Rugby: Rucking mess a threat to rugby

By Wynne Gray

Rugby is heading for a rucking mess.

While most of the refereeing discord in the Super 12 has been about scrums and the tackled-ball fiasco, there should be even greater concern about rucking - that dynamic phase which gave rugby its most precious attacking momentum and continuity.

Super 12 sides this season were told they could ruck - indeed there was widespread coaching approval - but because of the tackled ball mess we have seen little evidence of this art, and now with Glenn Taylor's ban, rucking has been actively discouraged.

Even though Super 12 rules allow bodies to be rucked near the ball, tribunal head Bruce Squire, QC, suspended Taylor for not knowing the distinction between legitimate rucking and rucking bodies to get at the ball.

In his decision, Squire warned that rucking players thought to be obstructing attempts to get the ball would continue to be punished.

"If, as he indicated, Taylor's view is shared by some coaching staff, they too will need to reflect on the distinction between the situations described and their coaching methods," added Squire.

That decision seems to give all the rights to the player near the ball, and to spell the end of rucking because it will not be worth it.

The decision is likely to have huge approval in the Northern Hemisphere, where administrators have been fearful of the boots-on-bodies impact on television audiences - especially with this year's World Cup.

Observers are already noting how referees are blowing up play before rucks can develop or how players are being chastised, sinbinned and penalised even if they try to remove opposition players killing the ball.

"Television is the master," one experienced referee commented. "The ruck is a real dilemma for the game, perhaps the biggest one we face in terms of law-making and law-application.

"Privately many referees would agree with the view that, within reason, a player lingering around on the wrong side of the breakdown deserves whatever he gets.

Say that publicly, though, and we'd be hung. With TV coverage the way it is, people go berserk every time a boot goes near a body."

Add that to the way referees are whistling as a response to the World Cup assessors rather than for the spirit of the sport and we can see why games can be so staccato.

A memo from IRB chairman Vernon Pugh, which was sent to those running the assessment panel, shows why the referees are operating as they are.

Pugh wrote that disregard for the rules meant either that referees could not apply the laws, were unwilling to apply them, did not understand them or the laws could not be applied.

"Whichever it is," Pugh wrote, "we may have to consider selecting and training up a group of current 'unknowns' or [risk] the charter and our pronouncements becoming meaningless."

The threat for the top echelon of referees could not be plainer. Rule as the IRB demands or there will be no World Cup reward.

So we see laws applied strictly, officials hamstrung by the rulebook and players limited by judiciaries which are taking the ruck - that fundamental factor for flowing football - out of the game.