Why not play more like the Chiefs? What’s stopping the rest of the world from adopting the high-risk/high-reward style of the Chiefs?

Admittedly, there is risk. But look at the rewards. The Chiefs are enjoying huge success with the risks they are taking. They have been tremendously successful over the last several years. Their success comes from the risk-taking: running from inside the 22, making the 50-50 offload, taking the quick tap, not taking the kick for an easy 3, etc.

Some might say that the Chiefs’ success comes from the quality of their players, not the risk taking. I grant you that this is true to an extent. However, I think the real enabling factor is their team fitness and coherent approach to the game. It is clear that Dave Rennie has instilled a consistent playing philosophy in the members of his team. When a break is made, or risk taken, they are all onboard with it and support the risk taker.

The ability to do this comes from the structure created by the coaching staff, but more importantly to my way of thinking, the fitness to perform and to provide support. If the team wasn’t at such a high level of fitness, they wouldn’t be there for the offload when required.

The point here is that fitness does not come directly from athleticism or skill. It comes from hard work and commitment to training. Any professional team should be able to develop the fitness level to implement a playing style similar to the Chiefs. Then, with enlightened coaching and an aggressive game plan, that team should begin to reap the rewards from risk-taking.

This past week I watched the Chiefs play the Reds. The Chiefs continued to produce wondrous sequences of rugby while the Reds’ only answer seemed to be another rolling maul. You could see the difference in the faces of the players: joyous smiles on the Chiefs and resolute bewilderment on the Reds. Certainly as a fan I prefer the Chiefs’ path.

Why not take a risk and enjoy the game?

Speaking of too many yellow cards, when did it become necessary to give a yellow card for a player tackling the ball-carrier after a quick tap penalty and before it is run 10-meters?

There seems to be an advisory to the referees to issue a yellow card in this case. The yellow card has been given for every occurrence I’ve seen this year. That results in a lot of yellow cards and a lot of teams playing short.

The old prescription was to award a new penalty 10-meters forward. Why the change in enforcement? The law book doesn’t say anything about a yellow card for this type of infringement. Here is the sanction (underline mine) for Law 21.7 WHAT THE OPPOSING TEAM MUST DO AT A PENALTY KICK:

Sanction: Any infringement by the opposing team results in a second penalty kick, 10 metres in front of the mark for the first kick. This mark must not be within 5 metres of the goal line. Any player may take the kick. The kicker may change the type of kick and may choose to kick at goal. If the referee awards a second penalty kick, the second penalty kick is not taken before the referee has made the mark indicating the place of the penalty.

Let’s go back to keeping players on the pitch. By all means, penalize them, give the 10-meters and let’s get on with it.

Hurricanes’ Julian Savea is on the touch-line, five meters out from the corner when he receives a pass. He never gets control of the ball, but keeps it in front of him. As he drives towards the line, the Chiefs’ Tom Marshall bundles Savea into touch causing the ball to spill to the turf in the in-goal.

Referee Chris Pollock calls for the TMO to review, “Try or no-try?”

During the review, the referee team notices that Marshall did not bind in the tackle. They decide a penalty for the shoulder-charge (something not noticed or penalized during the play), penalty try because the try “probably” would have been scored and yellow-card for Marshall’s foul-play.

When did a shoulder-charge become a yellow-card offense? I can agree with the penalty, and, grudgingly, agree to the penalty-try. I think it is a stretch that the try “probably” would have been scored “except for the foul play by Marshall”. Savea didn’t have control of the ball and would have had to regain control while dealing with Marshall’s tackle, which if it had been legal, surely would have stopped Savea from re-gathering.

My real issue though is the yellow-card. Is a shoulder charge at the half-way line a yellow-card offense? It never has been in my recollection. It’s a penalty with a warning, “Don’t do it again!” Then, on with the game. So, why make it a yellow-card at the try-line?

This amounts to double-jeopardy in my mind. Marshall and the Chiefs are penalized twice for the same offense. Once with the penalty-try and once with the yellow-card. That’s overkill.

Rugby is a hard game. Why are we softening it up? From a fan’s perspective, I want to see the best competitors playing hard. Surely, safety is a concern, but this is not really a case of an issue with safety. Marshall’s ill-advised “shoulder-charge” was really him turning his back in the tackle. There was no danger to anyone but himself. The referee’s overreaction reduced one team to 14 players. Removing players from the game diminishes the competition.

Let’s swing the pendulum back towards keeping players on the pitch. There are too many yellow-cards being given without enough cause.

When the battle scars have faded
And the truth becomes a lie
And the weekend smell of liniment
Could almost make you cry.

When the last rucks well behind you
And the man that ran now walks
It doesn’t matter who you are
The mirror sometimes talks

Have a good hard look old son!
The melons not that great
The snoz that takes a sharp turn sideways
Used to be dead straight

You’re an advert for arthritis
You’re a thoroughbred gone lame
Then you ask yourself the question
Why the hell you played the game?

Was there logic in the head knocks?
In the corks and in the cuts?
Did common sense get pushed aside?
By manliness and guts?

Do you sometimes sit and wonder
Why your time would often pass
In a tangled mess of bodies
With your head up someone’s……?

With a thumb hooked up your nostril
Scratching gently on your brain
And an overgrown Neanderthal
Rejoicing in your pain!

Mate – you must recall the jersey
That was shredded into rags
Then the soothing sting of Dettol
On a back engraved with tags!

It’s almost worth admitting
Though with some degree of shame
That your wife was right in asking
Why the hell you played the game?

Why you’d always rock home legless
Like a cow on roller skates
After drinking at the clubhouse
With your low down drunken mates

Then you’d wake up – check your wallet
Not a solitary coin
Drink Berocca by the bucket
Throw an ice pack on your groin

Copping Sunday morning sermons
About boozers being losers
While you limped like Quasimodo
With a half a thousand bruises!

Yes – an urge to hug the porcelain
And curse Sambuca’s name
Would always pose the question
Why the hell you played the game!

And yet with every wound re-opened
As you grimly reminisce it
Comes the most compelling feeling yet
God, you bloody miss it!

From the first time that you laced a boot
And tightened every stud
That virus known as rugby
Has been living in your blood

When you dreamt it when you played it
All the rest took second fiddle
Now you’re standing on the sideline
But your hearts still in the middle

And no matter where you travel
You can take it as expected
There will always be a breed of people
Hopelessly infected

If there’s a teammate, then you’ll find him
Like a gravitating force
With a common understanding
And a beer or three, of course

And as you stand there telling lies
Like it was yesterday old friend
You’ll know that if you had the chance
You’d do it all again

You see – that’s the thing with rugby
It will always be the same
And that, I guarantee
Is why the hell you played the game!

— Pirates Madalas

This comes from my mate and ex-HARC coach, Jason van Wyck. The author is unknown.

Once again I am hearing the cries for banishing, or emasculating, the rugby union scrum. This can only come from individuals with a personal prejudice against the scrum and a lack of understanding of the game.

As I pointed out in my facebook post referencing George Hook’s Independent article, the scrum is only one of the many things that can be sited as impinging on the “spectacle” of rugby union. George’s pet peeve was the interminable rucks and mauls created by attacking sides that don’t know how to open up space. Then, there are other things reducing the spectacle as well, for instance, the kicking game. Aerial ping-pong reduces the time the ball is in hand, and therefore, presumably, detracts from the “spectacle” that these scrum haters espouse.

To me, the beauty of rugby union 15s is the complexity of the sport. If you start removing basic parts of the game, you reduce the complexity, and therefore the possibilities. It is the endless possibilities of the combinations of rugby’s essential elements, the pass, the tackle, the kick, the dummy, the ruck, the maul, the scrum, the lineout, etc., that make the game fascinating, and yes, spectacular.

It is up to the players to employ the elements of rugby union to create the game itself. The coaches have some input, but only as suggestions as to what might happen on the pitch. It is up to the players’ creativity to make the game happen.

A jazz drummer once defined jazz for me as “spontaneous, simultaneous composition.” That is basically what we have in rugby union, spontaneous, simultaneous invention, within the laws of the game, by the 15 players on the field, to create the opportunity to score more points than the opposition. When it is done right and with creativity, it is a thing of beauty. But, it can’t be done without the basic elements. The fewer the elements, the less the possibilities. The less the possibilities, the lower the chance of creating the spectacular.

I agree that there may be some tweaking of the scrum required. The tweaks should not depower or reduce the scrums importance in any way. Rather they should enhance the probability of each scrum being completed efficiently, quickly and without collapse. My personal favorite is to go back to the time when only two injury substitutions were allowed AND require a team to forfeit a match if they can’t field a competitive front-row. This would reduce the specialization of the players, requiring them to learn multiple roles and functions, becoming generalists once again and increasing the number of possibilities. Who is to say a modern number six couldn’t learn the role of prop, or number seven that of hooker? The players are already filling game time roles out of their normal function: a prop making a clearing pass from the back of a ruck; a hooker filling in in the back line; a second-row making a kick; a wing cleaning in a ruck.

It’s not a spectacle. It’s a sport. Those that continually espouse the spectacle over the sport are just looking for quick wins in attracting mindless spectators to our sport. That is what we have come to in the professional era. It is wrong-headed, though. What rugby union really needs is committed, thoughtful and passionate rugby fans. The only way we will get them will be to continue to provide a complex game where creativity makes the possibilities endless.