Players off-feet at rucks

[megweya]

Hi all

Cornie Visagie (29 SA caps) has aired his views on various things including players 'bridging' over the ball as the ruck forms.
"When a player has not controlled himself and fallen over a ruck, he should not be able to crawl back on his hands and remain part of the ruck.
If you do not know what I am talking about, just watch a couple of clips of Richie McCaw. They deliberately take the space in the "gate" of the ruck on the attacking team's side, while they have their weight on their hands. It is impossible to clean out the players in this situation.
Even if it is only for 2 seconds, it is a penalty.
Players should learn to enter the area with balance and ensure they can stay on their feet. It will clean up the area, ensure safety at the ruck area and produce attacking rugby with far more continuity than what we are seeing at the moment"

I don't want this to be be a Richie flame-thread - there are about 29 other players on the pitch doing this sort of thing - or worse, 'Zzzz' just falling over the ball (at least one player every other breakdown falls over - whether  that is deliberate or just a consequence of the pinball effect of 3-10 guys of 90kg+ charging into each other).  Each fan can fill in 'Zzzz' with their own favourite hate-nation/player.

I suppose it highlights how the rules seem to expect the game to be played as some sort of choreographed set of precision manouevures, while the reality is a mix of mayhem and Machevelli (clumsiness and clever rule-bending/breaking).

Pity the poor ref!

Cheers

Megweya

PS Maybe they have the Lego version of the game in mind - like the one of Kirwin's length-of-field try in Lego:

[ruggerfan]

There was an article on "Stuff"  the other day complaining that the. Areferees are not policing the attacking sides enough that covered it better (rather than Richie bashing) highlighting how difficult it is to compete for the ball at the tackle. Basically "pick and go" has turned into "pick and dive" with attacking sides simply taking a voluntary tackle and sealing the ball off making it nearly impossible to compete. This has been used as a time-wasting tactic by inferior teams. Not sure what can be done about it as you cannot expect a player to stop on a dime if the defending side are not competing properly. The point has been made that if the defending side doesn't commit any players at all to the ruck, then it is not, in fact, a ruck at all making it legal for players to come around and stand in the attacking backline! I'd say it would have to be a brave team to try this and the world cup is probably not the best place to test it. For now teams will just have to respect possession more.

[BallBoy]

This has been used as a time-wasting tactic 

How irritating is that... 3 minutes (sometimes more) and a team do this to run the clock down. Pet hate of mine

[megweya]

... cannot expect a player to stop on a dime if the defending side are not competing properly.

The point has been made that if the defending side doesn't commit any players at all to the ruck, then it is not, in fact, a ruck at all making it legal for players to come around and stand in the attacking backline!

I'd say it would have to be a brave team to try this and the world cup is probably not the best place to test it. For now teams will just have to respect possession more.

The first time I saw something like that was indeed in a RWC - I remember a Samoa tactic used in a couple of 2007 games (one I think was not surprisingly against England) to neutralise the rolling maul (usually where a rolling maul was predictable such as from a lineout, or from almost any English set-piece).
As the 'attacking' dumb juggernaut was getting itself set-up, the Samoan pack would disengage and one would run around the back to challenge for the ball directly.
It worked well enough the times that I saw it.

This year Ireland may bring a comparable counter-intuitive tactic to the fore - the choke tackle favoured by Les Kiss their defence coach. The idea is that rather than bring the attacker down, the tackler wraps him up, usually with help from a 2nd defender. Once a few players join in the ref calls a maul and if the ball is not recycled by the attackers, then  a scrum is awarded to the defending side.

The risk is that the upright body positon required to defend in this way does not halt 95kg centres coming at speed. The attacker could break the tackle or drive on 10m-15m.

That said, it has worked at various times in games for Ireland and is one way of generating turnover ball.
It is preferable to my pet hate of endless kicking ping-pong while both sides hope the other one drops the ball.

However, I think the current vogue for trying to rip a ball out of the grasp of a ball-carrier as he is tackled is more visually-engaging and skillful.

Cheers

Megweya