Better Rugby Rules

Ali Williams was suspended for 6 weeks after being found quilty of illegal rucking.

Rucking is deemed to risky for the attacking team due to the above consequence.

Extract: Law 16.3 Rucking

16.3 RUCKING
(a) Players in a ruck must endeavour to stay on their feet.
Penalty: Penalty Kick
(b) A player must not intentionally fall or kneel in a ruck. This is dangerous play.
Penalty: Penalty Kick
(c) A player must not intentionally collapse a ruck. This is dangerous play.
Penalty: Penalty Kick
(d) A player must not jump on top of a ruck.
Penalty: Penalty Kick
(e) Players must have their heads and shoulders no lower than their hips.
Penalty: Free Kick
(f) A player rucking for the ball must not ruck players on the ground. A player rucking for the ball tries to step over players on the ground and must not intentionally step on them. A player rucking must do so near the ball.
Penalty: Penalty Kick for dangerous play

COMMENTS: The (f) clause above basically removed rucking from the game, the window to allow rucking is too narrow, and the offending team knows it, and slow the ball down as the ‘will be rucked risk’ is low.

Paddy O’Brien has said the issue is ‘players stomping’ (vertical action of standing on players) rather the backward action of the foot/heel to retrieve the ball, and with TV watching oh so very closely the ‘instant replay of rucking gone wrong’ is to much too bear. This means the rules and execution of rucking has a bias with the team that is slowing the ball down, as the team that requires the rucking action is at huge risk of loosing one its players.  This must be reversed, so that the team with the momentum of ‘going forward’ has the rights and should have the ref’s margin of error on there side.

Paddy O’Brien 4 year watch as ‘IRB Head Ref’ has seen a lot of PC’ness come into the sport (dont even mention ELV mess), maybe he should go back to giving out parking tickets !

Rucking should allow:
1) Any player on the ground, and on the wrong side can be removed by backward action of the feet.
2) No matter if ball is there or not, as a player body is enough hindrance for a team going forward ((f) above is a major issue).
3) The rucking player must be: crunched over , one foot on ground, and the rucking foot action cant be by the players head or groin.

Simple as 1,2,3 !

This means that any player on the ground and on the wrong side of the ruck is in for a few signatures on his back. And for all those ‘non rugby types’, get a grip its our sport ! The IRB has stuffed up here and caved in to the PC demands !

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