RUGBY RULES.

Hokitika Guardian, 18 January 1926, Page 1

RUGBY RULES.

“DRIFTING TO CHAOS.’

FRENCH FOLLOW ALL BLACKS

LONDON, Nov. 12

In his article in the “Sunday Express” Mr C. A. Kershaw (the English International half-back) bases his remarks on the incident in the Rugby match between Bhieklienth and the Racing Club of Franco in Paris. It will be rememlrered that the captain of the latter team attempted to have the match played under the New Zealand rules, including that penalising a side for finding touch outside its own twenty-five. Hopkins, the Blaekhentli captain, bad no option hut to refuse the French request.

“The importance of the incident,” says Mr Kershaw, “is that it serves to emphasise liow perilously close we are drifting to chaos in the laws of a game which, world-wide as it is. has no control authority, like the M.C.C. in cricket, to promulgate its laws, which hind only sectional interests instead of the whole body of amateur Rugby players the world over. The touch rule has no application here, except in the North of England, where the Rughv League game flourishes, and I do not think I am going too far in saying that the Tide is the hall-mark of professional Rugby, and is anathema to the governing bodies of Rugby in Groat Britain and Ireland. SOONER OR LATER A DEADLOCK.

“Unless something is done soon to create a uniform code of laws binding on every player of the Rugby T.-les player, a Frenchman, a New South Walesian, a South African, or a New Zealander, and unless a central authority on the lines of the suggested Imperial Advisory Board is created with power to frame a code, predicaments like that in Paris last Sunday will multiply, and sooner or ’.tier there will he a deadlock. “What is to happen oil February 27th. at Twickenham when F.hgli.id meets France? Are we, ns their hosts, to agree to play as they suggest, or are we to stand firm? It does not need a genius to guess what will happen, hut I cannot help feeling that all this is wrong. At the present rate of ‘progress’ (a word which I confess is hardly applicable), there will lie no French match at all in a few years’ time, and no matches against New Zealand either. “What a chance was missed at the Rugby Conference last December, and how short-sighted the International Board lias been in putting otf reform for another five years. For, after all, that is wliat the refusal of the Board to honour the agreement come to with the Dominions in favour of an Imperial Advisory Board, to meet annually, amounts to.

“But what can one say of coldshouldering our own Dominions, after leading them to believe that we were af last, to give them direct representation on our councils? And I wonder what a prominent Dominions delegate, whose name is a household word in English Rugby, and who came out of the conference to tell me ‘tilings are going our way,’ thought, when the International Board scrapped everything, and proposed that another three years should elapse before Die Dominions should meet our legislators again ? FETISH OF TOUCH-FINDING. “ T have no opinion to express on the new rule, beyond observing that the constant kicking to touch which one sees even in the host class of football nowadays is a serious menace to a genera I improvement in our methods of attack. ‘Keep possession of the hall’ is a good motto for players to remember, and one Dial is 100 often forgotten. The fetish of touch-finding is particularly noticeable this season among the Cambridge hacks, and time, and again in several recent games I have seen territory gained by a greatattacking movement, which has been brought to a premature close hv touelifindors in a trance

“An instructive experiment is to play a game with the New Zealand rule in force, it is only then that one realises iv ha t a refuge years of habit have made the touch line, it is a Rugby opiate. T should add, in ease I liese observations should shock the more conservative-minded among onr Rugby public, that even such a Rugby

stalwart as Air Rowland ft ill lias recently put his opinion on record that the rule against, kicking into touch should ho dealt with openmindedly, and lie even goes so far as to suggest that it should he tried officially hy the Rugby 1 r nion. The evidence, lie sn id. was overwhelmingly strong in favour of the practice from the two Dominions, where it has been thoroughly tried 1 and universally adopted. 1 I give no opinion on the point., hut i wish it could he tried as an experiment in England.’ OUTWORN SYSTEM. “ But, whatever the ultimate fate of the innovation, the call for a Rugby Clearing House grows more and more insistent. Indeed, it is in my opinion the outstanding problem in Rugby today. 1 do not at all agree with a recent leader in the ' Field,” which blames the Rugby Union for the existing lack of uniformity in the laws. On the contrary, as every one who was in close touch with the proceedings at the Rugby Conference last December is aware, it was the representatives of the English Rugby Union who fought hardest for Dominion representation—the first preliminary to uniformity of rulings. If anyone is to he blamed for the present chaos it is not the Rugby Union, hut rather those people who, in the words of Air Rowland Hill, have been guilty of a breach of faith, to both Australia and New Zealand.

“ft is not a question of blaming individuals; the fault lies in our outworn system of Rugby governance, incidents like the Rlaekheath one at Paris last Sunday, and the different rulings by referees on an identical point of law, are useful in emphasising a fact- which is becoming notorious.”