Tonight on The Breakdown the team celebrate the return of rugby to NZ and dissect the matches over the weekend.
COMMENT:
It's time for everyone to make their minds up and decide whether they want rugby to be a contact sport or a collision sport.
There is a difference and for the avoidance of doubt it is this: rugby as a contact sport means the game will be punctuated byphysical impacts but not necessarily defined by them. There will be space to exploit, room for the creative types to be effective and damaging and multiple strategic options for teams to pursue.
If it's a collision sport we will see big men endlessly smash into each other, making incremental gains in an endless process of grinding each other into submission.
The little men, the Damian McKenzie's of this world, will barely feature, becoming like the human appendix – a remnant of rugby's evolutionary past.
Pinning exactly where rugby currently sits on the spectrum that runs from contact to collision is hard to say, but based on the way test football was played at the World Cup last year, it has clearly moved along way towards the collision end.
There is no greater evidence of that than the fact England and South Africa – the two great collision teams of world rugby – made it to the final.
Presumably in some parts of the world there is an appetite for collision rugby. It works for some mind-sets and for the prevalent skill-sets inherent in the genetics of some populations.
But an opinion poll in New Zealand would most likely confirm that the majority desire here is to see rugby as a contact sport. Collisions are part of the desired package, not all of it and it was a giant source of frustration throughout 2018 and 2019 to see Beauden Barrett, the world's best attacking player, have defensive lines arriving in his face at about the same time the ball did.
Damian McKenzie of the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport
No one here wants rugby to be a war of attrition, a contest shaped exclusively by the muscularity of the players and hence that's why the opening weekend of Super Rugby Aotearoa saw 58 penalties awarded.
New Zealand's administrators are trying to create the framework to re-establish rugby as a contact sport. To do that they are demanding defensive lines have to be overtly onside.
Throughout the World Cup, it was constantly marginal whether teams were onside and if they steal a half metre in alignment and then advance a split second before the attacking team releases the ball, the space disappears and the outcome is that the first ball receiver has no choice but to enter a collision.
Also, players now have to enter rucks from the correct place, the attacking player has to immediately release the ball and the defender has to roll out the way east to west.
It's simple and achievable and if all these things constantly happen, then the game will flow better, more space will open and rugby will become less about the collisions and more about the way teams evade them.
This is the game most of us want to see and while it might be a painful transition to get there, it will be worth it because ultimately it will be the All Blacks who benefit most if rugby pushes towards being a contact rather than collision sport.
And the onus to speed up the transition and reduce the penalty counts sits entirely with the players and not the referees.
Referee Paul Williams during the Super Rugby Aotearoa clash between the Highlanders and the Chiefs. Photo / Photosport
Stay onside and the game works, it's that simple and players owe it to the referees to make the game easier to officiate.
It becomes an impossible job for referees when they have to adjudicate on endless marginal decisions and players have to accept they have an almost ethical responsibility to play with greater respect for the laws.
And there has to be an acceptance among the rugby supporting fraternity that they can't have it both ways.
Referees can't be expected to apply the law one way in Super Rugby and another in tests. Referees can't be selective about when to officiate the offside line: it is either all of the time or none of the time and the events at Twickenham in 2018 confirm why it has to be all of the time.
Sam Underwood scored a late try against the All Blacks that would almost certainly have won England the game.
But it was disallowed after referee Jérôme Garcès decided that Courtney Lawes was offside when he charged down TJ Perenara's clearing kick and the All Blacks held on to win because the referee had correctly applied the laws of the game.
