Rules of engagement
After, 15 games, the Six Nations will be able to show their tournament is something not to be tampered with, says Brendan Fanning
Brian O'Driscoll, Steve Borthwick, Sergio Parisse, Ryan Jones, Lionel Nallet and Mike Blair get ready to renew hostilities in the Six Nations, as Ireland begin by looking for revenge against France at Croke Park
Y ou will recall the sequence, one which felt like it took a day and half to unfold but in reality was more like a minute and half. Not that it made much difference.
It was Croke Park, almost two years ago now, the first day GAA's headquarters was opened to international rugby. And in that painful 90-second tailend, Ronan O'Gara restarted the game; the France forwards with some assistance from their backs started turning off the lights; and we rewrote our intros. A Grand Slam and a grand opening shredded in one energy-saving operation.
That was by no means the worst example of the kind of shutdown which one or other team could bring to a game of rugby back then, but with France returning to the scene of the crime this week, and in a new set of circumstances, it has a certain topicality.
With this Six Nations we are putting rugby's ELVs into our most glamorous shop window. In March, there will be another all-in conference of interested parties, followed then by each union going away and fixing on a position, and lastly in May, after the IRB have put heaven and earth into saving face, the decision will be taken on what is to be bought and what is to be binned.
If you were to take a punt now, you'd say that the game next season won't look a whole lot different to the way it looks now. North of the equator -- critically -- we never got on board at any serious level with the horrendous 'free kick fits all' sanction, so we won't have to wear that in the future. There's a reasonable chance too that the maul will go back to the way it was, though with a stipulation that it be refereed as a maul and not a piece of industrial machinery that starts and stops and starts again.
Nothing we are about to witness in the Six Nations will change much on those fronts, but in another area we are about to get constant reminders, spread over 15 games from Twickenham at 3.0 pm on Saturday to the Millennium Stadium at 5.30 on March 21, of something that has gone horribly wrong in the game. And it is relatively easy to fix.
For some commentators, this horror show is the most offensive part of the ELVs package. In fact, it has nothing to do with them. The confusion arose in the first place because along with the ELVs came a couple of reminders from the IRB about things that have been overlooked for years. And trying to get rid of a bad habit is a whole lot harder than trying to learn a new trick.
The key protocol was about something which is at the core of rugby: a fair contest for possession. Over the years this had become emasculated in the desire to sex up the game. The springboard for this was the glamming up of southern hemisphere provincial rugby to Super 12 status in the mid 1990s. You'll probably find that some of those making the loudest noise now about the scourge of ELVs are the same ones who hopped on board the Super Rugby train without asking where it was going. In its quest for more tries, the team in possession was allowed to sandbag bodies on the ball as if the ocean was coming under the front door. And that was the end of what was left of the ruck. Fast forward to last summer when the IRB told us that, along with the ELVs, there would be a return to first principles at the ruck -- no more sandbagging; players to try and stay on their feet -- and the effect has at times been chaotic, not least because referees are either afraid or confused or would rather continue as they were.
Its worst by-product has been the amount of kicking going on; teams are now petrified to counterattack for fear of being caught in possession, and then going off their feet at the tackle, and then penalised. So safety first: bog it. Between this season's Heineken Cup so far, and the November series just gone, the ball was kicked an average of 63.5 times per game. A year ago, before either ELVs or the tackle protocol, that figure was only 52 per match. You can't ascribe the increase solely to the tackle and how it is being refereed, but it's a huge factor.
The key, however, is not that the protocol is wrong, rather that it was brought in without catering for the collateral impact. The lawmakers are on the money in wanting to prevent what happened that day against France, or countless other examples of games being closed down by players taking turns to lie on the ball until the final whistle sounds. What they left out was the incentive for players to drive over the ball which currently they are afraid to do in case it is stolen by an opponent nipping in and taking off down the field.
There is a simple solution to this: referee the offside line at the ruck which currently is virtually ignored. Give players a reason to stay on their feet and drive forward (ie, that by doing so the opposition will be forced to retreat to stay onside). Better still, move the offside line five metres back from the ruck. If referees and their assistants can figure out 10-metre gaps at the lineout and five-metre gaps at the scrum, is it a quantum leap to do something similar at the breakdown?
As it is, we are plagued with referees and commentators who can't distinguish between a player who goes off his feet in the process of clearing someone out of the way -- a positive action -- and someone who goes off his feet with the express intention of sealing the ball off from the outside world -- a negative action. If you don't understand the difference, you shouldn't be either refereeing or writing about the game.
Fixing this would have a positive effect on a sport that is crying out for space to move. And that would only enhance its value, which already is huge business. The Six Nations recently commissioned a report into the value of its tournament, looking at ticketing, hospitality and broadcast revenues. The results of this will be in long before the ELV debate
is put to bed, and will provide a financial benchmark against which to measure any rise or fall in interest in the game as a result of what the IRB decide in May. They should use it as a bulwark against any attempt to introduce the 'free kick fits all' sanctions, which would disfigure the game. Moreover, when the debate on the global season kicks off again, the Six Nations will be in a position to highlight their tournament as something not to be tampered with.
So this is more than your average season, more than one that will provide pointers to the Lions tour. This is about opening up the game as a contest and a spectacle that will last till the final whistle.
