RUGBY RULES AND RULERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 659, 10 May 1929, Page 7

RUGBY RULES AND RULERS

THE annual meeting of the New Zealand Rugby Union at Wellington next week promises to provide a fruitful field for lively discussion. The management committee itself has come in for vigorous criticism, and Mr. S. S. Dean will require all his eloquence and diplomacy to convince the delegates .that the old committee should be returned en bloc for another year. Round the forthcoming visit of the British team has centred a clamour from the Die Hard section of Maoriland Rugby for a. return to the old rules. The amended system of play, sponsored originally by Auckland, has proved a popular innovation in the game throughout the Dominion, and it is safe to say that, if the football public had any voice in the question, it would give an overwhelming vote in favour of the amended rules which provide a faster and more spectacular style of play. Apart from that, it has by no means been proved that a majority of the players are in favour of a return to the old order of things, in spite of the bogey that has been raised in connection with the British visit. As for the agitation to abolish the wing forward and to revert to the 3—2—3 scrum, it is only necessary to say that this antiquated English scrum formation was discarded from New Zealand Rugby a,s an obsolete feature of the game 30 years ago, when it was found that seven men, with their weight properly applied, could hold their own with an eight scrum.

The value of an extra man outside the pack was so evident that, in 1905 the Welshmen paid the Ail Blacks the compliment of packing seven men in the scrum and playing an extra back. But even Gwyn Nicholls and Co., the master tacticians of British Rugby in their day, failed to grasp the principles of the correct application of weight in the 2—3—2 scrum; and much of the English criticism of the New Zealand pack, and its own slavish adherence to the traditional 3—2—3 scrum, is based on the fact that England does not understand the New Zealand system of play, and as hinted by several of its hide-bound critics, does not want to have anything to do with “colonial innovations.” The 32—3 scrum was tried by the All Blacks in one or two matches in South Africa last year, and discarded as quickly as it was adopted. The use of Stewart as a “loose head” was simply designed to meet the. South African interpretation of; the off-side rule, apart from the fact that the All Blacks had no one in the party up to the standard required for a roving commission as. for instance, so brilliantly exemplified by J. H. Parker who completely spiked the guns of the English critics in 1924. The plain truth of the falling off in All Black scrum work in recent years has been the presence of too many “shiners” in the pack, and the lack of first-class hookers.

Where room for improvement really lies is in the urgent need for organised club coaching on the lines which made New Zealand football famous in the early part of the present century. Old-timers rightly point to the deterioration in scrum work, the absence of dribbling rushes and the inability of backs to open up the game by stab-kicking, cross-punting or even potting goals, apart from the primary necessity to run straight on attack and tackle hard and low on defence. All this means hard work in the club training sheds and consistent attendances at practice. Club coaches deserve greater recognition, and similarly, on the field of play, the honest player ought to catch the selector’s eye (All Blacks included), before the “vamper.” As far as the rules are concerned, better leave well alone.