Mystifying commandments

The second Super 14 tournament, now passing its halfway point, will be remembered for last-second victories, one-point results and, sadly, mystified expressions.

There have been many moments during the first 50 or so games that the expressions on the faces of any number of players have reflected what, to me, has been the distinguishing trait of the 2007 season – confusion about the application of the laws and bewilderment at referees’ decisions.

It would not take a video tape editor long to piece together a cameo, entitled “What the!?” of numerous players looking utterly puzzled – especially props such as BJ Botha, Jannie du Plessis, Wian du Preez and Heinke van der Merwe and loose forwards such as Schalk Burger, Luke Watson, George Smith and David Croft.

Cameras placed in the coaches’ booths would have captured similar moments of bafflement and, to be frank, on the visage of this correspondent watching in the offices of the SuperSport Zone.

I used to think I had a reasonable grasp of the laws but there have been times this season that there have been such variances in the application that I have wondered how coaches and players cope.

The four-stage scrum, introducing such variance in timing from official to official, has not been a success and, as predicted, the outlawing of the ruck has put defences (i.e. ball killers) in control.

There have been glaring discrepancies and often in the area of those crucial 50/50 decisions the referee’s intransigence, or indulgence, has had a crucial impact on the outcome of games.

It has got the point that analysing referees, anticipating their quirks and suiting game plans to the match official, is more important than studying the opposition.

This is clearly just not good enough – in any game let alone a professional one.

The Super 14 has shown up glaring variations in style and content among referees and coaches, quelled by the hefty fine slapped on Eddie Jones, have kept a diplomatic silence but they must collectively be tearing their hair out (figuratively in the case of Kobus van der Merwe!) at the inconsistency that could have such an impact on their continued employment.

Law15, governing the tackle, has for long been described as the “illegitimate child” of rugby, but now that rucking has been banned we might as well come right out and call it the “bastard rule.”

The anomaly is that the provisions of this law, as they are written, could not be clearer. The tackler must immediately release the tackled player, must immediately get up or move away from the tackled player and from the ball and must get up before playing the ball.

“The tackled player must immediately pass the ball or release it. That player must also get up or move away from it at once.

For the sake of brevity this a condensed version but, as they say in Oz, even a blind dingo could sniff that this is simply not how the law is being applied.

Some referees allow tackled players to fall down, roll over and over and shield the ball and other’s don’t.

Tacklers have practised the skill of either falling on the wrong side or of getting their hands on the ball and hanging on for dear life – the art, perfected by the like of a George Smith, being to get back to your feet and swing your legs onside without ever releasing the ball.

This causes the tackled man to hold on longer than he should and in no time at all others fall over the ball, making it look as though momentum carried them there in the assured knowledge that they are safe from being trampled on because putting the studs on a man, who is in effect killing the ball, is these days considered the most heinous of crimes.

So now we have two men writhing away on the ground, others standing over them, and the referee shouting “leave it!” to one or the other or both.

The upshot is that instead of having a maul (men on their feet grappling for the ball which is in the air) or a ruck (men on their feet trying to rake the ball which is on the ground) it becomes what at best can be described as a “muck’; neither one thing nor the other.

Invariably in this situation someone reaches over the top to snatch at the ball, or the scrumhalf and sometimes, depending on the referee, he gets away with it and sometimes not.

Sometimes the ball goes to ground and for some time the tendency has been for referees to allow someone to reach in pick it up and play on, as they shout “play on! he’s on his feet!”.

Sure he’s on his feet but what about hands in the ruck? Is that not a penalty according to the book? Well sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t. Hands in only counts against the defending side, never the attackers who often roll the ball out with their hands even though the law clearly states that they should not.

It’s an insidious evil which is ruining the game; caused by the fact that the law is simply not being applied correctly and aggravated by the fact that no two referees call it in the same way – just as each individual has a completely different tempo at scrum time.

The tackled man must release the ball and the tackler must move away; “through the gate” must mean through the gate and, I have to ask, when you’re kneeling on the man who is on the ground are you not, by implication, off your feet?

It’s an iniquity caused primarily by the Australia-driven demand for continuity and we now have a game that is not controlled according to a single set of rules but which depends on the idiosyncratic preferences of the referee – who, as we are always reminded, “is only human.”

The situation is obviously being exacerbated by the recent retirement of experienced referees such as Andre Watson, Tappe Henning, Andy Turner, Paddy O’Brien, Scott Young and Andrew Cole (although the problem was already apparent while they were around) and the advent of some raw officials but it is not going to improve when there is such an ambiguous attitude to calling the regulations correctly.

There has been constant evidence of referees making decisions according to popular opinion or to some World Cup brownie points-earning directive from the IRB – such as the four-stage scrum which is very hard to administer because each human being marches to a different beat so you immediately have an in-built inconsistency - rather than calling the game strictly as it is laid down in the law book.

I’ve said it before (many times) and I’ll say it again as we struggle through this year of the referee - just blow the laws (the touchy-feely scrum excepted) because they are actually quite good laws. Continue as we are and the inconsistency which has become a blight on the game will never cease.