GERRY THORNLEY ON RUGBY: The IRB and the new ELVs went some way to ruining the opening weekend of the Heineken Cup
THERE WAS drama aplenty, there was even some good rugby and it was anything but predictable. The opening match even came within three minutes of a 33 to 1 underdog beating the 1 to 250 favourites. Even by the standards of the Heineken Cup, that would have been seismic. But it was not a vintage Heineken Cup weekend for the quality of the rugby.
Munster's somewhat distracted performance will in part be attributed to the comments of Tony McGahan earlier in the week about chasing a bonus point. Sure enough, when Munster have allowed themselves to be distracted by such notions in the past (at home to the Dragons or Bourgoin, and against Harlequins in Twickenham) they have struggled. The cart before the horse, etc.
Nonetheless, McGahan would be entitled to highlight that his players still made 10 clean line breaks, and had their support play and finishing been half as clinical as Leinster's - or Sale's for that matter - talk of a bonus point wouldn't have been nearly so fanciful.
In further mitigation of Munster, the combined effects of the IRB's diktat about players going off their feet to "seal" the ball along with the ELVs regarding kicking to touch hardly encourage teams to counter-attack or play from their own half. Why run it when the odds have increased on conceding a penalty? Arguably the two teams most inclined to risk it over the weekend, Munster and Bath, were punished for doing so.
The diktat itself it not a bad thing, for it was meant, presumably, to stop the tactics employed by most teams in an endgame-winning position, regardless of their field position. These pick-and-go drives around the fringes to run down the clock were most famously (but by no means uniquely) exploited by Munster in last May's final win over Toulouse. The latter, ironically, emulated those tactics when closing out the French championship final against Clermont.
In a further irony, of course, it was Montauban who paid the ultimate penalty over the weekend for this exact offence. That is what the diktat was designed to achieve, for running down the clock in this manner has become an anti-climactic endgame.
Why, for example, did the IRB not introduce a use-it-or-lose-it rule at rucks as well? Instead, the new diktat is being applied more rigidly in some instances, and more so in the English Premiership than in the Magners League. Hence, with referees Wayne Barnes and the distinctly unconvincing Rob Debney, there is little distinction between players flopping on to the ground to seal the ball and good low clearing out. In a dynamic, robust, physical contact sport, penalising players for falling down is absurd, all the more so in wet conditions. What's more, suddenly it also seems like the only rule in town.
By stark contrast, the old laws are still not being employed, and defenders are being allowed to creep up in front of the hindmost foot, either at the fringes or in midfield. Why don't more referees adopt a sideways stance, a la Alain Rolland and Alan Lewis, it has to be said, so they can more easily scan across the offside line?
Failing that, why aren't referees' assistants employed more regularly to curb this practice and so give the game more room to breathe? Even some of the ELVs aren't being enforced as they might be. While it's true that mauls can now be legally brought down, this can only be from pulling a player from above the waist. But Montauban, on Friday night, were by no means the first team to bring down mauls from well below the waist with impunity. It also increases the risk of injuries as well, and not only completely removes an attacking weapon but also a means of sucking in defenders. Similarly, teams may start off defending five metres away from scrums, but very often encroach long before the ball is fed from the base. Yet in both cases one cannot recall either offence being penalised once this season.
As counter-attacking - arguably the game's most thrilling source of tries - or running from deep have become riskier, so hoofing the ball is the percentage ploy. Ironically, the ELVs were brought about in part to stem the excessive kicking out of hand at the last World Cup. Now, instead, everybody is emulating Argentina's tactics a year ago.
Leinster, in contrast to Munster, played their English referee and the percentages better. Edinburgh were generally the more ambitious or impatient, depending on your viewpoint, when ending bouts of aerial ping-pong, and paid for it.
Gloucester curbed their counter-attacking instincts against a typically conservative Biarritz, who lost the penalty count 17-6 and left Kingsholm incandescent with rage at Scottish referee Paul Allen. And it doesn't help that there are not sufficient good referees to cover a full weekend of Heineken Cup matches, never mind the Challenge Cup as well. All told, there were over 70 kicks out of hand in the match as Gloucester coach Dean Ryan extolled Ryan Lamb and Iain Balshaw for reining in their normally "flamboyant" ways. Is this what the IRB want? Modern-day rugby has become akin to boot tennis.
One sat down on Sunday to watch the Leicester-Ospreys and Toulouse-Bath double header and until the 77th minute of the second match, the only try was from a close-range blockdown. Admittedly Leicester butchered a few chances, and Rolland awarded only five penalties in the second half, after 10 in the first. But Sunday's double header would have provided altogether better rugby a year ago.
Perhaps it's still too early to make a definitive judgment, but were the full raft of ELVs being used in the Southern Hemisphere to be adopted (what with the licence to cheat that is legalising hands in the ruck coupled with the preponderance of tap-and-go penalties) we are only a generation away from 15 rugby league-type clones.
What was an outstanding product last season had been made an infinitely more boring game by the IRB. They even went some way to ruining the opening weekend of the Heineken Cup. That's quite a trick.
Well done gentlemen. Keep up the good work.
gthornley@irish-times.ie
