'Get celebrating substitutes off the pitch - they are simply inciting trouble'

[Rossm]

Article by Will Greenwood in today's Telegraph:

Scoring tries is fun. I could never understand why Jason Leonard actually played rugby - 114 Tests for a return of one try. Really?

But then I suspect a driving maul, a good scrum, the physical battle, all supplied his adrenaline buzz. For me, it was all about scoring tries, out-thinking, out-maneuvering and hoodwinking an opponent.

I craved the try line. And then I often did daft things when I got there. I fired up an imaginary lawn mower and cut the grass; went to the corner flag to make a conversion harder for Jonny Wilkinson; pretended to be the referee in the World Cup quarter-final in Brisbane and asked for television match official to check I wasn’t in touch and then awarded myself the try (all in the wrong order). The list goes on.

I would spend time toying with new ideas on the training field and then the challenge was to score as soon as possible to try out the new celebrations. Don’t hate me for it - at least I was self-contained, and there were others who were much better than me at it.

I need to acknowledge Felipe Contepomi as the greatest ever in this regard. Playing for Bristol at the old Memorial Stadium in 2002 against Northampton, he scored all 32 points in a 32-24 win. What made it even more special was that as he scored the second of his two tries, he was travelling at such speed that he found himself running through a gap in the advertising hoardings and racing up the steps into the crowd, where he promptly found an empty seat, sat down with the crowd and applauded his own try.

So don’t get me wrong, I know why players want to celebrate a try and the emotion that runs through your body and brain when you do. There is, however, a celebration issue that has been building for years and it is getting worse - when the substitutes get involved in the post-try antics.

It reared its head in the first two weeks of the northern hemisphere rugby restart and it is going to cause a flare-up. The problem is the way that the replacements - or finishers, whatever you want to call them now - keep warm or get ready for coming onto the pitch.

Currently, during the match, the bench players have to use the dead ball area of the end their team are attacking. The reason for this is that if they are warming up in their own end, it can be off-putting for the opposition. The theory is that they will see too many defending players in similar shirts (even if they are wearing bibs). For the attacking team, it matters less if they see similar shirts in the dead ball area and their bench players know that if their team look like scoring a try, then they have to immediately dash off from that area to make sure there is no interference.

All good and fair so far. It’s what happens next that is the problem and there are two examples from the weekend that I want to highlight - one in the Glasgow Warriors game against Edinburgh, and the other in the Saracens-Quins game.

At Murrayfield, Peter Horne ran a great line off Adam Hastings close to the line and scored for Glasgow. Edinburgh players who were attempting to tackle Hastings end up amongst and adjacent to the celebrating Glasgow players. That is fine, but in amongst it all were five or six fluorescent-bibbed Glasgow subs bumping and jostling everyone, whooping and hollering and being supremely irritating. Everything flared up, and while no punches were thrown, things were teetering on the edge.

It was totally out of order - messy, horrible and unnecessary. There was a brilliant piece of commentary from Chris Patterson at the time: “It frustrates me. I think it’s inflammatory when replacements are in behind the posts getting involved with celebrations as well. It can spill over.”

He was right. A few minutes later, Adam Hastings scored a few minutes later and we immediately saw six or seven fluorescent bibbed replacements come charging on. At that point, Mike Adamson, the referee and hero of the day, got involved: “Whoa, whoa, whoa, back away subs. When a try is scored I don’t want to see you sprinting to the try line, it’s just going to incite things.”

Calm words, common sense, a nice warning (couched as a request) to cease and desist and the whole situation was calmed. But the referees shouldn’t have to do this. The situation should not be arising.

The Premiership was no better. For Saracens against Quins, Michael Rhodes made a break up the right, got lucky with an offload that bounced off a Quins player’s head to Saracens new young prop Sam Crean, who burst clear. He offloaded to Billy Vunipola, who charged down the line, got stopped just short and after a quick ruck, Maro Itoje picked up and dotted down for a superb try.

We then had three bib-wearing player run on and start celebrating in amongst the wreckage of the ruck which included Quins players. Why were they on the pitch? Replacements have no place on the field of play for celebrations. The dead ball area is the field of play. All they do is agitate a team that has just conceded a try and are frustrated already. Add in the deliberate shouting and cheering, the bumping and the jostling, and you have a physical altercation that is waiting to happen.

It’s time to ban the substitutes from the field of play and give yellow cards or penalties to ensure it doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t be too hard to spot the transgressors – they're the ones wearing fluorescent bibs, jumping up and down and shouting.

I raised this very question a few years ago either here or in the other place. Why am I not surprised that the EAs are mentioned by Will as an example from the Prem. and it would be Itoje who scored the try, after all he is the pompom girl in chief for them.

[Peej]

He's not wrong. It's something that all clubs do though, and should be clamped down on.

If you want a point of contrast, look at how Lomu celebrated against England in 1995. Barely batted an eyelid. The game has certainly changed, and not all for the better.

Another, less significant thing, that bothers me. Watching Sarries, whenever they win a scrum penalty the entire team comes rushing forward to pat the front row on the head. It's tiresome, but as much as anything it just slows the game down, as it takes a minute for the players to disperse again far enough for the game to be restarted.

[hopwood]

I can't stand all the substitutes diving on top of the on-field players in celebration.
There's something fundamentally wrong with it.

If I was an opposition player...I would just want to lamp them if they got in my way.
These players are not on the field of play.
They are substitutes and should not be allowed to join in the celebrations with the players out on the pitch.
What next? They come running in after the scrum wins a penalty and pat everyone on the back?

These try scoring celebrations could easily prove incendiary in certain games, depending on the friction between the teams.
It could incite problems.

I find it unnecessary...and quite frankly uneasy to watch.

[Neils]

Fully agree with the article and the comments. What gets me is the very small in goal area some pitches have and they seem to get clogged up with the reserves. It is still the pitch and they should not be on it. One thing football has right!

[InBetweenWasp]

I think Greenwood is either:

- struggling for things to write about
- getting old

If this gives him the ‘ache! This happens during most games, by just about all clubs and the number of times I can recall something kicking off because of a sub celebrating is a big fat zero.  Even Greenwood struggles with much else than a smouldering atmosphere in the Edinburgh v Warriors game as an example. 

It may be the only example in the past two weeks, but if this was a genuine issue developing he’d be talking about previous incidents and the trend he’s seeing.

[Rossm]

I think Greenwood is either:

- struggling for things to write about
- getting old

If this gives him the ‘ache! This happens during most games, by just about all clubs and the number of times I can recall something kicking off because of a sub celebrating is a big fat zero.  Even Greenwood struggles with much else than a smouldering atmosphere in the Edinburgh v Warriors game as an example. 

It may be the only example in the past two weeks, but if this was a genuine issue developing he’d be talking about previous incidents and the trend he’s seeing.

One of these days I think it will kick off big time. Only when that happens will people sit up and take notice.

[InBetweenWasp]

I think Greenwood is either:

- struggling for things to write about
- getting old

If this gives him the ‘ache! This happens during most games, by just about all clubs and the number of times I can recall something kicking off because of a sub celebrating is a big fat zero.  Even Greenwood struggles with much else than a smouldering atmosphere in the Edinburgh v Warriors game as an example. 

It may be the only example in the past two weeks, but if this was a genuine issue developing he’d be talking about previous incidents and the trend he’s seeing.

One of these days I think it will kick off big time. Only when that happens will people sit up and take notice.

Perhaps.  But let's be honest, it's an edge issue.  He's writing about the potential for a scuffle to kick off - These days players know the consequences.  How many punches have been thrown since it became a Red Card offence for making contact above the shoulders compared to before it became something that would be more heavily penalised?

If they can largely be trusted to control themselves in the heat of the game, at the bottom of a ruck or in the scrum then i'm pretty sure we can trust them not to get too carried away when the opposing team celebrates a score.

Would rather he banged the drum about:

-- Getting rid of the caterpillar
-- Police 'use it' so it actually is 5 seconds before it's freeball
-- Refs getting stronger about time wasting at the scrum. 

After getting a man binned (vs Irish), Luke Pearce made the point to Leicester to speed up getting ready for the scrum several times.  They ignored him and continued at their own pace, winding the clock down.  All teams do it.  But would quite like to see the Refs call time off and make it clear, they'll put the time on just before they call 'crouch'

We all have different preferences on what we'd like to see change and perhaps in time we'll see subs celebrating tries causing inciting fight after fight, but until then, i'd prefer to see pundits and the bodies tackle some of the things we see regularly during games rather than make a change about something which might, or might not happen.