L'experiment is going wrong
The hot topic of debate in France is – yes, guessed it – the ELVs. Please excuse us, esteemed rugby reader, for boring you with more postulating about the new laws, but the consensus in France is worth mentioning.
The hot topic of debate in France is – yes, guessed it – the ELVs. Please excuse us, esteemed rugby reader, for boring you with more postulating about the new laws, but the consensus in France is worth mentioning.
The growing common view is that the new laws, or rather French referees' interpretations of the news laws, are actually putting attacking-minded teams at a disadvantage.
The moaning and groaning emanating from heavyweights like Toulouse, Clermont, Perpignan and Stade Fran̤ais is all about the ruck and how referees in France seem to be fixated on penalising the attacking team while defenders go unpunished, leaving sides with the ball with little option other than to use their possession to kick for territory Рthe net result of which is a ping-pong match between full-backs.
Perpignan coach Jacques Brunel was so frustrated by his team being blown up at the ruck in their dull 5-3 defeat of Montpellier last week that at half time he ordered his team, who were dominating in terms of possession, to kick for territory rather than attack with ball in hand. He then ruffled a few feathers by standing on the side-lines and repeatedly yelling, for the referees benefit one assumes, “in this game, it's no good to have the ball.”
What is perhaps more significant than the complaints themselves, is the people who are doing the complaining.
For years the attacking styles of Toulouse and Clermont have been hailed as shining examples of how teams who want to entertain should approach the game- last year's Top 14 Final between them is a case in point. Yet they seem to be amongst those struggling the most under the new laws, which are supposed to help teams that try to do what Toulouse and Clermont do best – score tries by playing running rugby.
Stade Fran̤ais haven't had any problems winning under the ELVs Рthey're undefeated and top of the table Рyet their coach, Australian Ewen McKenzie, was screaming blue murder after their match against Brive last weekend .
The fact that McKenzie is unhappy is probably the most telling alarm bell of all. He is the only coach in the Top 14 to have already worked under the ELVs (he led the Waratahs to the Super 14 final). Of course the Northern Hemisphere are trialling a slightly different set of rules to those used in the Super 14, but McKenzie feels that the refs in France's interpretations of the laws are not consistent with those in England nor in the Southern Hemisphere.
“The problem is that in the rucks, the refs are only watching the attacking team,” said McKenzie after the 37-16 win over Brive.
“In England, it's not being reffed in the same way at all. It's hence a problem of interpretation. One will have to ask the question of the (French) Federation because, as a result, no one is going to attack at all and just occupy territory by kicking.”
The merits and demerits of the new laws aside, the fact that they are not being applied in the same way around the world is far more worrying than cross-equator debate about whether they're actually a good thing.
Has the IRB gotten ahead of itself? The new laws aren't all bad – even the staunchest naysayers before the Super 14 kick-off were convinced that some of them were a good idea by the time the Crusaders lifted the trophy (please note, not much changed there!).
Perhaps the crux of the matter lies in the above sentence: Some of the laws are really good ideas. But the fact that they've been tossed into a pot of thirteen, all at once, makes for a confusing and downright incomprehensible situation for players, referees and fans alike. (It could be worse – the anarchy that reigned in lower leagues that trialled all 32 original ELVs was farcical.)
So far, in France at least, the introduction of the ELVs has been counterproductive to their initial goal of making the game more entertaining. So, what's gone so horribly wrong?
The new laws are supposed to be experimental. Any scientist will tell that doing any kind of experiment where thirteen variables have been changed is a total waste of time as it's practically impossible to decipher which results are the caused by which change.
I for one, am not against change. On the contrary, watching old footage of games from yesteryear when, for example, there was no lifting in the line-out is worth a good laugh, and it quickly becomes clear that, like in most domains, change is necessary for progress.
But let's get real, one at a time please or we might end up with a situation where none of the new laws – or worse, the least beneficial of them – are adopted, making the entire 'trial period' a monumental waste of time and effort.
By Ross Hastie