For
as long as I can remember, observers of our great game have bemoaned the influence
of goal kicking upon the results of matches. From time
to time the Law makers seemed to have agreed and have increased the value of a
try from three to four and now five points, introduced the indirect free kick
for certain offences but curiously, since the advent of professionalism in 1995
and despite various ELVs, nothing has changed in this area. As the Pirates
swept up through the Leagues a few years ago they enjoyed the fruits of Nat Saumi's
boot which clocked up hundreds of points every season. Just how much they relied
upon him was amply illustrated when he sadly left under a cloud just as they embarked
upon National One for the first time. Inexplicably they then set off at
this higher level without a front line goal kicker. The result was a near disaster
and they very nearly paid for it with a swift relegation. The coach at
the time was Kevin Moseley and the following season he saw the light and brought
in both Lee Jarvis and Tom Barlow. These in turn were of course succeeded by the
metronomic Alberto di Bernardo and Gareth Steenson. Things wobbled again last
season until Rhys Jones began to really come into his own as the season wore on.
The pressure on these players is of course immense and yet as a 'one off' skill
it is almost as much akin to golf as to rugby. In other words, the influence
of one player's form in one isolated facet of what is essentially a running and
physical contact sport repeatedly dominates the overall result. This is despite
the fact that the ability to kick goals requires neither running nor contact nor
indeed very much athletic prowess at all. Of course in US football it is taken
to the extreme and the kicker rarely gets involved in any other facet of play
whatsoever. Every now and then this comes up to the surface in the media
- often when a country feels aggrieved that it has lost a match just because the
other side had a Carter, Wilkinson or a Jenkins. I well recall the outcry
when the British Lions outscored the All Blacks in Dunedin by four tries to nil
but lost 17-18 as the late Don Clarke kicked six massive penalties awarded by
a New Zealand based ( I nearly wrote biased!) referee. That was a very, very long
time ago and yet nothing much has changed. In my usual way of repeatedly
questioning the status quo in rugby - I ask WHY? One of the old reasons
advanced for keeping things as they are was that if the value of the penalty was
to be reduced (or goal kicking made too difficult) then players would cheat more.
This was undoubtedly true but, since the excellent innovation of the yellow card
system, I would suggest referees have a very effective way of dealing with that
if they choose to use it. A second reason I have heard is that there is
high drama in the goal kick itself. I fundamentally disagree. If there are ten
attempts at goal in a match taking an average of fifty seconds each the clock
is ticking for eight and a half minutes of a match during which twenty nine players
are going precisely nothing. Is that entertainment? Just to compound matters
the Laws of the Game stack everything in the kicker's favour. The other
team has to stand still, he is given a full minute to make his kick and for the
past few years they even give him a kicking tee. Once again I question WHY? Of
course it is the same for both sides but my point is that, given all the physical
effort, tactics and preparation that goes into the overall game, the influence
of this single aspect is wholly disproportionate. Furthermore if rugby
is ever to be a truly global spectator sport I wonder if this needs addressing.
You don't need to change the rules of the game very much - just make the goal
kicker's job a lot more difficult. A few simple ideas spring to mind.
1) Reduce the time allowed for a kick at goal from sixty seconds to
forty.
2) Ban the use of kicking tees, piles of sand etc.
3) At a penalty
attempt the penalised team has to retire fifteen or even twenty yards rather than
the current ten but can then charge at the kicker. The kicker could however use
a drop kick. More radical departures might include 1) Every
team has to have three nominated kickers and they each have to take one in turn
before the first can take his next shot.
2) Narrow the distance by a couple
of feet between the goalposts. It would look a bit odd to begin with but we would
soon get used to it!
3) The oft-suggested differential penalty - e.g. three
points for foul play but only two for offside, technical scrummaging offences
or being off your feet in a ruck etc. I would also like to see coaches re-introduce
many more creative set moves from penalty kicks. We rarely see these today unless
it is near the end of a match and more than three points are required to snatch
a win. I would suggest that these changes would give them much more incentive
to explore such set moves once again. So fellow Pirates…. have I
been off smoking the wrong stuff again or do you agree that there are a few ways
we could make the game we all love even more exciting? This blog will
be a feature of the new Pirates website, but for now you can join in the discussion
on the
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