Alice Soper: Rugby’s complex lawbook application only distances fans further

Match referee Wayne Barnes show a red card to Sam Cane in the Rugby World Cup final. Photo / Photosport

OPINION

The first rugby law I learned live was a deeply embarrassing experience. Having played eight games of organised rugby in my life, I somehow found myself at a representative tournament. The opposition kicked the ball through and I scampered after it, collecting and dotting down behind my try line. What I had failed to understand is that I had in fact carried the ball back to do so, resulting in awarding my opposition possession in a handy spot to launch an attack. They scored, I learnt humility and the carryback law forever.

Shameful as it was, I’ve carried on this way throughout my rugby - learning most of the laws by breaking them at least once. This knowledge was helpful in my game as a player and a coach, but also as a fan, setting me up to have a fairly good grasp of what was going on. But where we are drawing the line is shifting. Countries and competitions are now split on what is fair play, and as a result, more of us are getting offside with our understanding.

This is never more evident than around the enforcement of the tackle height law. The motivation behind recent changes are thoroughly decent but the application across countries is leading to dissent. In domestic rugby in Aotearoa, there is one standard around the acceptable height of the first arriving tackler versus the second. In the United Kingdom, all tacklers, regardless of arriving order, must be equally low. Meanwhile in France, there is a moratorium on two-person tackles.

The interpretation changes again when players enter the professional leagues. Stark is the contrast between punishments handed out in the men’s game between the Southern and Northern Hemispheres. Super Rugby Pacific fans will be outraged at a yellow card that their Gallagher Premiership counterparts would receive a red for. How long a team is reduced in number for that red also differs, with Super Rugby allowing a replacement after a 20-minute stand-down. It’s not hard to draw a line from these concessions made in the local leagues to the discipline difficulties that the All Blacks experienced at the World Cup.

It’s also not hard to fathom why fans, who have been primarily watching one standard be applied, feel aggrieved to see another enforced in these big matches. One look at the comment sections after last year’s World Cup final laid plain this frustration. The people who wear the ire of this confusion are not those tinkering with law trials but the referees enforcing them, many of whom, upon retirement, cite this abuse as one of their reasons for putting down the whistle.

Rugby punditry will frequently tell you the complexity of the sport’s laws is one of the most difficult barriers for new fans. So it raises the question of why we are building these barriers higher. There is a growing chasm now for fans to vault, filled with all the differences in laws depending on the levels and locations of the game. That’s not to say innovation and improvement shouldn’t be made, but rather a simple plea: that they be consistently applied.

The best part of the men’s rugby I watched as a kid was seeing different styles of play run against each other. Watching the tactics applied to get the best from the teams under the laws that governed them. It was this innovation of the style, not adaptation of the substance, that was a joy to behold.