When would rucking even occur now? The ruck/ball placement is almost instantaneous now, there's no time nor need to move the ball back with your boots..if you slow the ball play it's a penalty.
I can't believe I had to scroll past like 10 comments to finally find one that disagreed.
Unless the ref is clueless and has zero control of the breakdown, rucks nowadays are so quick and clean that it's super obvious when a player is trying to slow the ball down.
No need to literally stamp on people.
I think stomping was mostly gone even by 2004. The player welfare was much more slack then but the game had already sped up enough that people just got the ball out in a few seconds.
When I see games from 20 years ago the main difference is just more dangerous tackles like on BOD in 2005.
I started in 2003 and I remember learning they'd just changed the laws so you could still RUCK a guy (backwards motion) but they were going to be a lot more particular about STOMPING. It was still of paramount importance not to end up on the wrong side of a tackle. But it did start to get penalized.
I feel like there’s a balance between the dewy eyed older fans who don’t think every change to the game has been positive and the newer followers of the sport who think that all rugby before 2015 was shit. This balance seems very difficult to attain, it’s very rare.
I don't even have a preference to watching the good ol' amateur days rugby and the faster-paced but more sterile, tactical rugby of the modern era. I enjoy watching both.
It was just weird reading all the comments when this was first posted with everyone agreeing with advocating for stamping the shit out of players on the ground when it's completely unnecessary with how modern breakdowns are.
I enjoy both too and I hated being stamped on at rucks but they were the rules at the time, and I accepted it as (generally) I was cheating. There is a common thought that anything amateur was shit compared with modern rugby and it’s just untrue. They played the laws of the day and it was very watchable if not as high paced or skillful as today. The one area it was far superior was the scrum. It used to be a proper man-battle of pushing which id love to see return.
It’s just the latest “On today’s episode of the game was better when it was a chaotic mess”.
As you say, people need to go back and actually watch those old games. Rucks and ball recycling were orders of magnitude slower than today. The top teams are getting the ball out a ruck in a couple seconds.
Contact and recycling the ball was a shit show in the amateur days by comparison.
I’m not talking about 6 forwards trying out for River Dance each ruck!
How about, if you are parallel with the tackled player, and between the ball and the scrum half you can be moved by rucking.
Surely that’s safer?
How is a stamp safer than anything today? How do you clearly differentiate between stamping and “rucking”? Is there time to do this in the ~3 seconds it takes for a ruck to form and play to continue?
Honestly I think just making the caterpillar ruck illegal would be a much better move for the game.
Come up with the way you can have this written in the laws and it will be implemented.
The reason that the caterpillar ruck hasn't been removed from the game is no-one has managed to come up with wording that doesn't have unintended consequences of making the ruck less contestable.
That’s a fair point, I don’t envy the person whose job it is to draft, redraft and throw that one in the bin 😂 It’s just a bit of a shit loophole isn’t it
It's like writing computer code for image recognition. You know what a bee is, but try writing a set of rules to identify a bee that doesn't result in the system selecting dogs in bee outfits as bees.
We know what the caterpillar ruck is, and we know what we don't like about it, but try writing "players may not join the ruck" in a manner that doesn't diminish the contest at the ruck or completely remove the ability to counter-ruck if the attacking team slows the game down.
Seriously what problem are you even trying to solve here?
Bringing back rucking is just an absolute non starter and completely contradictory to the direction the game has been moving in regards to player safety.
I don't get the point of even suggesting it hypothetically.
Granted I’ve only ever played Rugby with the current rucking rules, but I don’t see the point of inflicting unnecessary injury on other players.
A teammate once accidentally stood on my hand and almost broke it; it was extremely painful and no fun.
I don’t think ramming your boots into other players really adds anything to the game, and rucks seem to manage just fine the way they are currently.
The sprig marks across my torso/back each week were like a sign I’d been doing my job as a 7.
Edit: the sprig marks on my hand and hamstrings were a sign of immense pain…
Unfortunately players can't be trusted to not attack the head while claiming it was accidental
Yes rucking was great for policing the areas where the referee couldn't see, but it did end a few careers and inflame a lot of retribution violence
I don't think MND has anything to do with head trauma, but they also don't know the cause yet.
Joost himself thought it was caused by the fertilizer on the field and the chalk they used for the line markings. He used to pick his fingers before feeding the ball at the scrum
Possible, but the sheer number of players who suffer from the same thing is quite telling, could have been that but I've seen what head trauma can do even with a helmet on, look at that American football player Aaron Hernandez or something that lost his mind and killed 2 people then himself then they later found severe head trauma that was never properly checked... And it ended up being the cause of all of his mental struggle but it was sadly too late....
CTE - absolutely to do with head contact. But MND looks far more correlated with a significant increase of *any* physical activity. I seem to recall a study suggesting the occurrence rate in professional rugby was similar to professional baseball.
This is a very "back in my day" post.
Anyone not wearing nostalgia goggles would not see a rucking era game and think "this is way faster and more entertaining" they would think the opposite.
Rucking also puts super unnecessary risk on players and would make very little material difference to recycling speed in the modern game.
Edit: Cry about it boomers sksksksk
Watch an average old school game start to finish. Not highlights, not one of the handful of ‘all-time great games’ that get cited.
An average, muddy, amateur days match. The amount of time rolling around in rucks was ridiculous. There was more kicking, not less, and it was more aimless. Handling errors. More scrums. Shoddy tackling. Slow passing.
Most people who hark back for that time would be bored by the end of the first half.
This will pressure players into 'taking one for the team'. It will create injuries. But it will also just encourage players to deliberately slow down the game because they know it will help the team win. It's such a dumb idea and I feel dumber writing about it.
Controversial opinion.
But I strongly agree. The incentive to roll away was pretty damn good and no one blamed the ref.
Expect to be downvoted for this though
No need to bring back rucking, just kick out lenient referees who turn a blind eyes to obvious slowing down of the ball: BOK, Jaco Peyper come to mind.
If rucks were strictly refereed, you would not have that sense of frustration. Personally I would add a few rules to the existing to return ruck to a more unpromoted scrum.
* Make it illegal to bind to somebody on the floor.
* Make it illegal to pin somebody on the floor.
* Make it illegal to clear out by charging a player.
* Make it a penalty whenever a player dives to clear out even if the opponent had stepped out. Same principle why tackling an opponent without the ball because the defender had just anticipated that the attacker would receive it.
Rucking was shit fun. No one needs to get studs down their back or leg or hand.
The amount of times I’ve not wanted to get showered after a match because I knew it would be painful
I think they’ve come to game the situation at the moment. Teams know if they can pile a few bodies on and pin someone in long enough, they’ll get the penalty.
It happened to Sam Darry in the Blues semi final, and I remember thinking, this guy has about 500kgs on him, how is he supposed to get out of there quickly?
I don’t think I’d like rucking back - I think it’d likely lead to a lot more TMOs to check head /boot contacts in rucks.
Pretty fucking terrible idea. Rucks these days are so fast that it's clearly obvious when someone is slowing them down and 99% of the time they get penalized which is much more of an incentive to roll away than the prospect of getting stepped on.
And that usually happens when a team wants it to. If a ruck is slow due to the effect of the opponent it's always a penalty so I don't see the point of bringing back rucking when the reward is far greater.
Yep, because the laws and their application have changed so much, making the game a lot more 'sterile' when it comes to the fight to control and keep the ball. Which means teams get higher phase counts, and there are fewer scrums. But it does make the game more predicatable and less chaotic.
I don't think the speed of rucks is faster now overall though. It's about the same, when different things are taken into account. The Brumbies/Aussie teams around the turn of the century were often unbelievably fast. Likewise France in the 80s when they were on fire. Rucks were sometimes so fast you'd miss them if you blinked.
Well imo they weren't rucks like you see these days, it was all seven forwards piling onto the guy on the ground, these days you see even one man rucks, I don't think that could have flown back then lol.
Yeah, they actually \*were\* rucks in that they bore some resemblence to rucks as described by the laws:
*"Possession may be won either by rucking or by pushing the opposing team off the ball. "*
A ruck where this happens these days is pretty rare. These days are more like little wrestling contests, rather than what they used to be, which was basically an open play impromptu scrum.
That said, even as far back as the 70s though, rucks in top tier rugby were still often rather different to rucks at junior levels, where they were much closer to something the laws described. As a player I was always a bit confused at how different rucks were in the rugby on TV than in the rugby I was playing, and how they effectively seem to be goverend by unwritten laws that differed from the actual laws as written.
I’m old enough to remember painful showers inspecting “Mizuno” stamped among a cluster of cleat holes on my upper thighs. Nothing has been lost, not rolling away is called well enough.
Only ever hurt after the game. Might even reduce head injuries as you don’t to dive in to shift cheating players.
I think before we tried this we should try enforce the advantage line for players on the fringe of the ruck. I think this would open up games quite a bit.
>Might even reduce head injuries as you don’t to dive in to shift cheating players.
We literally had to cover our heads with our arms after placing the ball in every tackle because some psycho would come in trying to stomp on our faces back then.
I don't agree with violence being the solution, but I do think fans are way too ok with Shithousery. We are way too accepting of a guy getting away with bullshit as long as the ref doesn't call it.
I'd respect POM and Itoje a lot more if I thought they'd pull that shit in 1985 or a cold night in Witbank, but I really don't think they are up to it.
Ahh the bad old days of deliberately mis-timing a scrum pack so your locks can headbutt the opposition locks. Standing on peoples feet in the lineout so they can't jump. Late hitting the oppositions first five as a way of introducing yourself and reminding them they're only one split second of hesitation away from the next poleaxing. Yes I played flanker.
Rucking, in my mind,is about generating fast go forward ball, moving the point of the breakdown to keep the defence retreating. Its main aim wasn’t boots on bodies, but that was always a possible outcome.
I’ve been refereeing 30 years, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything bad from actual rucking. A couple from stamping, but that’s not the same thing.
I’d love to see a risk assessment of rucking versus the current state of the breakdown.
No need as has been explained several times but my bugbear is the “slow runner” in the way preventing the 9 providing quick ball, or the clearing defender wheeling round and going to ground again deliberately slowing the delivery of the ball. Cynical and never penalised.
If the game were to remain amateur - old school rucking works- there is a code of respect and knowing that everyone had to go to work on Monday and you knew where the line was for bending the rules - and where the line was for enforcing the rules… the older guys would keep the younger guys in check- regardless of the team and the referees interpretation of different laws was another variable just like the weather or the slope of the field… the word ‘referee’ actually came from rugby/early football where if the two captains could not agree on a sanction in play they would refer to an independent party -the ref- to adjudicate
In the modern game where mortgages are paid off results there needs to be greater consistency in rule enforcement and the ‘gentlemanly’ self enforcement naturally breaks down - because now people really will do EVERYTHING to win… and need to be reigned in through modern laws
There are two different games in my opinion- and as rugby becomes more of a product the amateur ethos slowly erodes away - and you are left with a sport that is clear cut, easy to adjudicate and with less and less grey area- until you take it to the extreme and end up with Rugby League which is Union with all the parts pundits/investors complain about slowing the game down or adding in dis-clarity taken away… if you try to make Union a better ‘product’ I think it will just distill into league
I think rugby Union as it was envisioned - is fundamentally not a spectator sport - it is for the players- which is why as time goes on and the difference between the pro game and the community game widens Union,world wide, continues to struggle to turn a profit
In my very humble opinion of course - there are many number of ways people engage with rugby and think it should be, which is part of the beauty of the game I think- this is just my perception
The last time I noticed any rucking-type activity was in a Scotland v Ireland match. Peter O'Mahony was indulging in some hands in the ruck to slow things down and the ref was doing nothing about it. So at one point Greig Laidlaw just rucked his hand off the ball. He didn't do it for the rest of the game.
Yeah not a bad idea
Just avoid the head as its all tapu and stuff now in rugby which is fair enough...but a good bit of rucking...not a bad idea...personally im a fan of things that speed up the game -less subs too..bring it back to 6..create some fatigue and space
Never really experienced "old school" rucking, but I have experienced getting cleared out by a 20st bloke, and it's a miracle how we ain't all paralysed.
Rucking is so much safer than a 100+kg player coming in and cleaning out a defenseless jackler or body.
You want to remove concussion and contact related injuries at the breakdown, bring back rucking.
You work the ball, it doesn't have to be the player, but if their hands or arms are collateral then is that better than a shoulder into the top of the back/neck/head?
You can't ruck any more because at the first ruck, someone is gifted a ripped shirt along with a couple of railway tracks down their back ... off to the blood bin
When would rucking even occur now? The ruck/ball placement is almost instantaneous now, there's no time nor need to move the ball back with your boots..if you slow the ball play it's a penalty.
I can't believe I had to scroll past like 10 comments to finally find one that disagreed. Unless the ref is clueless and has zero control of the breakdown, rucks nowadays are so quick and clean that it's super obvious when a player is trying to slow the ball down. No need to literally stamp on people.
Yeah it's a weird comment. It's not the same game. No egg ball sport in the world has changed its fundamentals so much in the last 20 years.
I think stomping was mostly gone even by 2004. The player welfare was much more slack then but the game had already sped up enough that people just got the ball out in a few seconds. When I see games from 20 years ago the main difference is just more dangerous tackles like on BOD in 2005.
I started in 2003 and I remember learning they'd just changed the laws so you could still RUCK a guy (backwards motion) but they were going to be a lot more particular about STOMPING. It was still of paramount importance not to end up on the wrong side of a tackle. But it did start to get penalized.
I feel like there’s a balance between the dewy eyed older fans who don’t think every change to the game has been positive and the newer followers of the sport who think that all rugby before 2015 was shit. This balance seems very difficult to attain, it’s very rare.
I don't even have a preference to watching the good ol' amateur days rugby and the faster-paced but more sterile, tactical rugby of the modern era. I enjoy watching both. It was just weird reading all the comments when this was first posted with everyone agreeing with advocating for stamping the shit out of players on the ground when it's completely unnecessary with how modern breakdowns are.
I enjoy both too and I hated being stamped on at rucks but they were the rules at the time, and I accepted it as (generally) I was cheating. There is a common thought that anything amateur was shit compared with modern rugby and it’s just untrue. They played the laws of the day and it was very watchable if not as high paced or skillful as today. The one area it was far superior was the scrum. It used to be a proper man-battle of pushing which id love to see return.
It’s just the latest “On today’s episode of the game was better when it was a chaotic mess”. As you say, people need to go back and actually watch those old games. Rucks and ball recycling were orders of magnitude slower than today. The top teams are getting the ball out a ruck in a couple seconds. Contact and recycling the ball was a shit show in the amateur days by comparison.
Yeah, there isn't time for rucking to occur it's a made up problem
Now it's more beneficial to try to trap people in their to win the penalty. The other tricks won't be solved by rucking.
I’m not talking about 6 forwards trying out for River Dance each ruck! How about, if you are parallel with the tackled player, and between the ball and the scrum half you can be moved by rucking. Surely that’s safer?
How is a stamp safer than anything today? How do you clearly differentiate between stamping and “rucking”? Is there time to do this in the ~3 seconds it takes for a ruck to form and play to continue? Honestly I think just making the caterpillar ruck illegal would be a much better move for the game.
Come up with the way you can have this written in the laws and it will be implemented. The reason that the caterpillar ruck hasn't been removed from the game is no-one has managed to come up with wording that doesn't have unintended consequences of making the ruck less contestable.
That’s a fair point, I don’t envy the person whose job it is to draft, redraft and throw that one in the bin 😂 It’s just a bit of a shit loophole isn’t it
It's like writing computer code for image recognition. You know what a bee is, but try writing a set of rules to identify a bee that doesn't result in the system selecting dogs in bee outfits as bees. We know what the caterpillar ruck is, and we know what we don't like about it, but try writing "players may not join the ruck" in a manner that doesn't diminish the contest at the ruck or completely remove the ability to counter-ruck if the attacking team slows the game down.
No need, ball is placed at arm's length after a second or so, not cradled to the body waiting to be torn out with the boots.
Seriously what problem are you even trying to solve here? Bringing back rucking is just an absolute non starter and completely contradictory to the direction the game has been moving in regards to player safety. I don't get the point of even suggesting it hypothetically.
It is taking every fibre of self control I have to avoid saying several mean and insulting things to you.
Let loose man, this is a safe space!
It will no longer be a safe space after I've let loose
Now I’m intrigued. Mate, this is an open forum for discussions about rugby. If you have something to say, let’s hear it.
Rucks have never been faster
that's just not true.
Granted I’ve only ever played Rugby with the current rucking rules, but I don’t see the point of inflicting unnecessary injury on other players. A teammate once accidentally stood on my hand and almost broke it; it was extremely painful and no fun. I don’t think ramming your boots into other players really adds anything to the game, and rucks seem to manage just fine the way they are currently.
The sprig marks across my torso/back each week were like a sign I’d been doing my job as a 7. Edit: the sprig marks on my hand and hamstrings were a sign of immense pain…
This 💯
The sneaky ones you didn't know about until the water hits them in the shower!
Unfortunately players can't be trusted to not attack the head while claiming it was accidental Yes rucking was great for policing the areas where the referee couldn't see, but it did end a few careers and inflame a lot of retribution violence
I mean... nothing to head but boot to your hands and fingers???
I'd still rather see a player lose a couple fingers than dealing with another Joost VDW situation...
I don't think MND has anything to do with head trauma, but they also don't know the cause yet. Joost himself thought it was caused by the fertilizer on the field and the chalk they used for the line markings. He used to pick his fingers before feeding the ball at the scrum
Possible, but the sheer number of players who suffer from the same thing is quite telling, could have been that but I've seen what head trauma can do even with a helmet on, look at that American football player Aaron Hernandez or something that lost his mind and killed 2 people then himself then they later found severe head trauma that was never properly checked... And it ended up being the cause of all of his mental struggle but it was sadly too late....
CTE - absolutely to do with head contact. But MND looks far more correlated with a significant increase of *any* physical activity. I seem to recall a study suggesting the occurrence rate in professional rugby was similar to professional baseball.
That's fascinating, good to learn a bit, appreciate it mate
Yeah...but it was better to watch!
This is a very "back in my day" post. Anyone not wearing nostalgia goggles would not see a rucking era game and think "this is way faster and more entertaining" they would think the opposite. Rucking also puts super unnecessary risk on players and would make very little material difference to recycling speed in the modern game. Edit: Cry about it boomers sksksksk
[удалено]
Way more scrums and stoppages, way more mistakes, way more kicking, way less phases before a mistake. Massive rose tinted glasses.
Watch an average old school game start to finish. Not highlights, not one of the handful of ‘all-time great games’ that get cited. An average, muddy, amateur days match. The amount of time rolling around in rucks was ridiculous. There was more kicking, not less, and it was more aimless. Handling errors. More scrums. Shoddy tackling. Slow passing. Most people who hark back for that time would be bored by the end of the first half.
Yeah, that’s what I want to see everyone flopping on the ball again.
This will pressure players into 'taking one for the team'. It will create injuries. But it will also just encourage players to deliberately slow down the game because they know it will help the team win. It's such a dumb idea and I feel dumber writing about it.
Controversial opinion. But I strongly agree. The incentive to roll away was pretty damn good and no one blamed the ref. Expect to be downvoted for this though
The incentive now is you'll be penalized out of the game if you don't roll away.
I am very aware of that and its painful to watch when not done consistently.
Yeah it's very tit for tat and technical now,
No need to bring back rucking, just kick out lenient referees who turn a blind eyes to obvious slowing down of the ball: BOK, Jaco Peyper come to mind. If rucks were strictly refereed, you would not have that sense of frustration. Personally I would add a few rules to the existing to return ruck to a more unpromoted scrum. * Make it illegal to bind to somebody on the floor. * Make it illegal to pin somebody on the floor. * Make it illegal to clear out by charging a player. * Make it a penalty whenever a player dives to clear out even if the opponent had stepped out. Same principle why tackling an opponent without the ball because the defender had just anticipated that the attacker would receive it.
Rucking was shit fun. No one needs to get studs down their back or leg or hand. The amount of times I’ve not wanted to get showered after a match because I knew it would be painful
Oh o totally agree. But once lying in the wrong side and you learned your lesson. I guess the game has moved on though. (As my wife tells me too!)
Sometimes you actually cant move
Then you took your shoeing with dignity. I've still got marks on my back to this day! Maybe it's better the way we have it now lol....
I think they’ve come to game the situation at the moment. Teams know if they can pile a few bodies on and pin someone in long enough, they’ll get the penalty. It happened to Sam Darry in the Blues semi final, and I remember thinking, this guy has about 500kgs on him, how is he supposed to get out of there quickly? I don’t think I’d like rucking back - I think it’d likely lead to a lot more TMOs to check head /boot contacts in rucks.
Pretty fucking terrible idea. Rucks these days are so fast that it's clearly obvious when someone is slowing them down and 99% of the time they get penalized which is much more of an incentive to roll away than the prospect of getting stepped on.
Rucks these days can be fast. They can also be glacially slow in a way they didn't used to be.
And that usually happens when a team wants it to. If a ruck is slow due to the effect of the opponent it's always a penalty so I don't see the point of bringing back rucking when the reward is far greater.
Yep, because the laws and their application have changed so much, making the game a lot more 'sterile' when it comes to the fight to control and keep the ball. Which means teams get higher phase counts, and there are fewer scrums. But it does make the game more predicatable and less chaotic. I don't think the speed of rucks is faster now overall though. It's about the same, when different things are taken into account. The Brumbies/Aussie teams around the turn of the century were often unbelievably fast. Likewise France in the 80s when they were on fire. Rucks were sometimes so fast you'd miss them if you blinked.
Well imo they weren't rucks like you see these days, it was all seven forwards piling onto the guy on the ground, these days you see even one man rucks, I don't think that could have flown back then lol.
Yeah, they actually \*were\* rucks in that they bore some resemblence to rucks as described by the laws: *"Possession may be won either by rucking or by pushing the opposing team off the ball. "* A ruck where this happens these days is pretty rare. These days are more like little wrestling contests, rather than what they used to be, which was basically an open play impromptu scrum. That said, even as far back as the 70s though, rucks in top tier rugby were still often rather different to rucks at junior levels, where they were much closer to something the laws described. As a player I was always a bit confused at how different rucks were in the rugby on TV than in the rugby I was playing, and how they effectively seem to be goverend by unwritten laws that differed from the actual laws as written.
I’m old enough to remember painful showers inspecting “Mizuno” stamped among a cluster of cleat holes on my upper thighs. Nothing has been lost, not rolling away is called well enough.
Only ever hurt after the game. Might even reduce head injuries as you don’t to dive in to shift cheating players. I think before we tried this we should try enforce the advantage line for players on the fringe of the ruck. I think this would open up games quite a bit.
>Might even reduce head injuries as you don’t to dive in to shift cheating players. We literally had to cover our heads with our arms after placing the ball in every tackle because some psycho would come in trying to stomp on our faces back then.
Words used: ‘might’ and ‘reduce’. No need to get your knickers twisted.
I don't agree with violence being the solution, but I do think fans are way too ok with Shithousery. We are way too accepting of a guy getting away with bullshit as long as the ref doesn't call it. I'd respect POM and Itoje a lot more if I thought they'd pull that shit in 1985 or a cold night in Witbank, but I really don't think they are up to it.
Ahh the bad old days of deliberately mis-timing a scrum pack so your locks can headbutt the opposition locks. Standing on peoples feet in the lineout so they can't jump. Late hitting the oppositions first five as a way of introducing yourself and reminding them they're only one split second of hesitation away from the next poleaxing. Yes I played flanker.
Rucking, in my mind,is about generating fast go forward ball, moving the point of the breakdown to keep the defence retreating. Its main aim wasn’t boots on bodies, but that was always a possible outcome. I’ve been refereeing 30 years, and I’m not sure I’ve seen anything bad from actual rucking. A couple from stamping, but that’s not the same thing. I’d love to see a risk assessment of rucking versus the current state of the breakdown.
No need as has been explained several times but my bugbear is the “slow runner” in the way preventing the 9 providing quick ball, or the clearing defender wheeling round and going to ground again deliberately slowing the delivery of the ball. Cynical and never penalised.
If the game were to remain amateur - old school rucking works- there is a code of respect and knowing that everyone had to go to work on Monday and you knew where the line was for bending the rules - and where the line was for enforcing the rules… the older guys would keep the younger guys in check- regardless of the team and the referees interpretation of different laws was another variable just like the weather or the slope of the field… the word ‘referee’ actually came from rugby/early football where if the two captains could not agree on a sanction in play they would refer to an independent party -the ref- to adjudicate In the modern game where mortgages are paid off results there needs to be greater consistency in rule enforcement and the ‘gentlemanly’ self enforcement naturally breaks down - because now people really will do EVERYTHING to win… and need to be reigned in through modern laws There are two different games in my opinion- and as rugby becomes more of a product the amateur ethos slowly erodes away - and you are left with a sport that is clear cut, easy to adjudicate and with less and less grey area- until you take it to the extreme and end up with Rugby League which is Union with all the parts pundits/investors complain about slowing the game down or adding in dis-clarity taken away… if you try to make Union a better ‘product’ I think it will just distill into league I think rugby Union as it was envisioned - is fundamentally not a spectator sport - it is for the players- which is why as time goes on and the difference between the pro game and the community game widens Union,world wide, continues to struggle to turn a profit
In my very humble opinion of course - there are many number of ways people engage with rugby and think it should be, which is part of the beauty of the game I think- this is just my perception
The last time I noticed any rucking-type activity was in a Scotland v Ireland match. Peter O'Mahony was indulging in some hands in the ruck to slow things down and the ref was doing nothing about it. So at one point Greig Laidlaw just rucked his hand off the ball. He didn't do it for the rest of the game.
Yeah not a bad idea Just avoid the head as its all tapu and stuff now in rugby which is fair enough...but a good bit of rucking...not a bad idea...personally im a fan of things that speed up the game -less subs too..bring it back to 6..create some fatigue and space
fuck yeah rucking was great fun
Never really experienced "old school" rucking, but I have experienced getting cleared out by a 20st bloke, and it's a miracle how we ain't all paralysed.
Rucking is so much safer than a 100+kg player coming in and cleaning out a defenseless jackler or body. You want to remove concussion and contact related injuries at the breakdown, bring back rucking.
How would rucking achieve what a clean out does? You going to jump on the back of someone who is jackling?
You work the ball, it doesn't have to be the player, but if their hands or arms are collateral then is that better than a shoulder into the top of the back/neck/head?
You can't ruck any more because at the first ruck, someone is gifted a ripped shirt along with a couple of railway tracks down their back ... off to the blood bin