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SANZAAR clarifies World Rugby law trials less than a fortnight from Super Rugby kick-off
By Online Editors
The governing body of Super Rugby, SANZAAR, have issued a statement in a bid to clarify the new law trials being implemented by World Rugby in the Southern Hemisphere's premier club competition.
Last week, World Rugby announced that six law amendments - including 50:22 kicks, goal line dropouts and the ability to review yellow cards - would be trialled worldwide in competitions such as Super Rugby, the Top 14 and the Americas Rugby Championship.
However, only one of those amendments, the high tackle technique warning, will be used in the upcoming Super Rugby season as a head injury prevention strategy.
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The amendment will be called into action during matches through referees, who will issue warnings to players who have committed high tackles.
There has been confusion about the implementation of the new law in Super Rugby with regard to whether an automatic one-match suspension would be imposed on players who received two warnings in a match, as was the case during last year's World U20 Championship.
In their statement released on Monday, SANZAAR said it will appoint a tackle technique review officer to oversee the new trial, with a particular focus on upright tackles.
"This process will not impose any sanctions on players. This is not designed to penalise the player in any way but to hopefully shine a light on poor technique that has been shown to increase the risk of significant injury and attempt to affect behavioural change via education and identification.
"The shadow trial will see Sanzaar looking at all tackles each round and identifying tackles in which the tackler is in an upright body position, and in the event it is deemed the tackler has shown poor technique in executing an upright tackle, a warning may be sent to the player and player's coach.
"This process will be an educational process that will aim to educate players and coaches of high-risk behaviours by identifying poor tackle techniques and seeking to inform players of better choices they can make in the tackle zone."
SANZAAR also announced it had slashed the number of referees who will officiate this year's competition, with the departures of Glen Jackson, Nick Briant and Egon Seconds leaving the refereeing team at 12 instead of 15.
"This year, we have reduced the referee team from 15 to 12 following intense scrutiny of performance and the objectives we want to meet, as identified by the Stellenbosch camp in South Africa recently," Sanzaar chief executive Andy Marinos said.
"This smaller, tighter referee team we believe will deliver greater consistency of performance and better critical decision-making processes to ensure Super Rugby delivers fantastic rugby for the players and fans."
Super Rugby referees boss Lyndon Bray added: "The recent camp covered the way in which our refereeing teams of four (referees, assistant referees and television match officials) continue to work on getting better at making the best game decisions in the major moments of the match.
"This includes foul play, try scenarios, contestable scrums [with reduced resets], that teams who are strong at mauling from their line-out are able to use their maul and that we enable space for teams to attack with confidence."
SANZAAR's 12-man refereeing team for 2020 Super Rugby
Federico Anselmi (ARG)
Nic Berry (AUS)
Mike Fraser (NZ)
Angus Gardner (AUS)
AJ Jacobs (RSA)
Ben O'Keeffe (NZ)
Jaco Peyper (RSA)
Brendon Pickerill (NZ)
Rasta Rasivhenge (RSA)
Marius van der Westhuizen (RSA)
Paul Williams (NZ)
Damon Murphy (AUS)
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Latest Comments
Turn it up. Give me your john A game would ya!
Go to commentsI didn't really get the should tone from it, but maybe because I was just reading it as my own thoughts.
What I read it as was examples of how they played well enough in every game to be able to win it.
Yeah I dunno if Ben wouldn't see it that way (someone else would for sure need to point it out to him though), I'm more in the Ben not appreciating that those close losses werent one off scenarios camp. Sure you can look at dubious decisions causing them to have to play with 14 or 13 men at the death as viable reasons but even in the games they won without such difficulties they made a real struggle of it (compared to how good some of their first half play was). This kind of article where you trying to point out the 3 losses really would most likely have been wins only really makes sense/works when your other performances make those 3 games (or endings) stand out.
There might have been a sentence here and there to ensure some good comment numbers but when he's signing off the article by saying things like ..
and..
I don't really see it. Always making sure people are upto date with the SH standing/perspective! NZ went through some tough times with so many different perspectives and reasons why, but then it was.. amusing how.. behind everyone was once they turned a corner. More of these 'unfortunate' results returned against SA and France at the start of the RWC which made it extra tasty to catch other teams out when they did bring it. So that created some 'conscious' perspective that I just kept going and sharing re thoughts on similar predicaments of other teams, I had been really confident that Wallabies displays vs NZ were real, that the Argentines can backup their thing against Aus and SA (and so obviously the rest), and current one is that England are actually consistent and improving with their attack (which everyone should get onboard with), and I'm expecting a more dominant display against Japan (even though they should have more of their experienced internationals for this one) that highlights further growth from July. 👍
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