- Analysis
- Sport
- Rugby Union
- World Rugby
World Rugby ushers in law changes to speed up game, but have they opened a new loophole?
By Iain Payten
There was a certain irony to World Rugby announcing a raft of measures designed to speed the game up - including a law change to claw back minutes from scrum re-sets - while at the same time unveiling another glacially slow step towards a global acceptance of the contentious 20-minute red card.
As flagged in February as a result of the Shape of the Game conference, a range of “fan friendly” law changes, trials and studies were approved by the World Rugby executive during meetings this week.
Pitched as a “a holistic approach to addressing common areas of fan and player frustration”, World Rugby announced three law changes with immediate effect. Following Super Rugby’s lead to eradicate kick-tennis, the “Dupont law” offside loophole has been shut, and the dangerous “crocodile roll” clean out has also been banned.
The most significant law change, however, was World Rugby removing the option to take a scrum from a free-kick, which is designed to reduce the number of time wasted around scrums in a game.
Many scrum offences are punishable by free-kicks, meaning a string of scrums had the potential to chew up several minutes.
In parts of the world where scrummaging has always been a traditional strength, however, questions emerged online about the potential for traditionally weak scrummagers to seek to cheat and exploit the law change by deliberately infringing.
Queensland Reds pack a scrum against Wild Knights.Credit: Kev Nagle / Stephen Tremain.
“So, could a team with a struggling scrum give away a free kick at a scrum and…not have to scrum again because the opposition can’t choose to?” former England prop David Flatman said on X.
Some of the more unhinged types on social media went as far as accusing Australia, who has played a big role of law innovation recently, of pushing for the free-kick change to hide its weak scrum.
But senior refereeing sources, who are not permitted to comment publicly due to their employment conditions, shot down the prospect of an effective scrum avoidance loophole, however, by pointing out a free-kick offence becomes a full-arm penalty when done twice, and that a referee can also re-pack a scrum instead of giving a free-kick.
Anything seen as deliberate infringing is also a full penalty, and the context of field position and which side has scrum dominance would be taken into account, the sources said.
Increasing the pace of the game also drove five of the six closed law trials announced by World Rugby, which will be rolled out in World Rugby-run competitions like the World under 20s championship, Pacific Nations Cup - and any other competitions that want in.
As flagged, the trials will look to eradicate the caterpillar ruck, allow crooked lineout throws if they’re uncontested and give halfbacks more space at scrums by making the tunnel the offside line.
The most interesting trial will be the use of a 30-second shot clocks for teams to set scrums and lineouts. The modern scrum can be ponderously slow, and take between 45 seconds and a minute to set and complete.
The last law trial was one of the most significant, but also pointed to a still-burning political fight between the northern and southern hemispheres about the 20-minute red card.
In a sensible move, World Rugby announced a new streamlined disciplinary system to address the huge inconsistencies often seen in rugby suspensions and sanctions, and which are increasingly meted out due to a rise in red cards for head contact.
The trial will see two categories of automatic suspension from a red card: a two-week ban for contact that is deemed “a reckless action but has made minor errors such as in technique or timing”.
Darcy Swain sees a red card against England in Perth in 2022.Credit: AP
The second category is an automatic four-week suspension for “aggravated foul play”, which includes a deliberate shoulder charge or a dangerous driving tackle. Suspension length can be increased from that point at a hearing, depending on severity, but the system would do away with mitigation and nonsensical reductions.
The new system is designed to balance the last part of the same trial - the use of a 20-minute red card, which sees a replacement allowed for the sent-off after 20 minutes. It has been “trialled” in Super Rugby and the Rugby Championship since 2020 and has been actively pushed by SANZAAR to World Rugby as a way to punish the player, but not the whole team or the fans, given the impact on a game when one side goes to 14 players.
To the frustration of the south, it has been voted down for broader trials in the past, with nations like France and Scotland strongly opposed to the 20-minute red card. In a recent interview, the vice-president of the FFR vice-president Jean-Marc Lhermet argued the 20-minute red card would remove the deterrence power of a full red, and he hoped World Rugby would not “impose” it.
Though there was some progress in a closed trial getting approved by a 75% vote of the World Rugby executive,
there had been hopes the next step would be a full global roll-out, given there is already ample trial data from SANZAAR. World Rugby said it will examine the findings of the latest trial in November.