Sir, – I found Keith Duggan's article ("Is rugby in danger of becoming a brilliantly-coached bore?", November 22nd) to be an excellent assessment of the current professional rugby game. He, however, sees the halcyon days of the amateur era through somewhat rose-tinted glasses. The "up your jumper" 10-man rugby so expertly played by Munster, and to some extent by Ireland, through many of those amateur years was just as boring as the modern game.
I have two suggestions to help make the current game more exciting and to encourage more individual flare.
Firstly, to provide more open space in which to attack, reduce the number of players or increase the size of the pitch. Secondly, to encourage the team in possession to take more risk and use its creativity, change the laws at breakdowns and restarts so that it is much less likely that the team in possession retains the ball. At the moment that likelihood is almost at 100 per cent stupid. – Yours, etc, ADRIAN O’CONNOR Tai Tam, Hong Kong.