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I've always been a proponent of 'If it aint broke, don't fix it', and the current crop of rule changes only emphasise to me the randomness and needlessness of most of the tinkering done over the past decade. Most of the rules have been designed to encourage attacking play or make the game faster. They have succeeded in making the game so fast with quick play-the-balls and quick taps, it is like touch football at times. Maybe I'm being too idealogical, but IMO the primary attacking strategy IN ANY SPORT shouldn't be to try and make the defending team unable to get back onside fairly (It's the reason we have wrestling). The other reason I hate quick taps is players just don't know the rules and half the time are off and running when their own players are still offside. In years gone by if you stuffed up a tap it was a scrum with the feed to the opposition. Whatever happened to that? Now it's, 'OK. You made a mistake there, didn't you. Now come back and try again like a good little boy'. And as for encouraging attacking play, does anybody think teams are bombing the tryline less? They're just changing where they're aiming!
This year teams we have teams given a choice where to pack a scrum. Ages ago we were told it was important to set scrums 20 metres in instead of 10 and we sadly lost the traditional backline setup of centres working together. Now all of a sudden 10 metres is ok (which is not an aspect I'm complaining about...the scrums should've stayed where they were). And we've also now got a 20-40 rule along with the 40-20. WHY, exactly?? And like Robbo, I also hate the arbitrariness of getting seven tackles from 22 metre restarts.
IMO the game should return to basics and do away with all this half-baked rule changes they keep coming up with. And in future if they want to inflict any rule changes, it should only be done with the International Board's approval!
Rant ends.
This year teams we have teams given a choice where to pack a scrum. Ages ago we were told it was important to set scrums 20 metres in instead of 10 and we sadly lost the traditional backline setup of centres working together. Now all of a sudden 10 metres is ok (which is not an aspect I'm complaining about...the scrums should've stayed where they were). And we've also now got a 20-40 rule along with the 40-20. WHY, exactly?? And like Robbo, I also hate the arbitrariness of getting seven tackles from 22 metre restarts.
IMO the game should return to basics and do away with all this half-baked rule changes they keep coming up with. And in future if they want to inflict any rule changes, it should only be done with the International Board's approval!
Rant ends.
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