The Farcical First Weekend of Rugby's New Tackle Laws

The new tackle directives from World Rugby have been through their first weekend of fixtures, and it didn’t go very well, writes Lee Calvert.

The old adage is, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” World Rugby recently decided that something in rugby was getting broken far too often – namely, the heads of players – and after commissioning some research to look into it introduced the new high tackle directives. This was done at roughly a fortnight’s notice in the middle of the northern hemisphere season. When it was pointed out that this could cause some problems, the response was, essentially, ‘they have to come in sometime, it’s the off season down south, and anyway this is a safety issue that cannot wait.’

A cynical person might say that by 'safety issue' what World Rugby really means is ‘growing probability that we’re going to get sued up the wazoo', but we must take them at their word, I suppose.

There were two very large talking points from the first weekend of the new rules.

A penalty try was awarded to Scarlets in the dying minutes of their victory over Ulster on Friday, given for two Ulster players attempting to tackle a Scarlets attacker as he ran, stooped over for line virtually diving. As you can imagine, it was nigh on impossible for the Ulstermen to get under the diving player, so they hit him around the shoulders in an attempt to prevent the try.  They achieved this, only to be penalised for a reckless tackle, yellow carded, and a penalty try was awarded to Scarlets, which effectively won the game for the Welsh side.

Anybody watching who has played the game will confirm there is no possibility to not tackle an attacker in such a way when they are stooping for the line, so we can only conclude that World Rugby no longer wish defenders to make those tackles, for safety reasons.  The consequences of this for the game of rugby union are terrifying, depressing and honestly, sad.

Fast forward to Saturday and Saracens vs Exeter. Sarries captain Brad Barritt flies in to tackle Exeter lock Geoff Parling, swings his arm into the tackle, Parling stoops a bit and Barritt clatters him on the noggin. Parking is out cold and is falling through the tackle as Saracens prop Barrinton comes in as second man in the tackle, put his shoulder in, and Parling falls onto his shoulder face first. Referee Ian Tempest takes a long time to look – with the most brilliant “Why me? Why today of all days?” look on his face – decides that Barrington should have a red card. Barritt, the swinger of the arm to the head initially, received no sanction whatsoever, like a buy two fouls get the cheapest one free. In sending Barrington off, Tempest actually apologised, something I can never remember a referee doing ever before.

The RFU disciplinary panel has since cleared Barrington and given Barritt a three week ban, essentially reversing the ref’s calls on the day.  Do try to keep up won’t you?

Advocates of the new approach will say that there is bound to be a transitional period for players and officials alike, and that the overall aim of the directives is to drive tackles lower, thus reducing head injury.  Except, the two worst head injuries that happened this weekend were suffered by players doing exactly that.  Marcelo Bosch bounced his head off an Exeter player’s hip attempting a low tackle at speed, and James Haskell in the first tackle of his return from injury whammed his head off the lower regions of Leicester’s Freddie Burns and was out cold before he hit the ground.

We all want rugby to be as safe as it can be, of course, but it can never actually be safe given the very essence of the game.

The consequence, unintended or otherwise, of these new directives will be to create a game that is not one that we recognise, one where players back out of tackles on the line, where attackers attempt to buy penalties by dramatically stooping into tackles.  Most depressing of all is that judging by this weekend in Europe the same number of head injuries may still occur. We will have fundamentally changed the impacts in a game for nothing.

Most galling of all is that rugby league are laughing at us, and it’s a struggle to think of any reason why they shouldn’t.