This law is not an ass

South Africa are the worst rucking side in the world!

That remark, deliberately provocative and vulgar, was made to me in an exchange I had some time ago with a Kiwi fellow rugby scribe.

In fact, it was some time ago because we had been corresponding on an incident involving the former Blue Bull Drikus Hattingh and an ACT opponent name of John Langford in the early days of SuperRugby.

Hattingh had got himself into hot water for what he claimed was “rucking” but which the Australians felt was closer to common assault or kicking.

It sparked a furore that spread to New Zealand because the Kiwis had always claimed that South African players did not know how to ruck but went out to injure or simply boot their opponents.

This had also been a point of contention during the 1994 tour to New Zealand and my Kiwi mate, who had seen the TV footage of Hattingh’s mountaineering, was quick to remind me of our teams’ evil ways.

The discourse came to mind as I addressed the screen to write yet another column about the vexed question of the breakdown and what rugby law makers should do about it.

And I had a clear topic in mind – bring back the ruck - following the recent decisions at the IRB’s meeting on the laws to keep some of the ELVs, to kick some into touch and to call for “further examination” of the breakdown – i.e. a tackle followed by the ensuing sequence of events that sometimes lead to a ruck, or a maul or, in rare cases, a continuation of play.

Proponents as diverse as David Campese and Brian Moore have called for a return to rucking as a means to speeding up the delivery of the ball at the breakdown.

The ELV that permitted “hands-in” has been shown to be a failure and my contention is that the law makers don’t need to spend additional time on sorting it out – they should simply return to the tackle, ruck and maul laws as they are currently written (remember the law book has, as yet, not changed) and ensure that they are strictly adhered to.

In essence this means that the tackled player should immediately release the ball, that the tackler should leave him alone and that if the ball is on the ground with a player from each side over it, it is a ruck and hands must stay out and that if it is in the air then hands are allowed.

With so many teams employing a squat flanker whose key role is to get his hands on the ball, thus slowing it down, the only way forward is “to get him out of there.” Put the ball back on the ground and allow players to drive over it – thus demanding pace and numbers to the breakdown and providing quick possession and extra space for the attackers.

We must not forget that one of the key motivations of the experimentation was the “Mum factor” (to avoid injuries that turn anxious parents off the game) but in truth, if rucking is properly done, there are really very few injuries. It enables the ball to be freed, for players themselves to deal with the ball-killers and makes it much easier for referees to spot the villains who step over (should that be on?) the mark.

Another aberration of the ELVs was the ruling that the player making the tackle could not be off-sides – i.e. if he immediately got to his feet having made a tackle he could play the ball from any side.

In no time at all any number of players (especially the loose forwards) had perfected the art of falling off-sides while making that tackle and then claiming the ball when it was legally placed by the tackled man – thus bizarrely creating a situation in which it was okay for a player to be off-sides.

This latter phenomenon flew in the face of one of the objectives of the experimentation which was to find a way to stop the truck-and-trailer maul which allowed a team to “hide” a player behind a phalanx of his fellows – thus making it impossible for him to be tackled.

This situation is – just like decoy runners, but who are really blockers, in the backline – clearly wrong but can be easily eliminated by the provision that the ball carrier should always be at the front of the formation.

As Campo and Brian Moore, Victor Matfield and Todd Blackadder and number of others have said: Just ask the players, they know what works and what doesn’t.

The IRB needs to move at speed to return to a single, workable, acceptable and effective set of laws because the current hotchpotch has already led to too much disharmony and done too much damage to a game that seemed at its zenith during the 2007 Rugby World Cup.

The problems started because the vexing laws – ironically they are in a row in the Law Book, 15, 16 and 17 - were not applied properly, either constantly “tweaked”’ or different “interpretations” forced on referees.

My contention is that no further experimentation is needed. The rules as they are written are clear and concise – the problem has been that we have strayed from the letter of those laws.