagged-he had further to run than the centre to be fair, if you watch it again he out paces the Scottish winger (with the ball in one hand) so he's no slouch to be fair, not the fastest winger on the planet but he's not slow, certainly not slower than the centre who caught him. I don't think there's many wingers who would have finished that off from the startin positions.