SPORTSRITE - Try not to get the blues

With Tim Eves
WE interrupt your blissful beachside slumber-fest to bring you a gentle reminder.
This might read a bit like a storm warning, you know, "a weather-bomb called Cyclone Foxy Lady is about to rip your beach house to pieces", but it shouldn't, unless, of course, you haven't swotted up on the new rugby rules. Whoops ... guilty your honour.
So, just in case you haven't realised yet, and just in case you are still interested enough to care, it seems timely to remind you that rugby is about to assault your television screens again.
Or at least a version of it.
Pardon?
Was that a sigh or a scoff you just uttered? By crikey, you better make sure you fix that cynical anti-rugby attitude before Steve Tew, the "chief executive designate" of our national sport, gets wind of it.
Rest assured, you don't want to fall foul of Mr Tew this early in the season.
Ask anyone involved in rugby these days, from provincial chief executive to those grubby worthless individuals who masquerade as rugby reporters, there ain't no comin' back from a dressing down from a chief executive designate.
So best you fire up the Google and start searching out the new rugby rules, and make sure you re-acquaint yourself with the new rugby landscape while you're at it.
You don't want to turn on the sports channel and start cheering for the Blues only to find out the Blues wear white, the Force wear blue just like the Waratahs (oh, as do the Bulls), while the Reds are in purple, the Crusaders are in red, and the Chiefs mostly wear yellow except when they play the Force at which time they wear white (with red and black stripey things).
And when you see Robbie Deans looking happy, be very, very sad, unless he is in blazer with a red badge, in which case you could be happy unless you cheer for the Blues in white, or maybe the Highlanders in blue.
And you thought the rules were complicated?
This season you can use hands in a ruck where you only used to be allowed to use your feet. You can take a scrum when you win a penalty or a free kick. But if awarded a scrum you can't pick a penalty, you have to do the scrum. But if you get a free kick you can chose a scrum, because sometimes a scrum is better than a free kick.
The offside line is still invisible but has been moved 5m back from the scrum so it is harder to find but easier to exploit and, when a try is scored in the corner, it won't be disallowed for hitting the corner flag, because it no longer exists.
Just like the last time new rugby rules arrived in 1992, these are designed to reduce the number of games decided by the penalty kick.
When those laws were introduced it was with the aim of speeding the game up and also to reduce the number of penalties.
It was even said at the time that penalties would become so rare a Grant Fox-type player would become obsolete. But then Andrew Mehrtens landed nine penalties in one game and England's superboot Jonny Wilkinson started kicking heaps of penalties after posing momentarily like he was constipated.
We are not sure what these new rules will do, but judging by that stunned goldfish look on your face right now, either you're Jonny Wilkinson, you're constipated, or you're wondering how you made it to the end of this rugby diatribe.
Right now, live coverage of a foxy lady in a cyclone has more appeal than a Blue rugby scrum against the Reds in purple.