OT - Rugby World Cup

Growltigger · #1 November 20th, 2003, 01:36 PM

Oleg and Baron Grazic,

A few facts to enlighten you. I was reading the paper this morning and an interesting fact came out, following on from the Australian media's repeated denounciation of English rugby for being boring because of our reliance on kicking, and that we score too few tries.

The article was interesting, the author had undertaken research at the Last two year's data, and the result was that England have scored more tries per game on average than Australia, and a higher percentage of English points have been as a result of tries.

Hmmm, may be the Aussie media should just shut up!

oleg · #2 November 20th, 2003, 04:42 PM

Sure, the one and the only objective is to win the game. Nobody argues with it. But may be we should consider some changes to the rules to make game more exciting ? I have nothing against drop-goals, it is a pleuforia of penalties I don't like. Scoring points should be something more challenging than kikick the ball after some minor infringement in the scrum !! Why not move the scrum 5 yards forward, something akin to American football rules ? Or award more free kicks ? It is just a profanity of the game when all the scoring is due to referee desisions and not by teams. Just MHO.

Growltigger · #3 November 21st, 2003, 11:07 AM

I dont disagree with you Oleg but I think penalty decisions like moving the scrum forward 5 yards will favour those teams with powerful scrums.

My personal view is that you need the penalty kick in order to incentivise teams not to foul, but what you should do, IMHO, is make tries worth a lot more than 5 points, maybe 8 or 9 points and conVersion worth 3.

Tries then become paramount, and you would need an awful lot of infringements to make it match.

I think drop goals should be worth 4 points as having played the game for years, I know how damn hard they are to do, when the opposing team is doing its best to slam you down. Kicking straight under that sort of pressure is TOUGH with a capital OUCH

oleg · #4 November 21st, 2003, 03:34 PM

Well, but decreasing the penalty or increasing try score will have exactly the opposite effect - bigger insentive to foul to stop the try ! But if the foul will NOT remove the possiblity of try but make it even more likely, that may work. That why I like the idea of moving the ball.

Growltigger · #5 November 21st, 2003, 05:21 PM

Oleg, that is actually not a bad idea. If you say that within the 22 line, any penalty gives the attacking side the option of the penalty or a scrum 5 yards forward from where the penalty occurred, then you probably would find more teams going for the try and the bigger points.

Nice idea, has anyone got Clive Woodward's email address?

oleg · #6 November 22nd, 2003, 06:12 PM

What a game !!!!
I eat my words about England being boring.

In fact been adventurios almost cost a title ! 3 points up, 3 minutes to go, why not keep the ball and kill the time ? By no, Johny does for glory

It turns up well in the end though

gravey101 · #7 November 22nd, 2003, 07:05 PM

yes, it was a good game. England let the Aussies back in in the second half through mistakes rather than poor play in general. I still can;t work out what that penalty was for at the end of normal time...