THE DECLINE OF THE GAME OF RUGBY

Imagine if you will a person going to a football club or othe sporting association and suggesting a variation on the game of soccer in the following terms: "I've just had this amazing idea for a new game. It involves picking up the ball and running with it and the opposition is allowed to hold on to players to tackle them. Of course, one obligatory element of the game means that every year one or two young men will be injured sufficiently to paralyse them from the neck down and there may be occasions when players might attempt to insert their fingers into their opponents’ eye sockets. It's been necessary to incorporate a large number of rules to control the chaotic behaviour that can ensue and also to make the game more audience-friendly for television, so the referee will keep up a continuous monologue, instructing players how to play".

I'm not sure that you would get very far with such a suggestion and yet this is a factual representation of some (only some) of the less attractive aspects of Rugby Union Football today.

Let's look further into the problems faced by the game:

1. Rugby today is heavily weighted in favour of defence. The reason for this is mainly that even amateur players are much fitter than they used to be and 15 of them can cover the area of the field much more effectively than their fathers could. We now also have the free use of substitutes rather than substitutes for injuries only, so if a defender is becoming too tired to cover is part of the pitch he can be replaced.  This makes the game boring to watch and tedious to play.

2. The same question of fitness and specialised training applies to the scrum, which is where young men in the amateur game tend to break their necks when the scrum collapses. We also have the ridiculous situation where, if a front-row forward is injured and there is no specialist replacement available for that position, scrums have to be 'uncontested'. The situation arises because of the immense forces generated within the scrum by young men who are fitter, stronger and better-trained than the average player in times gone by. At the amateur level, the disparity of fitness and physical size within the scrum, together with less well-trained players, can lead to the broken necks and paralysis. Should you doubt this statement, ask any sample of fathers if they would like their sons to play in the scrum and I guarantee that the majority will say no.

3. On the subject of the scrum, some television reports of professional games now have a little clock in the corner of the screen to add up the number of minutes in the game lost to re-setting failed scrums. Some years ago it was calculated that the ball was in play for only 20 minutes of an 80-minute game. This may have improved with changes to the rules, and it would be interesting to see what this figure is today.

4. And if we are talking of the rules, we could go on all night. I understand that football has 11 rules. Theoretically rugby has 22 'laws', but these are subdivided so that they comprise a small book. Also, the rules of football have been unchanged for decades whereas the rules of rugby are continually being tinkered with. Why should this be? Basically because football is a game to be watched, while rugby is a game to be played. The problem has been that, in the northern hemisphere at least, the Five (now Six Nations) games began to appear on television, which made rugby's shortcomings as a spectator sport become more obvious. So rules were changed to give more points to the try, to prevent too much kicking into touch and to prevent pileups on the ground from which the ball would never emerge. This has led to a curious situation: rugby is now the only sport in the world in which the referee maintains a continuous stream of instructions telling the players how to play the game (at some stadiums you can even hire headphones to listen to the referee’s commentary directing the game), on the other hand certain rules are specifically ignored. It is rare today to see the ball put in straight to the scrum and the same frequently happens at the lineout. These transgressions are almost never punished. And yet how often do we see a scrum ordered for a 'knock forward' when the ball has actually fallen vertically or gone sideways?

5. In trying to recruit new players in other countries I often make fun of American football, advertising rugby as "What American football would be like if mothers didn't watch", and indeed, while I respect any athletic endeavour I find it impossible to react to the absurd exaggerated body-armour of the US game (not to mention the face painting) without smiling. And yet there has been a creeping influx of body armour into rugby. When I started playing the game one or two forwards would wear a leather scrum-cap to prevent them developing the cauliflower ears that mark a rugby forward or boxer for the rest of his life. You were allowed to wear shoulder padding if you could provide a suitable medical justification such as a previously broken collarbone. Today, among both forwards and backs we find some players using a helmet composed of tablets of a solid material and underneath the shirts it is quite clear that there is body armour protecting the trunk as well as the shoulders. This is understandable (if not particularly impressive) among professional players who (a) play too many games in a season and (b) need to protect their bodies in order to pay their mortgages. At the amateur level, however, it creates a difference between those who can afford to buy body armour and those who can't, and the ensuing disparity in the amount of physical aggression delivered and the results of physical aggression received.

So, is there hope? I don't think there is any hope of reforming the professional game, simply because too many vested interests have too much money invested in it. However, I believe the situation is similar to that of the beer industry. The big breweries are interested only in mass-producing carbonated horse-piss they can transport around the country in aluminium barrels but there is a significant proportion of the public that has reacted against this and supports the products of small, local breweries, a movement summarised in the title of the Campaign for Real Ale. It should be possible at grassroots level to launch a Campaign for Real Rugby. It might involve the following elements:

1. There can be no justification whatsoever for continuing to sanction a game in which it is guaranteed that a certain number of players will (will, not may) suffer an accident in a planned part of the game that can lead to permanent paralysis. The scrum must be de-powered and this can easily be done by removing two players from the back row. These two players could either stand out of scrums or be removed from the field altogether (see the next point).

2. As I have mentioned above, there are too many players on the field of the conventional 15-a-side rugby union game today and many people prefer to play the 7- or 10-a-side game. I don't see any problem in reducing the number of players to 13. A friend of mine to whom I have made this suggestion replied rather tartly: "Well why don't we just play rugby league then?" Why not indeed? In many ways rugby league is a rather more interesting game, but I don't see any intrinsic problem in playing a form of rugby union that gives players more room on the pitch to show their skills and evade tacklers. Although not designed to this end, this change would actually make the game more interesting to spectators.

3. Every sport that I know of is afflicted with a senior bureaucratic management made up of ex-practitioners or bought-in professional managers, people who generally feel an unconquerable need to wear suits, or even worse, blazers. These are the people who have tampered with the rules of rugby, generally to the detriment of the game. The Campaign for Real Rugby would ask the clubs for suggestions for rule changes. Rules that were adopted would then be applied equally by officials and one would hope that these rules would be sufficiently clear that referees would not need to instruct players how to obey them.

4. If there is a stratum of the rugby-playing world sufficiently delicate that their mothers insist they wear body-armour, perhaps they could be directed towards American football where I'm sure they would love prancing around in those macho shoulder pads and the buttock-hugging pantyhose. With fewer people in the scrum, the Campaign for Real Rugby might even abolish the ear-protecting scrum cap, but that's open for discussion.

5. The very nature of rugby does attract certain individuals who see the field of play as an opportunity to commit acts of violence that have nothing to do with the game. In Wales we have recently seen a promising young player blinded in one eye by an opponent who had heard of this practice happening at the highest levels of the game. Not only should those found guilty of such acts be banned for life, but legal proceedings should be taken against them.

6. The rugby world is rather smug about the behaviour of its spectators compared to footbal fans, but I have noticed a decline in behaviour at games, especially the booing of players taking penalty kicks (which you don't hear so much in football), except in Ireland, where they still maintain some ideas of sportsmanship.  This is a form of spectator interference is the equivalent to a fan running onto the pitch, which would cause the game to be stopped, so if spectators make too much noise and a kick at goal fails, the referee should allow it to be taken again.

This year I had my 67th birthday and just before it I finally retired from playing rugby even though my appearances on the field had been sporadic of late because of travel commitments. I have never played it well – I've played alongside enough good players to recognise that – but I have always enjoyed the game so the comments made above are intended as constructive criticism aimed at making rugby more enjoyable to players and spectators alike.