Rugby rules.

[gerrykeegan]

A lad I worked with had half an ear, I asked him how it happened, He was tight head in the scrum and his front row collapsed, unfortunately his opposite number had turned his head and took a bite of his ear, their front row stayed up.

[sans pessimism]

A lad I worked with had half an ear, I asked him how it happened, He was tight head in the scrum and his front row collapsed, unfortunately his opposite number had turned his head and took a bite of his ear, their front row stayed up.

Hard for his coach to give him an earful

[Dinny Breen]

I posted this for the closet rugby fan Billys Boots before

Laws in rugby provide a framework for the game, rules imho tend to be more black and white and not open to interpretation. To say a referee does not know the laws (rules) is wrong, you will find he has his own interpration of many laws and like in any sport on the field of play he is right even when wrong. Take for example, a ruck, in a ruck you can only enter the ruck through 'A Gate', now this gate doesn't exist physically, as a rule of thumb it's considered the width of the tackled persons body position but only the referee can for definite say what this is - some referees allow a wide gate some a narrow. It's up to the players to figure out if the referee is allowing a wider gate (hence screams he's in from the side as the referee waves play on) or a narrow gate (hence screams he came from behind ref, he was on-side as the referee indicates a penalty).

[thewobbler]

I'll try to keep this simple 5 Sams. I'm sure a proper rugger-bugger could apply more science to the below, but I'm trying to keep it in a GAA folk's perspective.


Three main reasons I can think of for the ball being kicked "away".

Territory. This can be equally as important as possession in rugby. This has always been the case, but these days when most professional kickers are expected to convert every opportunity inside 50 metres, it's particularly so. Think about how often teams with the ball cough up a penalty for holding on too long – it's just not something you want to risk doing in your own half.

Variance / Keeping the opposition on the back foot. The key to breaking through a defensive line is to create a bit of space and exploit it. If your team never shows a willingness to kick the ball, then the opposition's back 3 (full back and 2 wingers) can step up and reinforce the defensive line instead of holding back and covering off kicks, which obviously makes it more difficult to break that line. Australia were a classic case of this problem against Ireland; their fly-half and full-back ran at Ireland every time they got the ball. Ireland just stepped up and made a big flat line for Oz to run through, which they never did.

Opportunity. A well-positioned kick will tend to meet an isolated opponent (normally the full back), and should be a difficult take. At best this gives your team's more aggressive runners the opportunity to bury the said full-back and either turnover the ball (with significant territorial advantage) or force a penalty from holding on. Normally it involves the opposition full-back sh1tting bricks and kicking the ball always hurriedly, giving you a line-out with territorial advantage. Sometimes it just ends up in a ping-pong battle between kickers.



Offside is quite simple. In an attacking sense, as all passes in rugby go backwards, your teammates should never be ahead of you. If they are ahead of you, then receive the ball, they are offside. In a defensive sense, it's pretty much the opposite. You should never be ahead of the ball, and therefore you should never tackle from anywhere but behind the ball. There is more complexity to it involving imaginary lines of scrimmage and active/inactive, but by and large, you always want to be behind the ball.


Rugby blocking is a bit different in that as defenders are coming from behind the offside line, they are normally going at full tilt to take the kicker out. The kicker reacts to this by getting the kick away as early as he can, so the defenders rarely have little option other than to fling themselves towards the space where the kicked ball is about to enter. In football, blocks tend to come from the side, or when players have been slowed down to a stop by the defender, hence you can target the foot.


Rucks and mauls are more difficult to explain. I'll probably make a mess but here goes.

Rucks. One of the problems with rugby's basic framework as a game is that by nature, everything comes to a crashing halt every few seconds i.e. a big man is dragged to the ground by another big man. At this stage, the ball should normally have been presented by the tackled player for his team to restart their attack, but the reality is that oftentimes without some sort of contrived restart mechanism, the 10 or so big lumps who've come over to protect/fight for the ball, would just swamp the ball as it's becoming active again, and more and more of them would join in until all 30 players are lying in a heap around it. Which wouldn't be much of a spectacle.

Rugby League went for a rule where everybody gets out of the way, and the tackled player shoos it back into play. Union's interpretation of things is a bit more freeflowing, but once a ruck is formed, a handful of rules (including offside) help keep everyone from piling in every time they catch sight of leather, and help ensure that play can be restarted. How strictly referees interpret the rules around a ruck seems to be one of the more contentious elements of the sport. As an attacking tool, rucks should be the platform to big things. Your better ball-carriers tend to take more than one opponent to stop them, and the more opposing players you can commit to a ruck, the more room there should be outside of it. Also, "quick ball from the ruck" is what analysts always drone on about. If your attacking team needs to commit lots of bodies to the ruck, it's because they can't get the ball suitably well protected to move it out of the ruck. Thus when the ball is spun out from it, there is normally fewer bodies for your team to string together a move, plus they tend to be facing up to an organised defensive pattern.


Mauls. You've probably seen "crossing" a few times i.e. when two attacking players collide (or touch) during a move. This is considered an illegal advantage in that player 1 could act as a shield for player 2. Mauls (to me) are like organised, legal crossing. They're a set play in that the referee recognises that normal rugby rules about never being ahead of the ball, are temporarily thrown out the window, as each of the players in the Maul is bound together working as one unit. Which makes it like a scrum.

What happens is a player carrying the ball is joined by a teammate (or more) and that teammate then locks horns with him and they "charge together". More and more players join them, and the players involved tend to move the ball backwards until the last person in the Maul is the ball-carrier, and everyone else involved is part of the battering ram. A Maul comes to an end when momentum is removed from the attack. At that point, the referee advises them that they need to break up and go back to the normal offside rules of rugby. At which point most of them (they're always forward) tend to lie down, go "inactive" and have a breather.

[Billys Boots]

I posted this for the closet rugby fan Billys Boots before

Laws in rugby provide a framework for the game, rules imho tend to be more black and white and not open to interpretation. To say a referee does not know the laws (rules) is wrong, you will find he has his own interpration of many laws and like in any sport on the field of play he is right even when wrong. Take for example, a ruck, in a ruck you can only enter the ruck through 'A Gate', now this gate doesn't exist physically, as a rule of thumb it's considered the width of the tackled persons body position but only the referee can for definite say what this is - some referees allow a wide gate some a narrow. It's up to the players to figure out if the referee is allowing a wider gate (hence screams he's in from the side as the referee waves play on) or a narrow gate (hence screams he came from behind ref, he was on-side as the referee indicates a penalty).

That couldn't have been for me, as I don't know what it's about.  I've read it three times and it still makes no sense.

Why the interest in rugby recently - I thought it started in January?

[sans pessimism]

I'll try to keep this simple 5 Sams. I'm sure a proper rugger-bugger could apply more science to the below, but I'm trying to keep it in a GAA folk's perspective.


Three main reasons I can think of for the ball being kicked "away".

Territory. This can be equally as important as possession in rugby. This has always been the case, but these days when most professional kickers are expected to convert every opportunity inside 50 metres, it's particularly so. Think about how often teams with the ball cough up a penalty for holding on too long – it's just not something you want to risk doing in your own half.

Variance / Keeping the opposition on the back foot. The key to breaking through a defensive line is to create a bit of space and exploit it. If your team never shows a willingness to kick the ball, then the opposition's back 3 (full back and 2 wingers) can step up and reinforce the defensive line instead of holding back and covering off kicks, which obviously makes it more difficult to break that line. Australia were a classic case of this problem against Ireland; their fly-half and full-back ran at Ireland every time they got the ball. Ireland just stepped up and made a big flat line for Oz to run through, which they never did.

Opportunity. A well-positioned kick will tend to meet an isolated opponent (normally the full back), and should be a difficult take. At best this gives your team's more aggressive runners the opportunity to bury the said full-back and either turnover the ball (with significant territorial advantage) or force a penalty from holding on. Normally it involves the opposition full-back sh1tting bricks and kicking the ball always hurriedly, giving you a line-out with territorial advantage. Sometimes it just ends up in a ping-pong battle between kickers.



Offside is quite simple. In an attacking sense, as all passes in rugby go backwards, your teammates should never be ahead of you. If they are ahead of you, then receive the ball, they are offside. In a defensive sense, it's pretty much the opposite. You should never be ahead of the ball, and therefore you should never tackle from anywhere but behind the ball. There is more complexity to it involving imaginary lines of scrimmage and active/inactive, but by and large, you always want to be behind the ball.


Rugby blocking is a bit different in that as defenders are coming from behind the offside line, they are normally going at full tilt to take the kicker out. The kicker reacts to this by getting the kick away as early as he can, so the defenders rarely have little option other than to fling themselves towards the space where the kicked ball is about to enter. In football, blocks tend to come from the side, or when players have been slowed down to a stop by the defender, hence you can target the foot.


Rucks and mauls are more difficult to explain. I'll probably make a mess but here goes.

Rucks. One of the problems with rugby's basic framework as a game is that by nature, everything comes to a crashing halt every few seconds i.e. a big man is dragged to the ground by another big man. At this stage, the ball should normally have been presented by the tackled player for his team to restart their attack, but the reality is that oftentimes without some sort of contrived restart mechanism, the 10 or so big lumps who've come over to protect/fight for the ball, would just swamp the ball as it's becoming active again, and more and more of them would join in until all 30 players are lying in a heap around it. Which wouldn't be much of a spectacle.

Rugby League went for a rule where everybody gets out of the way, and the tackled player shoos it back into play. Union's interpretation of things is a bit more freeflowing, but once a ruck is formed, a handful of rules (including offside) help keep everyone from piling in every time they catch sight of leather, and help ensure that play can be restarted. How strictly referees interpret the rules around a ruck seems to be one of the more contentious elements of the sport. As an attacking tool, rucks should be the platform to big things. Your better ball-carriers tend to take more than one opponent to stop them, and the more opposing players you can commit to a ruck, the more room there should be outside of it. Also, "quick ball from the ruck" is what analysts always drone on about. If your attacking team needs to commit lots of bodies to the ruck, it's because they can't get the ball suitably well protected to move it out of the ruck. Thus when the ball is spun out from it, there is normally fewer bodies for your team to string together a move, plus they tend to be facing up to an organised defensive pattern.


Mauls. You've probably seen "crossing" a few times i.e. when two attacking players collide (or touch) during a move. This is considered an illegal advantage in that player 1 could act as a shield for player 2. Mauls (to me) are like organised, legal crossing. They're a set play in that the referee recognises that normal rugby rules about never being ahead of the ball, are temporarily thrown out the window, as each of the players in the Maul is bound together working as one unit. Which makes it like a scrum.

What happens is a player carrying the ball is joined by a teammate (or more) and that teammate then locks horns with him and they "charge together". More and more players join them, and the players involved tend to move the ball backwards until the last person in the Maul is the ball-carrier, and everyone else involved is part of the battering ram. A Maul comes to an end when momentum is removed from the attack. At that point, the referee advises them that they need to break up and go back to the normal offside rules of rugby. At which point most of them (they're always forward) tend to lie down, go "inactive" and have a breather.

Thank God you didn't go into detail Wob!!

[Dinny Breen]

I posted this for the closet rugby fan Billys Boots before

Laws in rugby provide a framework for the game, rules imho tend to be more black and white and not open to interpretation. To say a referee does not know the laws (rules) is wrong, you will find he has his own interpration of many laws and like in any sport on the field of play he is right even when wrong. Take for example, a ruck, in a ruck you can only enter the ruck through 'A Gate', now this gate doesn't exist physically, as a rule of thumb it's considered the width of the tackled persons body position but only the referee can for definite say what this is - some referees allow a wide gate some a narrow. It's up to the players to figure out if the referee is allowing a wider gate (hence screams he's in from the side as the referee waves play on) or a narrow gate (hence screams he came from behind ref, he was on-side as the referee indicates a penalty).

That couldn't have been for me, as I don't know what it's about.  I've read it three times and it still makes no sense.

Why the interest in rugby recently - I thought it started in January?

It was from a debate we were having on the champions league semi-final thread

http://gaaboard.com/board/index.php?topic=19019.msg955112#msg955112

[Billys Boots]

Apologies Dinny, I'd apparently lost interest at that stage. 

[Dinny Breen]

Apologies Dinny, I'd apparently lost interest at that stage.

[highorlow]

They should go back to the no lifting in the lineout law. It would make for better games.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyiPumPBHVQ

[haranguerer]

Surely if the opposing team just lifted a lad at the front of the line out he'd intercept every time? 

[thewobbler]

In that case you would just throw a low ball to the lock/front row who is standing by himself at the front of the line out. Besides, how long do you think any man could hold 18st of Paul O'Connell upright for?

[haranguerer]

I mean, I know there are obvioulsy good reasons for it or it would be done, but I suppose yuo could put a man on the gound at the front to contest low throws, and then only lift the lad when the ball is thrown...

[thewobbler]

Haranguerer, the technique you are talking about is actually employed quite often in that the guy standing at no.2 in the lineout is thrown up in the air as a shield. But to do this normally commits your best 2 lifters to that jumper, and if he's not up early enough, the other team have a huge advantage at the middle and back of the lineout.

[take_yer_points]

In what instance does the attacking team have the throw in at the line out when they're the ones who kicked the ball out?

And what's the rule for bringing the ball back to where it was kicked from for a line out? Is it because the ball hasn't travelled a certain distance? In what situation is this rule applied?