The clock is ticking for Super Rugby. Photo / Photosport
The clock is ticking for Super Rugby. Photo / Photosport
OPINION:
When WH Auden wrote his poem Funeral Blues and requested to stop all the clocks, he could not have foreseen that the opening line would become a guiding principle for a professional rugby competition in a far-off land.
But that line – stop all the clocks – speaks torugby followers as a common-sense mantra rather than an expression of profound sadness as it was originally intended.
Rugby has a history of adopting seemingly misplaced anthems, while the Southern Hemisphere has long been willing to be the global game's guinea pig, offering itself up as the place to trial rule innovations and experimental variations, and so it would seem there is a chance to bring these two traditions together next year.
Super Rugby says it's determined to become the most fan-focused competition on the planet and hence, stopping all the clocks is precisely the right thing to do.
Next year in Super Rugby, why not use the clock to speed the game up, keep the ball in play for longer and effectively kill the chronic time wasting which typically sees up to half the 80 minutes devoted to scrum resets, goal-kicks and teams slowly meandering to wherever they are supposed to be.
To be fair to Super Rugby, there has been a conscious attempt this year to stamp out overt time wasting – referees having been empowered to hurry teams along to lineouts and scrums and to kick the endless army of water carriers and medics off the field when they are lingering over a supposed injury.
But referees have virtually no real power to wield against teams that linger and malinger and if rugby is serious about giving fans a better product, then it needs to do so through a legislative framework that makes the clock a genuine weapon against those inclined to waste time.
Scrums have earned a bad reputation in the professional age, often portrayed as an outdated barrier to producing a modern source of entertainment.
But scrums are an integral and brilliant part of the rugby package. The sight of two good scrummaging packs testing each other out is compelling and fundamental to rugby being the gladiatorial sport that it is with a place for body shapes that can't find a home in any other sporting code.
The problem with scrums is the endless choreography required to set them and re-set them and minutes at a time can disappear in a heap of oversized limbs crumpling upon each other.
A scrum during a Chiefs v Blues clash earlier this year. Photo / Photosport
Scrums are great but the business of forming them and setting them isn't, so why not stop the clock between a scrum being awarded and the halfback being told to put the ball in?
What rational, fan-centric argument could be mounted against that idea and the secondary benefit of doing that may be to take the pressure off referees, who seem to often panic into awarding penalties via guesswork after a couple of consecutive scrums have collapsed.
The pressure mostly comes from the fact they know the clock is ticking and half the time they seem to just want to award a penalty on the basis the crowd is getting bored with the inactivity and wants to get back on with the game.
So too stop the clock for goal-kicks. If there are 10 in the average game, that's 10 minutes gone right there: 10 minutes devoted to seeing one player stare intently at the posts, then the ball, then the posts.
Or, if stopping the clock is deemed a step too far, at least put a tighter time limit on the whole business and enforce it – run a second clock that gives teams 45 seconds from the moment the try or penalty is awarded to the ball having to be kicked.
Ditto, put a second clock on the lineout and give the team in possession 30 seconds from the ball going out initially to being thrown back in.
No one loves the slow walk to the lineout after the elongated huddle, the needless pre-throw pushing and jostling to retain the metre gap and the whole façade of having to repeat calls against the cacophony of crowd noise.
None of these time-wasting enterprises add to the theatre of the occasion or enhance the entertainment value.
They are archaic habits that belong to a left behind age when rugby was under no pressure to be dynamic and the entertainment was derived by revelling in the quirks and oddities of the sport.
Better clock management feels like it could deliver massive reward for rugby as an entertainment product without compromising any of its combative nature.
If anything, better clock management will enhance the value of good scrummaging and efficient lineout work.
It can be used to build greater fatigue into the game by increasing the aerobic content and potential nudge rugby back towards being a contact rather than collision sport.
