RugbyRebels

Time to get to grips with this.
Too many tacklers deliberately get themselves on the 'wrong side' by swinging around the ball carrier. That's ok as long as they get out of the way quickly. But too often they are equally deliberately prevented from doing so by the opposition who clearly pin them looking for penalties. These players not only pin the tackler but also seal the ball off from the opposition. Scotland did this in spades yesterday - often going off their feet at the same time.
Maybe penalise players not rolling away quickly but also penalise players preventing them from doing so.

Pinning players in place has become endemic. You see it half a dozen times every game.

Players are so good at it, that making a distinction between simply doing their job at a ruck and preventing a player from exiting is impossible. So, all you can say is that if a player is prevented from exiting, whether deliberately or accidental, he is no longer transgressing.

Do what the Super XV did last season and Im assuming are doing this season and make players roll out towards the sidelines rather than the trylines. Or simply bring back proper rucking...

Doorzetbornandbred wrote:Do what the Super XV did last season and Im assuming are doing this season and make players roll out towards the sidelines rather than the trylines. Or simply bring back proper rucking...

Bring back proper rucking is music to my ears, Will never happen though unfortunately. Would cure so many ills in the game. Richie McCaw would have found life very different if it were allowed these days

I would hazard McCaw would have been rucked a plenty coming up through age grade rugby in NZ. Theres no way rucking will make a return at the higher level as they're trying to make the game safer.

Len wrote:I would hazard McCaw would have been rucked a plenty coming up through age grade rugby in NZ. Theres no way rucking will make a return at the higher level as they're trying to make the game safer.

Rucking is not dangerous

UKHamlet wrote:Pinning players in place has become endemic. You see it half a dozen times every game.

Players are so good at it, that making a distinction between simply doing their job at a ruck and preventing a player from exiting is impossible. So, all you can say is that if a player is prevented from exiting, whether deliberately or accidental, he is no longer transgressing.

I'd want to rewatch it, but I'm fairly sure Hartley at one point actually threw AWJ back into the ruck and got a penalty from it.

Bob wrote:

Len wrote:I would hazard McCaw would have been rucked a plenty coming up through age grade rugby in NZ. Theres no way rucking will make a return at the higher level as they're trying to make the game safer.

Rucking is not dangerous

Its a risk. I've seen somebody lose a tooth from wayward rucking.

hawkaye wrote:Time to get to grips with this.
Too many tacklers deliberately get themselves on the 'wrong side' by swinging around the ball carrier. That's ok as long as they get out of the way quickly. But too often they are equally deliberately prevented from doing so by the opposition who clearly pin them looking for penalties. These players not only pin the tackler but also seal the ball off from the opposition. Scotland did this in spades yesterday - often going off their feet at the same time.
Maybe penalise players not rolling away quickly but also penalise players preventing them from doing so.

Agree. But just as bad is the whole business of tackled players releasing/placing the ball. You are supposed to release the ball when you are tackled, yet refs allow players to squirm about on the ground until they get themselves into position to release on their own side. Then they keep their hand on it for ages until a team mate arrives to mop it up. In many cases these problems could be overcome by vigourous counterrucking designed to blast the opponents in possession off the ball. But many teams seem to have given up on counterrucking. It is just not part of their tactics and they won't commit the numbers to the breakdown. When it's done well it can still result in significant turnovers for the counterrucking team. The other benefit is that by comitting forwards to the ruck they no longer clutter up the midfield, with their ponderous go-nowhere carries that stifle many promising back moves.

We can all see it, why can't those moronic refs?

Cartman wrote:We can all see it, why can't those moronic refs?

BECAUSE they're moronic refs

It happens a bit, and it would slow the game too much to blow the whistle.
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It happens more, and it would slow the game down even further to blow the whistle; and zero tolerance doesn't work in case they miss one somewhere.
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It becomes endemic, and the law is essentially ignored; or new laws and resolutions are brought in to limit the amount of illegality occurring.
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New laws are now abused in a new and interesting way and the cycle begins again.

I don't think it's as bad as some of you are making it seem. You have to factor in the collision, fatigue, going limp when you're no longer in control of how you're going to land. The tackle is a very fluid situation and rugby is played by people of a wide variety of shapes and sizes. My conclusion is that not everybody falls over in exactly the same way. Gethin Jenkins is a particularly slow player to roll away but given the amount of work he's doing, he probably is genuinely knackered.

If there's going to be structure and we get a decent game out of it, then the ref's need a bit of wriggle room on the materiality of events.

kk67 wrote:I don't think it's as bad as some of you are making it seem. You have to factor in the collision, fatigue, going limp when you're no longer in control of how you're going to land. The tackle is a very fluid situation and rugby is played by people of a wide variety of shapes and sizes. My conclusion is that not everybody falls over in exactly the same way. Gethin Jenkins is a particularly slow player to roll away but given the amount of work he's doing, he probably is genuinely knackered.

If there's going to be structure and we get a decent game out of it, then the ref's need a bit of wriggle room on the materiality of events.

If we get too precise, the game will be as stop/start as American football appears. Provided the ref is consistent, players need to deal with different refs. With the number of laws and groups of players involved, it's impossible to cach everything in real time.

I don't mind players having a split second after going to ground to place the ball, it's all the rolling over, crawling and crabbing that goes on which annoys me. Once your knee is on the ground, you're tackled. You are permitted to place the ball but not to adjust your body position to make it easier to do so.

Of course in the good old days anyone fool enough to piss about on the deck after being tackled could get a wee reminder from Mr Sprig to let the bloody pill go. I've still got a faint, circular scar between my knuckles from a time I outran my support as a schoolboy and had to hang on for a bit until our forwards showed up. I've no recollection of whether or not I received my deserved penalty but I definitely remember my hand on the ball being dealt with properly.

Lizard wrote:I don't mind players having a split second after going to ground to place the ball, it's all the rolling over, crawling and crabbing that goes on which annoys me. Once your knee is on the ground, you're tackled. You are permitted to place the ball but not to adjust your body position to make it easier to do so.

The skill of being the ball carrier, releasing when tackled, getting back on your feet and then regathering.......you don't see it much at test level, the support is too quick. But it's a quality manoeuvre at 7's.

Its the falling on top of the tackler and pinning them that annoys me. Maybe if there was less time allowed to hold and place the ball so the release was immediate defenders would go for the ball rather than flop onto the tackler.
Maybe the best way of cleaning up all of this would be to outlaw above the waist tackles and forget about the rest of the stuff like rolling away or not releasing. Plenty of off loads too. Not going to happen though even experimentally.

Flopping onto the tackler should be 'off feet'....frequently though ruck will form before the tackler can get back on his feet and it's his own players trapping him and it all becomes moot.
Catching the attacking support killing the breakdown is not always easy because it frequently looks like go forward. The SH have this down to an art.