ELVes signal mischief

It will be interesting to see whether the new laws that will be applied in this year’s Super 14 will go the same way as the controversial four-stage “touchy-feely” scrum which made its appearance last year.

The early part of the 2007 tournament was dominated by controversy over the “crouch-touch-pause-engage” scrum ruling. Props were made to look ridiculous, Eddie Jones incurred a big fine and games were disfigured because of the inconsistency in which the engagement was refereed.

The law makers insisted they were doing it right but a funny thing happened on the way to the World Cup forum.

By the time the world’s 20 top teams gathered in France pressure from frontrow forwards had resulted in the four-stage scrum engagement becoming a single smoothly choreographed movement with referees having to concede that trying to put a brake on a pair beasts weighing in at some 900 kilograms and about to lock horns was well nigh impossible.

Now stand by for the ELVs – the acronym for Experimental Law Variations which has already entered the lexicon of rugby.

Initially known as the “Stellenbosch rules” because that’s where the process to improve the laws was initiated the law variations will be put into play this season.

And, rugby officialdom being what it is, the advent of the ELVs will be attended by confusion.

Some of the untried laws will be trialed in the Super 14, all of them will be put into play in South Africa’s domestic competitions and none of them in the Northern Hemisphere – which will make for a pretty difficult challenge for the like of Jonathan Kaplan and Marius Jonker who will have to have their wits about them when moving from the Super 14 to the Six Nations and vice versa.

There are also some oddities such as the ball being able to strike an object which is outside the field of play, rebound, and be called in!

Illogical but true. Originally law makers decided to do away with the corner flag (the one which marks the sport where the goal line bisects the touch line) but realised that it (the flag and its post) were necessary to assist touch judges in deciding whether the ball was in touch or touch-in-goal.

So the flag came back, but with the proviso that a try could be awarded if a player brushed against the post but was not otherwise in touch.

Now it has also been decreed that “it is play on if the ball rebounds off the corner post into field of play or in-goal,” and also “play on if the ball rebounds off the corner post on the dead-ball line into the in-goal area.”

Yet, “if the ball is grounded against the corner post and the ground simultaneously the ball is out of play!”

There is likely to be quite a bit of confusion and the outcome of this year’s Super 14 could well hinge on which teams adapt to the new situations quicker while also finding ways to exploit them.

The laws are designed to speed up play and ensure that the ball is play more and initial experiments (notably in Australia) would indicate that while there was not much difference in the “pace” of play the “amount” of play increased markedly.

A greater number of free-kicks, not being able to pass the ball back into the 22 for a relieving kick to touch, the backlines having to be five metres back from scrums, a restriction on the defending hooker and a stricter interpretation of off-side at the tackle and in open play (especially after a clean break) are the key features of the ELVs and there is little doubt that they will take some getting used to.

Ironically, as always happens, there are already signs of the changes having effects other than those desired. For instance, the ruling to have backs 5m back from the hindmost foot in scrums was intended to create more attacking space but already teams have worked out that the greatest benefit it could have is for a fast and strong No8 breaking off the back of the setpiece.

André Watson, in his usual thorough way South Africa’s manager of refererees, has moved to ensure that his officials introduce the ELVs with a minimum of mystification.

The country's top ten referees recently met at the nature reserve at Hartebeesthoek for intense instruction and discussion on the ELVs.

The presentations and discussions were led by Watson and Tappe Henning, the International Rugby Board's referee selector, over four days and ended with an examination which included the ELVs. Similar actions have taken place in New Zealand and Australia (whose referees have such a bearing on the success of South African teams) but if past experiences on the introduction of new law amendments are anything to go by there are bound to differences in application.

The ELVs are a sincere and genuine effort at making the game better and, of course, their introduction could go quite smoothly with the greatest threat to South African teams being the possibility of power outages during floodlit games!

Here’s hoping stadium generators are up and running or, in the event of a total blackout, that provision has been made for games to be played in daylight the following day.