I think the first comment nails it, though. If progress is halted once, then must use it. Kinda odd that law ever allowed a re-start.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/opinion/3 ... aul-banned
OPINION: This is a polite plea from Wayne Smith to World Rugby. Please, please, please abolish the driving maul. It is a blight on the game. It is against the very essence of pure rugby. It does not allow a fair contest for the ball. And it is a crashing bore.
If the Black Ferns had lost that Rugby World Cup final, then Smith could never have spoken out as he is doing now. It would have sounded like sour grapes, and a man who enjoys a glass of fine red wine as much as Smith has a very healthy dislike for sour grapes. But because the Ferns won, Smith may talk freely.
Smith, aka the Professor, says: “I don’t like the driving maul as part of the game. There are six or seven forwards in front of the ball. There is no access to the ball. It is legalised obstruction. I would get rid of it entirely. You could do it very easily by changing the laws so that if the attacking team chooses to kick a penalty to touch inside the 22, then the other team gets the throw in.”
How wonderful it would be if World Rugby had the cojones to implement ‘Smith’s Law’ before this year’s men’s World Cup in France. Was it any coincidence that four years ago the final was contested by South Africa and England, the two best mauling sides in the competition? Was it any coincidence that the England women’s side went on a record-breaking unbeaten run underpinned by the rolling maul?
Last year’s Super Rugby was dominated by the Blues and the Crusaders, the two strongest mauls. Moana Pasifika, new, vibrant, but less organised, were buried beneath the rubble of those mauls. And the tactic has clearly become a turnoff for viewers as TV figures continue to plummet.
We saw the nadir of all of this at the weekend when England beat Italy 31-14. That looks like a dominant performance, but the scoreline was an illusion. Italy had six clean breaks to England’s four and they beat twice as many defenders.
But, as their Kiwi coach Kieran Crowley observed: “We didn't have an opportunity today because England pushed us out of it.”
That was very polite of Crowley. He might equally have said that Italy didn’t have an opportunity because the New Zealand ref James Doleman pushed them out of it. And this again is a huge problem with the rolling maul. Rugby is a very hard game to referee, and when refs become dogmatic on marginal decisions, then those penalties can lead to scarcely-earned tries for teams with a strong rolling maul.
It is hard to think that Doleman was not swayed by the crowd of 81,609 people inside Twickenham. That is entirely understandable. He is human after all. But it is all the more reason why rugby needs to reduce the power of the refs.
Each of England’s five tries came directly or indirectly from rolling mauls. All five of those mauls were piggy-backed on penalties. Three of those penalties were extremely dubious and two should have probably gone the other way.
But Doleman had taken a position. He had decided, wrongly, that England had a significant power advantage despite the fact that when there was scrum stability early on, it was Italy who surged forward. When Italy did make significant stops of the driving maul, they were not properly rewarded. Even the position of the ‘gate’ seemed to alter depending on whether you were wearing a white shirt or a blue shirt.
There is also the problem of the yellow card. Two Italians were sin binned for interventions at a rolling maul. One, the young No 8, was sent from the pitch on a matter of timing. The other, a replacement prop, was binned even though Doleman had awarded a penalty try. That’s double jeopardy.
It’s a nonsense. American football is the sport to watch if you want legalised blocking, but this is blocking and evasion that has been choreographed over a century. And even the NFL is likely to outlaw the quarterback sneak next year because the attacking side has an unfair advantage.
There was one ghastly moment in the match between England and Italy when a beautiful try was cancelled for an ugly score. Max Malins had bamboozled the Italian defence with a lovely show of the ball and a burst of acceleration, but the try was called back because an England player far from the ball had inadvertently tripped an Italian. Really? So we went back for a penalty, and beauty became the beast. England scored instead from a driving maul.
It is hard to think that World Rugby really wants another World Cup final when one side scores four tries from rolling mauls. But it says it all when a contender for the New Zealand’s favourite sporting moment at the Halberg Awards is the moment when Joanah Ngan-Woo stole England’s lineout at the end of the women’s final as they went for yet another crunching maul.
And in many ways it was a beautiful moment. Assistant coach Whitney Hansen and others had worked to put together a video of the cues for the England jumper. And at the supreme moment Ngan-Woo picked the cue and got onto her lifters to get the hoist right.
Ngan-Woo said: “When fans tell me what it meant to them and where they were and how crazy it was, that's pretty cool, hearing that. It's an unusual play to have become a big moment. Having put the work in as a lock, how cool is it to see a piece of skill like that be so celebrated?
“It's crazy, because lineouts to me are my bread and butter. That sort of lineout is what we do every single day. That's what we do for our warm-up. To have the moment nominated for the Halberg award is just amazing. I'm just happy. It was something that I love to do. Lineouts are the best.”
Yeah, crazy good. But it is telling that we are celebrating a ‘defensive’ moment. It is telling that it is a greater piece of skill to stop the maul, than to rumble that hidden ball over line. Creativity can take a back seat.
There was a funny moment during the Guardian’s live commentary on the England v Italy game when the writer tapped out: “There was an England penalty later in the phase and from the lineout England run a beautiful first phase pattern to… only joking, it’s a catch, drive and penalty try after Ferrari collapses the maul.”
Yes, the driving maul has become a bad joke. Some of its origins were beautiful in the late ‘70s when the Beziers side of Raoul Barriere turned the rolling maul into an art form. But now the paint has faded.
There was a dancer out on the Twickenham pitch on Sunday who reminded me of Christian Cullen. Ange Capuozzo, the diminutive Italian fullback, is a joy to watch, a splash of colour, of fast feet, and intuitive angles and blazing pace. But for large parts of the game he was an irrelevance, the dazzling sun in the Azurri sky blocked out by the cancel culture of the driving maul.
Is that really what we want rugby to be?
