From this morning's Daily Telegraph.
Turgid rugby is turning fans off - referees have to realise they are part of the problem
Officials need to crack down on the scrummage as they do at the breakdown to avoid bores like the first half of England v Wales
In the end, the Twickenham crowd were given a tense end to a game that was won by England but which, for lengthy periods, was frustratingly disjointed. The responsibility for this unevenness lay with both teams, who made too many unforced errors, and the officials.
From an England perspective, they are still in with a chance, however remote, of contesting the Six Nations title and bar a disastrous final 10 minutes at Murrayfield would have been unbeaten going into the fourth round of the tournament. On the other hand, this win could, and probably should, have been settled much earlier, when they took a 17-0 lead in the second half and there is still a lot of improvement needed to reach the performance levels of France.
From a Welsh perspective, it was an admirable riposte, but disappointing that it took so long to find their attacking fluency. In the end, they ran out of time to overtake their opponents and the fact that they outscored England by three tries to one will be of little comfort. The loss leaves them battling to avoid finishing in fifth place, having won the title last year.
For balance it is right to record that there were several good performances from England players. Alex Dombrandt would have been my man of the match and he did far more of note than just scoring England’s only try. Maro Itoje was his usual industrious self and half-backs Harry Randall and Marcus Smith, took a step forward as a Test pairing, managing to input more pace into England’s game when they were given decent possession.
For Wales, Alex Cuthbert stood out and looked the most potent attacker on the pitch. Dan Biggar sustained his side's defiance in the first half and sparked their comeback in the second. Taine Basham produced another consistently competitive game and Taulupe Faletau was remarkable, given he had just returned from injury.
The second half was, in the main, a very decent spectacle, during which four tries were recorded. On the other hand, an 80-minute game actually took 101 minutes to play. Even accounting for the fact that there were two longish breaks for injury, there were other long bouts of inactivity which marred the spectacle, including a turgid first half which did nothing to promote rugby to any but its most avid supporters.
You can, if you like, dismiss the following as an isolated example or, if you are honest, you can admit that what I describe happens too often and turns off potential rugby converts.
Two sets of scrums took six minutes to complete, including one which ran down nearly three minutes off the Liam William’s sin-bin clock. What made this even more frustrating was that in some areas the referee, Mike Adamson, was admirably sharp in enforcing the law. If he had refereed the scrums in the same way he did the breakdown, we would have been spared the interminable delays and repeat offenders would have been yellow carded.
It is not a referee’s job to advise players how to scrummage. Not only are they not qualified to do so, but instructions like ‘I want balance’ ‘stay down’ and ‘hold your weight back’ have no agreed definition and could mean something different to every player in both front rows.
In no other aspect of play do referees feel it right to coach and players know what they should do without being told. A referee’s job is to enforce the law and the game would be better off if they did this in the scrum.
The trite, and disingenuous, response from referees is ‘no referee ever collapses a scrum.’ No, but no player has a whistle and is on the field to enforce the law. Some referees claim that if they took a stricter approach, scrums would never be completed.
Well, in this game, with the softly, softly approach, there were eight scrums in the game and only three of them were successful. Nearly 65 per cent of scrums didn’t complete, so how much worse could it be? Eventually, and probably far quicker than you think, players would get the message and you would, miraculously, see that they could comply with the laws all along.
When you have new laws, like the 50:22 experiment, it makes a mockery of its positivity if you then allow an unnecessary and inexplicable break in play. The whole Welsh lineout, and England hooker, Jamie George, were ready for the throw, only for Adamson to allow the home forwards to have a two-minute conference and a water break.
The latter must become properly regulated. In football drinks breaks were sanctioned for one minute in each half and cricket allows one every hour. Rugby should do similar because the haphazard way in which they seem to occur is becoming daft.
I particularly agree with his points on the amount of time that lineouts now take. And as for the f*cking water boys, they seem to have bred like rabbits this season🙄
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