The Sports Factor

Exactly 100 years ago Rugby Union split in Australia, with the formation of the rival Rugby League code. A century later it's being suggested now another split is possible.

Transcript

This transcript was typed from a recording of the program. The ABC cannot guarantee its complete accuracy because of the possibility of mishearing and occasional difficulty in identifying speakers.

Exactly 100 years ago Rugby Union split in Australia, with the formation of the rival Rugby League code.

A century later it's being suggested now another split is possible, this time between rugby playing nations in the northern and southern hemispheres.

Here south of the equator, elite competitions have been trialling what are called ELVs, Experimental Law Variations; basically they're rule changes aimed at making the game simpler to understand, more exciting to watch and better to play.

Well that's the antipodean view. In Europe they're not so impressed.

Indeed the Welsh Rugby Union chief has declared that the new laws are simply an attempt by Australia to turn Union into a new type of League, and that Australia's suggestion of a possible split, well it's just bullying.

One of the key people behind the proposed changes is the former Wallaby coach, Rod McQueen, whose team won the Rugby World Cup in 1999.

He's the Australian member of a group assembled to review the laws of rugby and to oversee the trials of the proposed changes. So, how serious is the prospect of a split?

Rod McQueen: I think it's serious. There doesn't seem to be at this stage any compromise being taken, particularly by the north in trialling the Experimental Laws to the extent that there have been in the south. And obviously that's an issue because I think that it's been pretty obvious that the teams that have actually gone through the trials are very reluctant to go back to a number of the old laws. It will be seen as a backward step I think, particularly in the south, if there's a call to go back to the old laws.

Mick O'Regan: Now there are almost 2 dozen Experimental Law Variations proposed. Apparently, say for example, the Welsh Rugby Union, they're prepared to trial 13; why is that such a problem? Is not trialling them all going to render the other trials meaningless?

Rod McQueen: Well I think that's the point. You know, you can have an opinion which of the laws work or which don't, but the whole idea of the Laws Project Group, which I'm part of, was to get a number of the laws and trial them as a group. That way, over a period of time, in this case 3 years, they could be properly assessed, and then they could make some decisions based on statistical analysis and data that we'd have, as to which ones should stay and which ones should go, if any. So I think the issue that we have is that there's never been a process like this done before.

It started out with the idea of looking at the principles of play that the uniqueness about Rugby Union is it's a game for all shapes and sizes, and so that's been the predominant issue that we've looked at, these laws, keeping in mind. The concern that I have is that we don't want to make a decision on the laws at this stage, but what we need to do is trial all the laws, and the concern we've got, the Welsh and the English in particular, are trying to make decisions on the laws not based on any statistical analysis, and the ones they take out, it means basically that once they take them out, that's it, and they won't have the opportunity to be trialled.

Mick O'Regan: I don't want to get too far down into the technicalities of these laws but I am very interested in the broad impressions that the respective unions have. Now it would seem to me that the idea of the Stellenbosch changes that became ELVs, was to speed up the game, to get the ball into play more, to give less long-arm penalties, that is, penalties that might result in a 3-point penalty kick, and a greater number of short-arm penalties where the side gets possession and then can play on again. What's the concern do you think, in the European members of the IRB about these changes? That it's going to make the game like Rugby League?

Rod McQueen: Really what we're looking at doing is trying to take the subjectivity out of refereeing decisions. There's a lot of laws in Rugby that take place when a tackle occurs, and that's a breakdown, and so there's something like 30 laws at this stage. What we tried to do is actually reduce that so that the referee isn't making such an impact on the game. And so some of the decisions like making the half-arm penalties for free kicks instead of full-arm penalties, where the referee can decide the outcome of the game, and in our case, in looking at the two years, the majority of the games that have been played under the Experimental Laws are now being I believe, won and lost by the team and by the coaching tactics, rather than the decisions that the referees are making.

So that was a very important part I guess of what these ELVs are all about. Additionally, the uniqueness of rugby is that it's a game for all shapes and sizes, and we need to keep that uniqueness in the game. And so scrums and line-outs have got to be equally as important as they always were, and there also needs to be a contest of possession. The big difference between Rugby Union and Rugby League is that there's no contest of possession in Rugby League, and hence a lot of the sizes of the players have become very similar, particularly in recent years since they made the scrum non-contestable.

Mick O'Regan: And of course the scrum is a key concern here, because it does seem to me that the voices coming out of Europe, that the voices of concern are saying that because Australia historically, or at least over the last 10 years, hasn't had a formidable scrum, that hasn't been the main weapon in the Wallabies armoury, and yet countries like England and I suppose to a lesser extent, the Welsh, have had very good strong scrums, and they're basically saying that the new laws penalise their ability in the scrum by shifting the game back to a more open running style of play. Now is that a fair criticism? Because it would seem to me from watching the recent Test between the All Blacks and the South Africans, that the contest for the ball in the set-piece was as strong as in any Test I've seen.

Rod McQueen: Yes, look it's a very inaccurate observation in fact, and in all the games there's been something like I think over 1,000 games played under the new laws, and the statistical data has been collected, right through that. So the average amount of scrums in a game is something like 21, and the average number of scrums in this game is very similar, there are about 20, 21. It's the same from the line-out perspective, the average line-outs for instance in Super 14 is about 27, 28; and the same occurs under the new laws. But more importantly, with the 5-metre law from the scrum, a scrum has become even more important because if you can get your side up in the scrum and get very quick, clean ball, the chances are that you'll get over the game line very quickly. So the reality is in fact that scrums and line-outs are every bit as important as they were before and in fact probably even more important.

And the concern I suppose that I have is that the sort of people that are making these statements, are not referring in any way whatsoever to the statistical data that's actually available to them which has never been done in the past. So for the last 100 years in Rugby Union, there's been law changes made, but they've always been done basically around the board room table, so for the first time ever, we've actually got a very well thought out process in place to try and get it right. And here we have the people that have been involved in making in my opinion, ill-informed decisions in the past, are coming out again and making statements that are completely unfounded.

Mick O'Regan: Do you think there's a level of intransigence that is being directed at Australia because it's felt in the Northern Hemisphere that Australia wants these laws because it's going to suit Australia's style of rugby more than other nations?

Rod McQueen: Look I can't answer that. I really don't know, because in fact the group of people that I'm involved with in looking at these laws come from both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and from a number of different countries. So I can't see how they can actually align the decision-making on this with Australia. I'm the only Australian that's involved in the group and the group's got Scottish, French, certainly New Zealand, and English people in it, so I really can't understand where they're getting their assumption from. I can only say once again it's certainly ill-informed.

Mick O'Regan: The former Rugby World Cup winning coach of the Wallabies, Rod McQueen.

Guests

Rod McQueen
World cup winning coach of the Wallabies.

Presenter

Mick O'Regan

Producer

Andrew Davies