A host of new laws and modifications have been introduced to make Super Rugby increasingly well-flavored this season, but a World Cup winning mentor wants the changes to go plane remoter by banning a divisive facet of the sport.
Wayne Smith, the veteran mentor who guided the Woebegone Ferns to success in last year’s Women’s World Cup – thanks to a couple of rolling maul tries in the final – has tabbed for the end of rolling mauls as a legitimate scoring tactic.
I dont like the driving maul as part of the game. There are six or seven forwards in front of the ball. There is no wangle to the ball. It is legalised obstruction,” Smith told stuff.co.nz.
“I would get rid of it entirely. You could do it very hands by waffly the laws so that if the attacking team chooses to kick a penalty to touch inside the 22, then the other team gets the throw in.
Thorn, the mentor of the Queensland Reds and a former All Woebegone and rugby league star, secure the rolling maul in an interview with Christy Doran for The Roar Rugby Podcast to be released on Friday.
“I hear what he’s saying but it’s got a uniqueness. You take yonder the maul, the scrum, the lineout – you might as well make it ten men and you’ve basically got rugby league.
“Everyone goes ‘you went from league to union, and the games are getting increasingly similar now,’ but they’re light years untied as a forward.
“There’s breakdowns, lineouts, what we don’t have anything like in league.
“One of the hardest ones is kick off receipts. Catching a kickoff, you’ve got two guys lift you and you’ve got to get in a position and reservation it whilom your throne like an AFL player.”
He said scrummaging and maul work in rugby presented huge challenges for players and coaches.
In the stuff.co.nz piece the author, Mark Reason, began: “This is a polite plea from Wayne Smith to World Rugby. Please, please, please unmarry the driving maul. It is a sear on the game. It is versus the very essence of pure rugby. It does not indulge a pearly races for the ball. And it is a crashing bore.”
The wearisomeness line is subjective. There are fans who revel in seeing a charging forward pack rumble over the top of a when peddling rival outfit. There can be something primal well-nigh such impressive shows of strength.
In his piece, Reason put two and two together and came up- with five, blaming rolling mauls for a ripen in Super Rugby viewership.
“Last years Super Rugby was dominated by the Blues and the Crusaders, the two strongest mauls. Moana Pasifika, new, vibrant, but less organised, were veiled underneath the rubble of those mauls. And the tactic has unmistakably wilt a turnoff for viewers as TV figures protract to plummet.”
Scott Fardy in the Brumbies’ maul (photo: John Youngs photography)
The Brumbies, of course, honed their expertise in attacking driving mauls under Dan McKellar – but his replacement Stephen Larkham questioned the tactic when he was spoken last year.
“Were world renowned over here already, in terms of our maul, its arguably the weightier maul in the world, has been for a number of years, Larkham said.
If youre a traditionalist, you love the intricacy overdue all of that. But we have to unravel yonder from some of those traditional elements to make the game a little bit increasingly exciting.
Thats what were going to be working on over the next month, were going to be working on a game plan thats a little bit increasingly heady for fans to come and watch and for the players to play themselves.
Larkham was part of a “shape of the game conference” with the Australian rugby coaches, CEOs, broadcasters, referees and administrators from RA to consider tweaks that would make the sport increasingly exciting. Some of those have been introduced, and are impartially predictable – including time limits on conversios, penalty kicks, scrums and lineouts. But
The negativity towards the maul as a legitimate tactic seems like flipside example of rugby’s identity slipperiness – an struggle to transpiration the game while plenty think it’s a blight, plenty increasingly think like it just the way it is, thank you very much.
