Rugby World Cup-winning coach Jake White has been at the forefront of rugby coaching at the highest level since the late 1990s.
Now in charge of the Pretoria-based Vodacom Bulls, White remains a top mind in the game and currently has his team in fourth position on the log.
Speaking today at his team announcement for this weekend’s BKT United Rugby Championship round 16 match against the second-place Glasgow Warriors, White was asked about World Rugby’s latest law changes, which will come into effect on July 1st.
Confirming the following law changes in order to continue the development of the sport in terms of both player safety and as a spectacle are as follows:
Onside from kicks in open play: In a rewrite of Law 10.7 relating to players being put onside from kicks in open play, it will no longer be possible for a player to be put onside when an opposition player catches the ball and runs five metres, or passes the ball. Laws 10.1 and 10.4 will make clear that offside players must make an attempt to retreat, creating space for the opposition team to play. This should reduce the amount of kick tennis in the game.
Free-kicks: Under Law 20.3, it will no longer be possible to choose a scrum from a free-kick. Free-kicks must either be tapped or kicked to encourage more ball in flow.
Banning the ‘crocodile roll’: The action of rolling/twisting/pulling of a player on their feet in the tackle area (the ‘crocodile roll’) will be outlawed and sanctioned by a penalty.
When asked about his thoughts on the changes and, in particular, the free kick and the inability to call a scrum from the free kick, White said, “Ok, so I want to quickly explain to you, and I know there is going to be a conspiracy theorist about why that happens because certain teams have strong scrums.”
“I want to explain to you guys that the laws of rugby are made for school kids, they are not made for professional players.
“I think that people who read into that (conspiracy theories) are naive.
“So I will give you an example. We used to have a squeeze ball where the player used to go onto his all fours and push the ball through his legs. Remember it was a big thing at a certain stage and they cancelled it.
“Because what happened? Schoolkids saw that, and they copied what they saw Dallaglio or Malcolm Marx do.
“Now those guys are strong men; if a little kid tries to do that and someone lands on him and now he is paralysed, then parents don’t want their kids to play rugby.
“So if you take that into context, if you can limit the amount of scrums then you are going to get more kids to play rugby.
“No one is saying that the scrum should be depowered. Let’s be fair. Over time, schoolboy rugby has gone from you can scrum to now you can only scrum a meter, so it has changed.
“All I would say in answer to that is there is no conspiracy to that. The lawmakers and the referees are going to have to work out how many free kicks they give at scrum time because there will be a lot more playing around because coaches are like that.
“Sometimes to give a team a free kick is better to defend than it is to defend from a scrum, so that is something that the referees are going to have to take into consideration.
“But what I am stressing to the people out there is the laws of the game are made to make more people play it, and the laws of the game are to make it safer, and the laws of the game are there to make it clear to teams that this is how the shape of the game should be.
“So it has nothing to do with some teams want to scrum and other teams (don’t) it would be to make parents comfortable.
“Because let’s be fair, if you went scrum, scrum, scrum, some schoolboy sides would scrum double the amount they have to, and that would increase the risk of having neck injuries, etc.
“So yeah, I don’t read anything into that other way that the lawmakers have looked at how they can make the game shape a lot better.
“Let’s be fair, guys, if it is a tap free kick and you have to tap and run it now, well, then theoretically there is more ball in play time, and you look at it from that context rather than the powerhouse scrum teams are disadvantaged, I don’t believe it.
“People said that when they brought in 50:22’s and all those things, you couldn’t kick the ball out if you brought it back into your 22. All that’s happened is that the ball in play used to be 24 minutes and is now 37,38,40 minutes in play.
“Who knows, make next. Maybe the next free kick is a quick tap, and the next one is a penalty because it won’t be a free kick all the time, and now you’ve given yardage away and territory.
“So, who knows, maybe scrumming will improve, and the tactics of scrumming will be different as well.” White concluded.
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