Gareth Ellis - Rule changes must enhance the game and not be for sake of it

We have seen it suggested that scrums are disbanded for the rest of 2020 to help reduce the risk of spreading coronavirus.

And it’s been proposed that we bring in the ‘six again’ rule like they have in Australia.

Over the years, rugby league has been very open to rule alterations and that is a way you can manipulate the game and how it’s played.

Whether that’s from an entertainment point of view in terms of how you can speed the game up or slow it down.

For example, when they brought in 12 interchanges, what they found was they had big, powerful players but they were only able to play 10 minute spells as they weren’t as fit and mobile.

You can manipulate the game however you want but you can do it in terms of safety as well like when the lifting law was outlawed a few years ago along with the shoulder charge.

That is the easiest way to build a safe game and play it in a way you feel it will be the most entertaining.

It can be for player safety but the majority of time it is for entertainment and I think throughout this current period of lockdown it’s become – in all sports – more apparent just how important the fans are.

It’s vital to make the game appeal to supporters.

I’ve watched old games going back where, a bit like rugby union now, every tackle formed a scrum.

Union went down that route with rucking and mauling whereas we’ve gone the other way and changed it to where really scrums now are just a way of restarting the game.

The argument for them is it provides a unique situation where you have backs versus backs for one play only.

But also, on the flip side of that, it does slow the game down for a minute or so.

If you wanted to speed the game up, that would be an easy way to do it – get rid of the scrums. They’ve seen in the NRL how things have sped up with the six again rule now implemented and, personally, I do think it is good. I know we’re mid-season, but the six-again has widely been received positively. It takes away that stoppage.

Also, I think it now better sees the punishment fitting the crime. Sometimes, a little infringement in the ruck could lead you to defending your own tryline in no time at all once the opponents have kicked to touch.

Yet you can knock somebody’s head off and the consequences are the same.

This way, I do think it better suits. Ruck infringements are always spoken about and are a big part of the game as coaches try to get a little bit clever with how they slow the game down.

But this should help it so it will be interesting to see if it does get passed through for Super League. I think the six again could even carry on after this season but the scrum rule is a bigger conversation to have.

I know it’s still only proposed. But whether you like scrums or not, or whether you think they are useful or not, they are part of rugby.

You don’t want the game to get to a point where it’s almost touch and pass and you’re just chasing your backsides around for 80 minutes with people dropping off tackles left, right and centre.

Are we saying that’s a good thing?

You have to get the balance right. You could look at Marc Sneyd, for instance, with his kicking, rolling the ball into the corner, slowing the game right down, getting a breather.

We applaud that but are we saying we don’t want teams to run the clock down in the closing stages of a game?

Again, that’s a conversation that needs to be had: what do we want the game of rugby league to look like?

We could end up possibly with a game that is too frantic and so far away from rugby league that it becomes totally alien to what we see now so it’s important we get these decisions right.

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