Loose Pass: The NFL and law enforcement as well as the curious case of European jerseys

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This week we will mostly be concerning ourselves with the NFL and law enforcement and the curious case of European jerseys…

Move with the times

Loose Pass will openly confess: it likes a bit of NFL. Not to the extent that the rugby would supersede, naturally, but we’re glad that the NFL is normally on Sunday nights when nearly all the rugby is out of the way (Top 14 big games notwithstanding).

So with the NFL and a raft of big European games so handily juxtaposed this weekend past, Loose Pass began to wonder if, although the interruptions for commercial breaks and time outs and goodness knows what else are a pain, some of the clock innovations ought not to be brought over.

For example, it took Manie Libbok fully 87 seconds of game-clock time to miss a highly kickable conversion of Deon Fourie’s try in the first half of the Clermont-Stormers game on Saturday. 87 seconds – that’s 3.625 per cent of the 40 minutes of allotted game time. The crowd at the Marcel Michelin were pretty vocal about what they felt was blatant time-wasting from Libbok, but the reality is he was within the laws; Law 8.8.d states he has 90 seconds from the moment the try was scored.

It’s rare for the NFL to be quicker, but in the case of goal-kicking it clearly is. A touchdown-scoring team has 25 seconds from when the kick team gets onto the pitch to line it up and knock it through (from a similar distance to Libbok’s miss on Saturday); for a field goal (similar to a penalty in rugby) it’s 40 seconds, and that’s from the end of the preceding play. The game-clock does not run for an extra point kick either, it stops when a touchdown is scored.

In rugby the kicker has 60 seconds from the moment they signal the intention to shoot for poles at a penalty – so that’s not even counting the faffing around deciding what to do (it’s rarely a difficult decision but goodness it ‘takes time’ sometimes). And 90 seconds from the time the try has been scored is, considering the maths above, craziness.

There were five penalties kicked at goal in the Clermont game, plus Libbok’s missed conversion, meaning potentially (and none of the kickers were in a hurry) we had 6.5 minutes of time out of the 40 – over 15 per cent, and this was not a kick-heavy game – of our time spent watching the kickers walk up to the ball, hot step back from it in slo-mo, gaze longingly at the path they wanted the ball to take, maybe swivel hips and shoulders a couple of times, pace nervously on the spot, practice some meditative breathing… and then finally boot a ball over a stick. You can probably add an extra minute to those for teams taking the time over whether to shoot a penalty for goal or not – we’re close to 20 per cent of the 40 minutes with that.

Call me greedy, but I’d prefer to see actual rugby rather than the endless solo choreography described here. Or at the very least, not have the performing artists eat away my rugby time.

Similar applies to one of the aspects of the NFL that irks viewers: the necessity to huddle and chat and call plays before they happen. Yet rugby is not doing much better. Scrums still take yonks to get together and the ridiculous charades of huddling and ‘tactical planning’ that go on before line-outs: you could slap a helmet and shoulder pads on them all and it wouldn’t make a jot of difference to the timing.

Wayne Barnes twice audibly told the Stormers to hurry up on Saturday (it is in no way only the Stormers or even only the South African teams guilty of this, we should add); the response to his command was reluctant at best, recalcitrant is probably more appropriate.

And finally of course, the ‘use it’ call. Referees do call ‘use it’ many times, scrum-halves do usually use it within 4.99 seconds of the call. The problem here is how long it takes for the call to be made. The caterpillars currently en vogue take a good 10 or 15 seconds to form at times, referees are often calling ‘use it’ when they get impatient rather than when they see the ball as clearly available, not what the ‘use it’ law was intended for at all.

The effect of the above? We still have far too much dead time in the game caused by gamesmanship and messing about. Injuries stop the clock anyway and we can’t stop people getting injured (or feigning it when they want a breather), but we can do something about over-elaborate, time-wasting kicking routines, we can do something about unnecessary tactical huddling and pedestrian set pieces.

So Loose Pass is advocating several things here regarding time management. 1. The time for conversions to not be taken off the game clock and to be reduced to 60 seconds. 2. The time for penalty kicks at goal to be reduced to 45 seconds and to not be taken off the game clock. 3. The time for line-outs to be taken to be set at 20 seconds from the moment the touch-judge marks the spot. 4. The time for scrums to be crouched to be set at 40 seconds from the moment the mark is made. 5. Referees to call ‘use it’ as soon as the ball is available.

Yes, we’d need a clock manager and yes, they do feel a little NFL-ish in nature. But it’s a lot better than watching endless kicker routines, huddles of big men getting their breath back together and other big men bend over in a line one-by one. Using them right, we’d get further away from the NFL than we are right now.

Is there a market?

Rugby jerseys, by and large, look pretty good. Better than soccer jerseys anyway. The material is stronger, warmer, more comfortable. Granted the new fashion for tightness does not flatter those of us like Loose Pass whose playing careers stopped but post-game careers didn’t, but having spent a fair deal of our youth gymming up for the game we can still pull it off. Or on, as the case may be.

Anyway, the other aspect of these bits of clothing is that they are not cheap to buy. So Loose Pass is consistently amazed that clubs continue to re-design kit on a remarkably frequent basis. The Ospreys’ jerseys on Sunday continued on a recent theme of seemingly having been designed by a four-year-old brandishing a pack of crayons, while we cannot for a second work out why Leicester felt the need to wear red, bar giving a different jersey some air time. Toulouse’s white jerseys seemed to have been decorated with a pink bar chart showing Airbus’ share price over the past few years.

Is there really a profitable market for these things? Are there enough people willing to part with 80 quid to buy a piece of clothing that might be in the public eye eight times a season? Does it all make enough of an impact on the respective balance sheets of all concerned? Don’t plenty of fans feel a little aggrieved when they stack that 80 quid on, say, a traditional green Leicester shirt and then go watch them play a quarter of a season unnecessarily in red? Answers on a postcard please, Loose Pass just doesn’t see how it works.

READ MORE: Eddie Jones: Former England boss to coach Barbarians against World XV at Twickenham

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