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Tuesday 18 January 2011

Punishing the cheats


My rugby wish for 2011 is a simple one: I’d like to see the authorities tell referees to take major steps towards eradicating the cynical cheating that is damaging the game.  Last weekend’s ‘Big Game’ at Twickenham attracted 75,000 people, but the spectacle they saw could have been so much better.  Referee Andrew Small, and it’s a tad unfair to single him out because he’s a good ref, and plenty of other refs have put in similar performances this season, took an age to yellow card anyone, and as a result the game made dire viewing.

Players were deliberately miles offside, and they were lying all over the ball at the breakdown.  When it became apparent that all the referee was going to do was issue a telling-off, of course they did it more than ever.  In these situations rugby players start to act like small children with a parent who threatens discipline but never acts.  You know the sort of thing: “Do that again and there will be no birthdays or Christmases ever again!”  Yeah, right.

The result of Small’s inaction was a first half that was pretty desperate stuff.  On the stroke of half-time he binned Bob Casey, and lo and behold the game got a bit better – not much better as this was two sides low on confidence playing tedious stuff, but it was still a step up from the first half.

If we want good flowing rugby then it’s easy: reduce the level of cheating and that’s what you’ll get.  For a few weeks it might involve twelve against eleven for a few minutes, but if that’s the cost of cleaning things up, so be it.  Once coaches had seen that the refs meant business, they’d act.

I’d also like to see the interpretation of a situation that merits a penalty try being strictly enforced.  The key word is ‘probably’ in the Laws – the penalty try can be awarded if the ref believes that a try would probably have been scored had the cheating not taken place.  In the second half of the Quins v Irish game Danny Care got binned for cynically slowing the ball down on his own line – you see similar occurrences in pretty well every game.  Quins fans would have reacted badly had a penalty try been awarded, but I’d have supported the decision.  Let’s have a few refs who take the line, ”He only cheated because he believed he was stopping a try-scoring move – that’s good enough for me”, and head under the posts.

During the second-half, Quins stand-off, Chris Malone, did something that rightly sent Sky’s Stuart Barnes off on one.  When Irish once again slowed the ball down illegally at the breakdown, Malone appeared to make a gesture to the ref’ suggesting that he show someone a card – the thought was dead right, but he was oh so wrong to do it..  Barnes made the point that rugby doesn’t need such football histrionics, and it’s hard to imagine that many would disagree with him.  I recall seeing an England international once take a deliberate dive, and the ref clearly said ‘We don’t need that in rugby, do it again and you’re off”, awarding a penalty against him.  That’s what we need if we are to stop rugby heading down the same cynical and unpleasant road that football has taken.

While I’m ranting, here’s another area I’d like to see sorted in 2011.  Gloucester’s England lock, Dave Attwood, is up before the Beak on a charge of alleged stamping.  It’s not for us to pre-judge the case against Attwood, but the circumstances are those that you see in every game.  Play moved on, and a player on the ground had a hold of Attwood’s leg, preventing him getting back into the action – in this instance another player was also trying to tackle Attwood without the ball.   Attwood was perfectly entitled to try to free himself, and we’ll leave it to the authorities to judge whether he went too far in doing it.  That, however, isn’t the point: two players blatantly cheated, and their victim is in the dock – where’s the justice in that?

In such situations –  and when you’re watching a live game you see a lot more than the camera picks up in a televised match – it’s hard to blame the officials as they’ve got enough on their plate following the action.  I’d like to see the citing officer’s role extended to encourage them to pick up on off-the-ball incidents – once a few culprits had copped bans then coaches would tell them to cut it out, and the game would be better for it.  It doesn’t need to be violent, cynical play is more of the threat to the top-level game than thuggery is these days.

I can hear the squeals of outrage from some old timers about this, and I’m sure that the argument will be that we’d take some of the game’s character away, but they’re just plain wrong.  Stop the cynical cheating and the game will prosper even more.

Happy New Year.

First published in The Rugby Paper on 02 January 2011 and reproduced with the editor's permission

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