Debate over law changes should not be allowed to become subjective

I was going to write a column on how the new law interpretations had helped the South African teams narrow the gap on the overseas Super 12 teams. Then Laurie Mains took the words right out of my mouth.

You didn't have to be a rugby rocket scientist last Saturday to see that the new interpretation suited the Sharks more than it did the Brumbies.

The Brumbies place a heavy emphasis on continuity and taking the ball through a succession of phases. The Sharks, as South African teams were wont to do for most of the 1990s, rely on aggressive tackling and the sheer physical strength of their forwards.

So when it comes to playing against Australian or New Zealand teams, the Sharks are not afraid of stop-start games. And they are by no means alone among South African teams in feeling that they have a better chance of winning when the game slows down.

The new interpretations turn the tackle ball into a lottery. With "bridging" and other means of protecting possession now outlawed, the team that goes into the loose scrum or tackle situation with the ball is now far less likely to come out with it.

The risk of being turned over becomes far greater. The result is that it either leads to more conservative rugby, or it reduces the effectiveness of the more adventurous team. As the Stormers of 1999 and 2000 were the only South African team to really place an emphasis on continuity in matches against overseas opposition, Mains is 100% correct when he says the new interpretations favour the South Africans.

However, he misses the point entirely when he argues on this basis that South African Rugby Football Union chief executive should side with the northern hemisphere at any IRB conference where law interpretations are discussed.

Surely decisions on the attractiveness of rugby union as a product in an increasingly competitive professional sporting market should not be based on subjective reasoning.

Which is precisely what Oberholzer and Springbok coach Harry Viljoen would be guilty of if they did take up the cudgels against those southern hemisphere role players who feel the product has been diminished.

Arguing that the game should be played a certain way because it favours your team loses sight of the bigger picture. Indeed, it is not totally unlike the northern hemisphere thinking that sparked the latest IRB directive on refereeing interpretations and which has made the Super 12 less of a spectacle than it was.

Of course the northern hemisphere would prefer the laws to favour those who are big on forward power and not so blessed with skill. It suits them because it gives their players a greater chance of competing against southern hemisphere nations which over the past decade have tended to be quicker and more skilled.

But is the negation of the spectacle in the best interests of rugby? I am not so sure. Frankly, compared to previous years, the first two rounds of this year's Super 12 have been one long bore. Even avid Sharks fans would agree that while their team's win was memorable for the result, it fell well short of providing the spectacle which would have kept a neutral observer, or non-rugby person, glued to their television set.

It was a similar story in the Blues match against the Crusaders, as well as several other matches in the round. Not all the apparent unforced errors that blighted the games could be blamed on the refereeing interpretations, but they certainly contributed.

There may have been nothing coincidental in the fact that both really outstanding performances of the competition have come in games where the referees appeared to be leaning towards the old interpretations. South African Andre Watson has been there and done that in a refereeing sense, which might explain why he prioritised the players and the watching public above the IRB assessors when he took the whistle for the first round game between the Brumbies and the Crusaders.

And while Mains feels the laws favour his team, there are some who feel that his Cats team's brilliant performance against the Highlanders last week was aided by the referee being in a time-warp and blowing the old way.

Interestingly, there have been similar claims about the referee in England's impressive win over Scotland in the Six Nations this past weekend. Maybe it would be over-hasty at this stage to force a change to the interpretations. Give the players a little time to get used to them and perhaps it will be a different story.

But the argument that they should be stuck with on the basis that South Africa might be better off in their battles with New Zealand and Australia defeats the purpose of law evaluations.

Adopting that argument is a little like calling for a reduction in the points awarded for a try because your team happens to have a good goalkicker. Or abolishing forwards because your people tend to be small and better suited to backline play.

Maybe the laws as they are consituted will favour you today, but tomorrow they may not. The thinking should not revolve around whether your team is better off, but whether the game of rugby will be more attractive to the wider public.

The people who really matter are not coaches who worry about results in the short-term, and who are forced by the nature of the business into a win-at-all costs mentality, but the various stake-holders who stand to lose substantially if rugby is allowed to become just one long yawn.

On the evidence of the past fortnight, we might well be heading in that direction.