Refs have to watch things like the offside rule like hawks. They often fail, simply because of the pace and structure of the game. They have to rule over the mystery of scrums - 16 men straining for technical and physical superiority but who fall down faster than a base jumper when things aren't going their way, leaving the often-puzzled ref to apportion blame or spend aeons resetting scrums while many fans lose the will to live.
The tackled ball and ruck and maul are still a mess, a horrifying mush of interpretations and confusion and which contain one of the game's great sins - the cleanout; the one time when a player is allowed to crunch another when he doesn't have the ball.
Pumas lock Tomas Lavanini's head-missile cleanout of Richie McCaw last weekend stemmed directly from this willingness to overlook a hallowed principle.
The game is a confusion of contradictions. Sometimes the refs let the advantage go on so long, there's time to take the dog for a walk and still be back in time for the penalty kick at goal. Other times, they blow it up a nano-second after the side sinned against or who could benefit from the mistake have had no time to develop an attack.
The lawmakers - the true villains - and the refs want to speed the game up and keep the ball in play but we still have to stop when an over-eager halfback wants to take a tap kick from a mark 10cm from where the ref says it is. Or the game is halted when the ball is thrown in crooked, even though the defending side hasn't jumped for the ball.
The proof of all this idiocy is when you hear the ref having to coach the players as they play. No other sport in the world has to do this. You know: "Hands off, No 6! Release! Roll away, tackler! Stay on your feet! It's a ruck! It's a maul!"
It's a travesty...
It's time rugby gave up trying to make the refs scapegoats for a set of laws which seem philosophically designed to stop things happening rather than allowing them to happen. The rules were intended to make the game more entertaining but, surely, not at the cost of all this confusion and making the refs sound like auctioneers. Hansen's right - rip up the law book and reinvent something simpler.
Maybe the current trial in Australia at provincial level will finally promote a change, although the main thrust seems to be around the points system (two points for penalties and dropped goals, three for conversions).
They are, however, trialling other sensible things, like 30 seconds to set scrums, less time for kicks at goal, crooked throws allowed if the opposition does not contest a lineout and players allowed to take a quick tap from the general region of the mark.
The evidence from Australia is, so far, that there have been fewer kicks at goal and more tries scored. However, it's not hard to be cynical on two points - whether the IRB will pick this up (even though they say they are watching with interest) and whether, when the stakes are raised at higher levels of rugby, more professional fouls would apply with the lessened penalty for a penalty, so to speak.
So far, the Australian trial has not resulted in loads more yellow cards, even though refs were instructed to throw them round like rice at a wedding. Yellow cards do not seem the way to go.
There has been over-use already - the Boks must wonder how they lost that test and have been gracious in their silence afterwards - and fans (just like they don't want to see collapsed scrums or confusing penalties) don't want to see matches decided by an official. They want two fit, full-strength teams playing their best against each other and creating entertainment, not being subject to policy.
